[Ifeffit] Demeter 0.9.19

Fri Jan 10 14:57:53 CST 2014

Hi Frank,

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Schima, Frank <frank.schima at nist.gov> wrote:
>
> On Jan 9, 2014, at 8:33 PM, Matt Newville <newville at cars.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi Frank,
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Schima, Frank <frank.schima at nist.gov> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> On Jan 9, 2014, at 8:26 AM, Matt Newville <newville at cars.uchicago.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Bruce Ravel <bravel at bnl.gov> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 01/09/2014 08:24 AM, Stefano Luciano Ciurli wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello Bruce and thank you for your hard work!
>>> instructions to install on OS X 10.6.8?
>>>
>>>
>>> There is not a Mac package.  I do not own a Mac and and so do not have
>>> the ability to develop a Mac package on my own.
>>>
>>> Over the years, no one has ever stepped up to help me develop a Mac
>>> package for Demeter.  (Or Debian packages, or RedHat packages, for
>>> that matter.)
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, I have *tried* many times, and put a fair amount of time in
>>> getting Demeter to work on a Mac.   What I have not done is *succeed*.
>>> I can tell you that getting wxPerl to work on Mac OSX is far from
>>> simple.  Though Demeter is many years old now, and I've tried many
>>> times over the years (and I using wxPython on Mac all the time), it is
>>> only within the past few months that I have ever gotten wxPerl to
>>> actually build on any Mac, and this was a 10.8 machine.  Currently
>>> (though I haven't looked at it in more than a month), getting the
>>> Ifeffit-Perl interface to build properly with Mac OS 10.8 has me
>>> stumped, as Apple is now using llvm/clang, making it challenging to
>>> work well with gfortran.
>>>
>>> Migrating Demeter to use Larch should simplify the situation, as it
>>> would remove the need for the Ifeffit-Perl interface.
>>>
>>> Frankly, the work I do on the Windows package takes a
>>> lot of time.  The only way I can claim that time fits in my job
>>> description is because my group uses Windows machines at our
>>> beamlines.  Help would be welcome to develop packages for Mac and
>>> other platforms, but despite repeated requests over many years, no one
>>> has ever volunteered and actually seen it through to completion.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, help building Demeter for Mac OSX would be great.
>>>
>>>
>>> I too have put a lot of work into making Demeter run on OS X. I have been
>>> attempting to make a port of it in Macports [1] so it is easy to install
>>> and/or have a package installer created.
>>>
>>> The good news is that along the way I have successfully created a port of
>>> ifeffit [2] that builds fine for me on 10.9 and should work all the way down
>>> to 10.6. I utilize gcc for gfortran. I believe the ifeffit-perl bindings [3]
>>> work too. After you install Macports [4], you can simply type:
>>>
>>> sudo port install p5.16-ifeffit
>>>
>>> The bad news is that my in progress Demeter port does not work yet. The
>>> problem I’m stuck on is getting the perl-wx port [5] built. I have not been
>>> able to get it built with the new wx-widgets version 3.0.0 that is in
>>> Macports. The perl-wx people apparently don’t have support for that version
>>> of wx yet and they never respond to my queries about it on the mailing list.
>>>
>>> I encourage people to test out ifeffit on OS X through Macports and give me
>>> feedback - positive or negative. Thanks to Bruce for his support during this
>>> endeavor.
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers!
>>> Frank
>>>
>>> [1] <http://www.macports.org>
>>> [2]
>>> <https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/science/ifeffit/Portfile>
>>> [3]
>>> <https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/perl/p5-ifeffit/Portfile>
>>> [4] <http://www.macports.org/install.php>
>>> [5] <https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/perl/p5-wx/Portfile>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Thanks!  I'm very glad you're working on this too.
>>
>> I wasn't able to build wxPerl with macports either, but it did work
>> with citrusperl.  I don't have a strong preference, but citrusperl
>> does seem reasonable as a "standalone perl install".   I don't know
>> how likely it wold be to package this up into an App, but I suspect it
>> would be possible.
>
> I don’t know anything about citrusperl - besides the 1 minute of looking at the site since you mentioned it - but I’m working on a Macports based solution to install Demeter and so I will be using perl from Macports only. I feel that is the best way forward and where my knowledge lies.
>
>> FWIW, I think that Demeter does not need wxWidgets verision 3, and
>> that 2.8 or 2.9 would be fine....  From recent experience with
>> wxPython and wxWidgets 3, I'd take the conservative approach and see
>> if Demeter can work with a not-too-old version like 2.9.   Does that
>> help you build with macports?
>
> It used to build for me, I think with wxWidgets 2.9. But for reasons that I’ve now forgotten, Demeter did not completely run correctly when I built it. I believe one of the sub programs did work for me however. But now that wxWidgets has been updated in Macports to version 3, the perl-wx project has apparently not been updated to accommodate this new version yet. wxWidgets has been a major problem in Macports because it was 32-bit code and not 64-bit ready. My understanding is that version 3.0 is 64-bit finally. This is the desired state that will allow it to work better with OS X and Macports in general.
>
>> And I have been able to build the Ifeffit-Perl bindings on 10.6, but
>> not on 10.8.   I assumed this is due to changes in the Fortran
>> compilers. On one 10.8 machine, I know that I tried one of the 3rd
>> party ports of GFortran from http://hpc.sourceforge.net/   It's
>> certainly possible that I'm doing something wrong.   I haven't looked
>> at this in detail since November, but will give it another got over
>> the next couple weeks.
>
> The p5.16-ifeffit port should build just fine on 10.8.
>
>> Of course, my preference would be to move away from the ifeffit
>> library to Larch, and this definitely works on Macs (and I know I can
>> make Apps), but it would be good to get some version of Demeter
>> working.
>
> I’m open to this. There is currently no port in Macports for Larch. That would be the first step. Do you think it would be useful? Perhaps we can work on this offline. Feel free to email me directly about that.
>
>
> Cheers!
> Frank
>
>
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I'm not opposed to any solution that might work.   I see 2 positive
features of citrusperl:
   1. it comes with wxPerl (for both wxWidgets 2.8 and 2.9, it seems)
   2. it claims to make repackaging easy, so that a single Demeter
package, similar to how Bruce distributes Demeter on Windows with
strawberryperl, might be possible.

I made some progress today.  Installing the gfortran 4.8.2 package
from http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortranBinaries
allowed me to build PGPLOT (with X Windows) and Ifeffit with PGPLOT on
OS 10.8 with very little trouble (I didn't try to build PNG support -
PGPLOT is broken for this).   Demeter doesn't need PGPLOT, this was a
sign of other conflicts.

I ran into a snag building the Ifeffit-Perl interface with citrusperl
-- I believe it actually compiled the wrapper code,  but there is some
confusion between the system Perl and citrusperl.  I think this is
solvable, but might take some effort.

--Matt

PS: FWIW, I'm using the 64-bit version of citrusperl.