Re: Min. req. of programming language standard support, GRASS GIS 8

On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 6:30 AM Huidae Cho <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Thanks Nicklas for the great summary! That helped a lot.
>
> I was wondering if we have a list of all supported platforms somewhere?
We have official downloads for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Are these three
only "officially" supported platforms? I know GRASS is compilable on
FreeBSD [1] and maybe (Open|Net)BSD. Is that it? Minix3 supports GDAL
1.11.3, PROJ 4.9.2, GEOS 3.5.0, and GCC 6.2.0 [2]. I know... they are a
little behind.

I think it is a bit more complicated, e.g. there is not one single Linux
version. We need to make a decision not only about platforms, but also
about platform versions. Traditionally, GRASS aims to be compatible with
all currently supported platform versions. For RHEL, this would mean
support for RHEL 7 (ignoring the extended support for RHEL 6 until 2024).
For Debian, this would mean support for Stretch (Debian 9). For FreeBSD,
this would mean support for FreeBSD 11.x. For Solaris, this would mean
support for Solaris 11 (ignoring the extended support for Solaris 10 until
2024). I have previously tested GRASS on all these platforms, but not on
all supported versions of these platforms. IMHO, it is ok if the current
GRASS version is running on the current version of these OSs (RHEL, Debian,
FreeBSD, Solaris) which are often used in production environments.

The derived and often more up-to-date OSs like Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. do not
seem to be a problem.

Markus M

>
> Since we cannot (or will be difficult to) go back once we move to a newer
C standard, I think we need to discuss what platforms we want to support
officially or unofficially (?) first. Is [3] or [4] (GRASS 6.3) still
valid? Has anyone tried all or some of those platforms recently (Sun
Solaris (SPARC/Intel), Silicon Graphics Irix, HP-UX, DEC-Alpha, AIX, BSD,
iPAQ/Linux and other UNIX compliant platforms)? I think at some point this
list was removed from a release announcement. Maybe, we are being more
realistic because many of these platforms are now irrelevant or we just
don't have enough resources or interest to maintain such a list of
supported platforms anymore?
>
> Best,
> Huidae
>
> [1] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=index&section=3
> [2] http://www.minix3.org/pkgsrc/distfiles/local/3.4.0-2016Q3/
> [3] https://old.grass.osgeo.org/screenshots/platforms/
> [4] https://grass.osgeo.org/news/2008_04_23_announce_grass630/
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 4:25 PM Markus Metz <[email protected]>
wrote:
>>
>> A pity that Nicklas did not answer in this thread, see his answer in
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2021-February/094913.html
>>
>> I have not studied the different C standards and the state of their
implementation in different compilers and their different versions in
depth, and thus appreciate very much the summary of Nicklas!
>>
>> IIUC, Nicklas recommends to allow C11 standard features in GRASS C code,
with no need to change the current code base, and all compilers in all
supported platforms apparently support C11.
>>
>> +1 from me, as long as all stock compilers on all supported platforms
support C11
>>
>> Markus M
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 8:56 AM Moritz Lennert <
[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Am 31. Januar 2021 22:15:53 MEZ schrieb Markus Metz <
[email protected]>:
>> > >On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 11:19 PM Moritz Lennert <
>> > >[email protected]> wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> Am 29. Januar 2021 20:54:06 GMT+00:00 schrieb Markus Metz <
>> > >[email protected]>:
>> > >> >Hi Huidae,
>> > >> >
>> > >> >On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 6:30 PM Huidae Cho <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> > >> >>
>> > >> >> Markus,
>> > >> >>
>> > >> >> I think we have to think about what benefits it would bring to
us by
>> > >> >modernizing C code. Probably, not much at all. Personally, I would
keep
>> > >it
>> > >> >as is because the minimum set of anything (e.g., ANSI C with no new
>> > >> >features) would probably be more portable, I believe. In other
words,
>> > >what
>> > >> >are we missing from C99?
>> > >> >
>> > >> >as I mentioned, there is no need to modernize the GRASS C code. The
>> > >> >question is if we officially allow C99 features.
>> > >> >
>> > >> >For example a number of useful math-related functions and macros
are only
>> > >> >available with C99. See /usr/include/math.h on your system and
search for
>> > >> >C99. Also a number of features related to data types, particularly
for
>> > >> >various int datatypes (stdint.h), become available with C99. And
the
>> > >> >geographic lib in PROJ with src/geodesic.c wants C99. For new PROJ
>> > >> >versions, C99 is a requirement.
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> If proj requires it, doesn't it automatically become a requirement
for
>> > >GRASS as well ?
>> > >
>> > >No, because the code base of other libs might have completely
different
>> > >compile requirements. A software can use functions and libs of other
>> > >software packages, but does not need to follow the compile standards
of
>> > >those other software packages, because they are compiled
independently.
>> > >
>> >
>> > Thanks for the clarification.
>> >
>> > In light of that I agree that we should choose the oldest standard
possible, unless we _really_ need something only present in a more recent
version.
>> >
>> > @those who want to use more recent standards: what are your reasons
for that ?
>> >
>> > Moritz
>
>
>
> --
> Huidae Cho, Ph.D., GISP, /hidɛ t͡ɕo/, 조희대, 曺喜大
> GRASS GIS Developer
> https://idea.isnew.info

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