IRC log for #brlcad on 20070914

00:21.23 *** join/#brlcad Twingy (n=justin@74.92.144.217)
02:05.53 starseeker They're going to fight hard to insist on no internal copies of libraries. Grr...
02:06.12 starseeker Or I should say, it may depend on who we can interest...
02:07.16 louipc tell them to fix it then they'll turn around :D
02:08.08 louipc on the other hand if they succeed great!
02:09.30 starseeker Sean's got it in good shape - we just need to get TCL 8.5 and all its friends to release stable versions.
02:10.22 starseeker I'm still unclear if there are one or two cases where it's just a full-on name conflict.
02:11.00 louipc between 8.4 and 8.5?
02:11.03 starseeker If we have to depend on an unstable tcl, brl-cad will remain masked. And it sounds like some of the Gentoo devs think that's how it shoudl be
02:11.10 starseeker no, between other libs
02:11.26 louipc oh you mean for installing in /usr/lib*
02:11.31 starseeker I'm arguing for /usr/brlcad or /opt/brlcad for an install path, and a lot of them are going to want it in there
02:11.51 louipc yeah I put it in /opt/brlcad for archlinux
02:12.00 starseeker It's simpler and safer.
02:12.21 starseeker And if tcl 8.5 isn't available, I want to use the internal version rather than fail. That didn't seem to sit well either.
02:12.23 louipc it thought that gentoo used /opt for large packages like brlcad
02:12.25 starseeker Sigh.
02:12.32 louipc java... dunno what else qt?
02:12.36 starseeker The policy I saw said binaries only
02:12.41 louipc oh heh
02:12.49 starseeker We could have an ebuild for the binary build of BRL-CAD I suppose...
02:12.54 starseeker seems a shame though
02:13.02 louipc it's been a year since i've used gentoo! haha
02:13.07 louipc actually not yet a year
02:13.25 starseeker archlinux work better?
02:13.25 louipc have both!
02:13.33 louipc archlinux is awesome
02:13.43 starseeker I find gentoo very clean and well integrated
02:13.50 louipc I don't have to waste my time compiling every single package
02:13.54 starseeker just a bit stubborn about package management ;-)
02:14.13 louipc yikes I found gentoo to be quite messy
02:14.19 starseeker really?
02:14.22 louipc but I hear that they've improved
02:14.28 starseeker I guess I'm mental ;-)
02:14.48 louipc yeah portage would mess up my system every once in awhile if I tried to --sync
02:14.53 starseeker ah
02:15.02 louipc need to completely reinstall
02:15.03 starseeker yeah, they had a few bad moments a while back.
02:15.21 starseeker I had to completely reinstall after putting BRL-CAD in /usr ;-)
02:15.38 louipc and I have a PIII 866MHz so compiling every damned thing was a PAIN
02:15.59 louipc starseeker: ouch
02:16.05 starseeker I'm hoping the guy I was arguing with in #gentoo will hop onto the bug for the ebuild and Sean can hang him out to dry ;-)
02:16.07 Maloeran Gentoo is like Linux from Scratch with package management, it's not bad for developpers or people who know what they are doing
02:16.18 louipc starseeker: ;)
02:16.19 starseeker louipc: ouch
02:16.42 starseeker Heh - I've got a nice fast P4 now (my old machine died, probably to excessive code compiling)
02:17.47 starseeker 8 cores?? You young whippersnappers, in my day we lived with one core so primitive it didn't even need it's own power feed, and we liked it!
02:17.48 louipc yeah I was thinking Gentoo might be better viewed as an automatic-distro-making tool
02:18.14 starseeker I've got two cores now, and I'm still getting used to how nice it is.
02:18.33 louipc I think I'm getting a laptop next
02:18.39 starseeker Thought I was buying one core - heh, was rather surprised when gkrellm popped up two displays ;-)
02:18.44 louipc dual core
02:18.51 louipc sweet
02:18.54 Maloeran I still had Gentoo fall apart in horrible ways, more than once. The last time was when I emerged a 32 bits X emulation library, and just that killed PAM ( can no longuer log in ), deleted fsck, and plenty of other "system" packages
02:19.08 starseeker Owowowow
02:19.20 Maloeran I never understood how that happened, but it's kind of bothersome. For anyone who doesn't know Linux in depth, that would be a pain to fix
02:19.28 starseeker No kidding.
02:20.01 starseeker Usually in situations that extreme, I would get out the install CD, boot it, mount the partitions without starting the install steps, and then start debuggind using the CD environment
02:20.08 louipc yeah it sucks when you can't even find the problem and you have to reinstall. it's like you've been defeated
02:20.14 starseeker amazing flexible and powerful - saved my tail a number of times
02:20.31 Maloeran Yes... I just plugged the hard drive in another box and fixed the mess there
02:20.40 starseeker BRL-CAD took the cake though - even revdep-rebuild didn't fix it.
02:21.31 louipc how many gentoo devs are there?
02:21.56 starseeker A fair number, but probably less than are needed for the software they have listed. Debian does better there.
02:22.17 louipc debian hardly releases though hah
02:22.23 starseeker Heh - true
02:23.07 starseeker The distros are too used to small packages that can easily follow their rules - when it comes to things like Axiom, BRL-CAD, OpenDX, GRASS, etc. it becomes much more difficult
02:24.05 louipc haha yeah I was telling an archlinux dev and he was saying 'oh no it's easy to make packages'
02:24.19 louipc and I said 'yeah usually, but not THIS one'
02:24.34 louipc starseeker: never!
02:24.55 starseeker louipc: Of course, what was I thinking - we wouldn't have a decent text editor
02:25.33 starseeker Just curious - what do y'all think about literate programming?
02:25.56 louipc what's that?
02:26.30 starseeker Donald Knuth developed it - it's a programming philosophy where source code and text are woven together in a single document, intended for human readibility
02:26.38 starseeker readability sorry
02:26.51 starseeker The TeX typesetting system is created in that fashion
02:27.01 starseeker you can buy the TeX source code in book form
02:27.36 Maloeran I find source code perfectly readable by itself, as I think most good programmers would
02:28.03 louipc a philosophy where you comment code nicely and use good variable and function names?
02:29.50 starseeker Well... here's an example:
02:30.00 starseeker hang on, gotta find it...
02:32.04 starseeker http://portal.axiom-developer.org/Members/starseeker/cl-web-v0.8.lisp.pdf/download
02:33.44 starseeker I guess I like the idea of having thinks like citations to mathematical research for mathematical code, etc.
02:34.26 louipc so it's a class of computer language eh?
02:35.18 louipc programming language rather
02:36.03 Maloeran Looks like a lot to read to understand the concept... but I'm really skeptical of the idea
02:36.05 starseeker not really - just a mark-up convention that allows source code extraction
02:36.25 starseeker Many people don't care for it
02:36.36 starseeker It might be that it is only really appropriate for special situations
02:36.52 louipc well it makes sense kind of
02:37.16 louipc I might use something like doxygen otherwise
02:37.53 starseeker http://www.literateprogramming.com/ might be a good place as an intro
02:38.47 starseeker Maloeran: It's only really useful to those who don't intimately understand the code, or perhaps the coding language
02:39.32 Maloeran *nods* Right
02:39.49 starseeker it has a certain appeal for open source (and particularly for Axiom, where a lot of the code is complex mathematics) where you have many developers who need to quickly understand both the code and the reasons for writing the code the way it was written
02:39.51 Maloeran I'm not generally fond of documentation, it's good for high-level stuff, but the low-level source code should speak by itself
02:40.12 louipc well documentation can save time rather than having to go over every line of code to understand what it does
02:40.20 Maloeran That's high-level documentation, yes
02:40.47 starseeker cl-web is a parser for literate documents, itself written as a literate document.
02:41.18 starseeker the idea is almost anyone with a basic Lisp knowledge could read it and know how and why.
02:41.52 starseeker In the end Axiom will probably use a more flexible system, but it was a good exercise ;-)
02:42.00 Maloeran Perhaps it's just me, but I find it faster and clearer to read the actual source code than most typical low-level documentation found within the source
02:42.29 Maloeran It seems to mostly get in the way, taking screen space... until you run a script to strip all comments out
02:43.32 starseeker Depending on the goal and context this is true. One of the most able Axiom developers (able to read straight code) ended up forking the code base to avoid the drive towards literate programming
02:43.38 louipc literal programming probably does a better job there the way it sounds
02:43.40 starseeker (among other reasons)
02:44.09 starseeker Mathematics has a way of creating maximally confusing code, I think ;-)
02:45.39 louipc looks like it's just a different way to write code actually might be less verbose than the lower level stuff...
02:45.43 starseeker more complex literate tools that are tightly integrated with a compiler can do tricks like reporting where in the document to find code that uses any particular code - a densely hyperlinked document.
02:46.20 starseeker I think Knuth's tools were like that, but the problem with those tools is they become specific to one language.
02:46.22 louipc print Hello there
02:46.39 louipc rather than printf("Hello there");
02:47.19 starseeker No, in that case the grammar for your first part would end up being so long the space saved wouldn't pay for itself ;-)
02:47.31 Maloeran I still prefer to see logic presented in code rather than in a maths form, but... that's just a matter of experience with code algorithms versus maths
02:48.10 starseeker That's quite true. Axiom is a special case, as it is a computer algebra system - many of its primary contributors would (hopefully) be mathematicians first and coders second
02:48.23 starseeker in such a case, making the code close to the mathematics is logical
02:48.42 Maloeran Right, makes sense
02:49.58 starseeker Also, if Axiom manages to outlive all of its original developers, it may someday be critical to survival for less skilled coders to be able to understand it and work with it
02:50.19 starseeker That's my idealistic side showing ;-)
02:50.47 louipc less skilled will get more skilled if they're determined enough :D
03:03.07 starseeker night all ;-)
03:17.04 ``Erik http://www.collegehumor.com/picture:1599962 that's walking distance from where I used to live in missouri O.o
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14:32.44 MinuteElectron Good afternoon all.
14:32.58 MinuteElectron It appears my connection troubles have evaporated. :)
14:35.01 brlcad sweet
14:36.27 ``Erik brlcad, staying in for lunch?
14:51.45 MinuteElectron ``Erik: You work in the same office as brlcad?
14:52.56 *** mode/#brlcad [+o MinuteElectron] by ChanServ
14:54.45 Maloeran They do, yes
14:55.05 MinuteElectron Ooh, cool.
14:55.37 ``Erik same building, same team... not the same physical office, though :)
14:56.58 MinuteElectron Oh, I see.
14:57.25 MinuteElectron ...
15:20.43 ``Erik we have 2-3 person offices, not a cube farm... :)
15:21.36 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/ (364 files in 43 dirs): removed trailing whitespace
15:22.04 MinuteElectron ``Erik: So you get paid to do this?
15:22.11 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/other/ (1102 files in 65 dirs): removed trailing whitespace
15:22.40 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/ (538 files in 44 dirs): removed trailing whitespace
15:22.50 ``Erik yup
15:23.07 MinuteElectron nice
15:23.15 ``Erik *shrug* it's a yob
15:23.27 MinuteElectron yob?
15:23.30 ``Erik job
15:23.30 ``Erik :D
15:23.35 MinuteElectron oh, right.
15:23.36 ``Erik mehican style O.o
15:42.47 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/rt/Makefile.am: use AM_LDFLAGS instead of user-settable LDFLAGS
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17:32.27 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/conv/g2asc.c: eliminate trailing whitespace in g2asc output
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17:44.52 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/ (6 files in 5 dirs): change c++/c99 "//" comments to more portable c89 /* */ comments
17:47.03 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/include/dm_xvars.h: change c++/c99 "//" comments to more portable c89 /* */ comments
17:51.39 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03johnranderson * 10brlcad/src/tclscripts/mged/text.tcl:
17:51.39 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: Greenwald identified a bug in tab expansion. I could not reproduce the segfault
17:51.39 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: that he saw, but did add a check for an open database before attempting
17:51.39 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: object expansion, and a check for a valid path prior to expansion.
17:52.28 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/mged/clone.c: pad out multi-line and doxygen comments
18:09.14 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/libbu/htester.c: cast to fix incompatible pointer warning
18:11.58 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/include/bu.h: change various ints and longs to size_t for pointer/offset stuff
18:16.25 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/nirt/showshot.c: need common.h for config.h defines
18:16.25 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/sig/coswin.c: include stdlib.h for malloc()
18:24.26 ``Erik <PROTECTED>
18:24.42 ``Erik minute... about?
18:25.24 MinuteElectron Who you work for :D
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18:25.54 ``Erik army research lab
18:26.23 MinuteElectron And does john work at the same place as erik. And if so is erik a lower ranking officer than erik (you get refered to as 'Greenwald' XD)
18:26.33 ``Erik heh
18:26.34 MinuteElectron I ask too many qquestions.
18:26.53 MinuteElectron And does brlc ad work at the same place as erik and john.
18:27.17 ``Erik kinda
18:27.24 MinuteElectron heh
18:27.46 ``Erik john is technically on a different team... one I used to be on... there was a split, I went on the sucky side of it, but I moved back to the side that does cad
18:28.26 ``Erik but all of johns BRL-CAD contributions these days are donated work in his spare time, he's not getting paid for it and the pointy hairs can go fuck themselves if they dont' like what he's doing :D
18:28.37 MinuteElectron heh
18:57.04 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/mged/clone.c: minor cleanup
19:22.09 brlcad several of the files also necessarily had dos line endings, did you check that they weren't "fixed"?
19:29.06 brlcad gah, and your tclIndex files are wrong
19:31.36 ``Erik eh?
19:31.45 brlcad ``Erik: you need to fix/revert the tclIndex file changes .. for whatever reason, the system you committed from is blowing most of the indices away
19:32.21 ``Erik hrmmm
19:33.00 brlcad looks like all of the incr tcl indices are gone
19:33.05 ``Erik hrmmm, musta missed those when skimming the diff
19:34.41 brlcad there's not really any point to "cleaning up" the src/other files.. just makes merging an incremental update harder, their code their mess
19:35.26 ``Erik yeah *shrug* it was a one-liner, it walked into other, updating in other just blows away what is there, so'z I didn't worry about it :/
19:35.27 brlcad that's why there was a ton in src/other, but not much in the rest of the package .. there's a ws script that does the cleanup/exclusions automatically
19:36.15 brlcad that's my point, it's not always a blow-away update .. sometimes it's a patch applied
19:36.19 brlcad that just causes conflicts
19:36.58 ``Erik heh, and admin -o will probably mess up the cvs2svn script?
19:37.15 brlcad nah, don't admin it
19:37.21 brlcad it's fine .. just for "next time"
19:37.50 ``Erik I mean the tclIndex stuff atm
19:42.25 brlcad hm, i'd just revert cleanly
19:42.47 brlcad ala cvs revert -j 1.3 -j 1.2 tclIndex.tcl, etc..
19:43.07 brlcad used to have a script that got the last revision, and reverted to the previous .. but pretty quick to do by hand too
19:43.26 ``Erik 'revert'? O.o
19:43.51 ``Erik merge?
19:43.54 brlcad hm?
19:44.05 ``Erik revert isn't a cvs command... are ya thinkin' svn?
19:44.16 brlcad oh, typo
19:44.18 brlcad update
19:44.28 brlcad svn has revert
19:44.50 brlcad cvs update, join from 1.3 to 1.2
19:45.10 brlcad i.e., revert back one (presuming 1.3 was head rev)
19:45.12 ``Erik <-- was doing 'cvs -z3 update -pr 1.2 tclIndex > tclIndex', the merge update seems to do the samet hing
19:46.49 brlcad ah, hm .. I'd be afraid of cvs dying on the pipe wiping out the file it was reading from
19:46.58 brlcad at least for some older versions
19:47.23 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03erikgreenwald * 10brlcad/src/tclscripts/ (7 files in 7 dirs): re-add indices accidently clobbered when removing trailing whitespace. My bad.
19:47.35 brlcad s/pipe/output redir/
19:47.37 ``Erik heh, since it's a reversion, it doesn't matter... if the pipe craps itself, run it again, it's still in the repo
19:47.49 ``Erik stream, whatever
19:56.11 ``Erik probably just drift from printing floating point numbers
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20:07.30 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * 10brlcad/ (17 files in 11 dirs):
20:07.30 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: The c89 headers are all fair game since it's been a requirement since the move
20:07.30 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: to ANSI c89 compliance. So.. remove the HAVE_STDLIB_H checks and just use the
20:07.30 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: header. The headers <complex.h>, <fenv.h>, <inttypes.h>, <stdbool.h>,
20:07.31 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: <stdint.h>, and <tgmath.h> were added with C99 and still need to be checked.
20:07.33 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: There are several other c89 headers that we could just use, though, that are
20:07.35 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: still being checked.
20:08.48 brlcad ``Erik: yeah, that's a nasty tolerance bug .. kudos if you figure out why :)
20:09.48 brlcad it probably is just drift, but when you push it through again, you're pushing through a v5 asc which has more digits than the v4 it started from so it shouldn't be different
20:13.23 iraytrace Looks like a commit storm in the logs today ;0)
20:17.55 brlcad all hail the 'ws' commits
20:20.47 ``Erik but I got a bunch of non-ws commits in, too
21:44.28 poolio_ hmm, quite off topic but I was wondering if any of you guys knew of some sort of dynamics simulator...like an aerodynamics simulator where i could throw in an object and get something like a drag coefficient back
21:44.51 brlcad er, the flight simulator has things for that
21:44.56 brlcad s/er/hmm/
21:45.28 brlcad http://www.flightgear.org/
21:45.56 brlcad not sure if you could do a single wing, but it does the computations and you can feed custom geometry
21:57.03 poolio_ hmm, thanks
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23:05.38 ``Erik um
23:05.48 ``Erik flightgear has a couple coarse emulation models
23:05.57 ``Erik that require experiemental details entered
23:06.03 ``Erik jsim and uhhh something else
23:06.20 ``Erik xplane uses 'blade theory' to generate force sums, there're plenty of papers on the idea
23:09.34 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * 10brlcad/configure.ac: might as well also list the c89 and c95 headers
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23:18.00 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * 10brlcad/src/ (librt/wdb_obj.c mged/ged.c): don't bother checking for errno.h, it's c89
23:31.24 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * 10brlcad/ (configure.ac src/mged/ged.c): don't check for errno.h, we can assume at least c89 compliance
23:41.19 CIA-4 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * 10brlcad/ (6 files in 5 dirs): math.h and float.h are also fair game, c89 baby

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