[PPL-devel] New Parma Polyhedra Library packages

[Roberto Bagnara]

Matthias Klose wrote:
> Hi, we did need the packages as a build dependency for gcc-snapshot
> (trunk).  the testsuite is run, but we don't abort the build on
> errors. see the build logs at http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?pkg=ppl,

Hi Matthias,

I have checked the build logs, but `make check' does not seem
to be run.  In contrast, `make world' is run into the `doc'
subdirectory: this generates tons of developer references
that I doubt are of any interest to the ordinary user.
If you can let us know which kind of documentation you
want to include in the package, we can advise.

Concerning tests, I think it is very important that `make check'
is run on each architecture to make sure there are no problems:
perhaps not on every build (since it is a very heavy procedure),
but at least before any release.

> current bug reports at http://bugs.debian.org/src:ppl.

I had a look at them: I have fixed one in CVS (the next PPL 0.10
snapshot will come in a few days). For the other bug, I have offered help.

In general, at least for the PPL, reporting the bugs upstream is
the quickest way to have them fixed.

> I hope that Arthur Loiret can provide access to an alpha machine. Note
> that Debian conigures gcc on alpha to include -mieee by default. for
> testing you'll find other gcc versions installed on this machine
> (gcc-4.x).

Notice that -mieee is not enough: according to the GCC documentation
you need -mieee-with-inexact, and even that is not enough
to obtain full IEEE 754 compliance (see
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2008-09/msg00400.html).
We are testing right now a new configuration procedure that
should be able to detect and work around such bogus implementations of
floats.

Concerning the access to machines, thanks to FSF Europe we have
access to an Alpha.  What we miss, is access to the following:
ia64, hppa, arm, s390, mips, mipsel, sparc (but we have sparc64),
armel, and m68k.

All the best,

    Roberto

-- 
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Computer Science Group
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:bagnara at cs.unipr.it