Help with Linux?

If you have significant experience with Linux, please consider helping
maintain the Linux version of VPython.

It has been some years since a real Linux expert worked with VPython;
that was Jonathan Brandmeyer. Some expertise is needed, because with
every new release of Ubuntu, presumably the most popular Linux
distribution, there's a pretty high probability that something will go
wrong, as was the case with the function Gdk::GL::get_proc_address
breaking. Moreover, the Ubuntu package python-visual is typically far
behind the current version of Visual. The latest version of Ubuntu
offers a python-visual package that is version 5.12, released in
August 2009, over two years ago (the current version is 5.72).

I hope very much that one or more Linux VPython users will step
forward and take responsibility for some aspects of maintaining Visual
on Linux. Here are the main issues that I see as needing ongoing
attention:

* Improve the build machinery. Brandmeyer made a very important
contribution in creating the autoconfigure machinery that made it
possible to build on diverse Linuxes. However, this machinery is
showing its age. For example, it doesn't deal with 64-bit machines,
and it's aimed at site-packages rather than the now-favored
dist-packages. Moreover, the autoconfigure machinery is quite complex
and not easy to modify. Probably someone(s) should experiment with
using distutils instead of autoconfig for building Visual.

* Get involved with the process that leads to a python-visual package
for Ubuntu. I know nothing about this process, but it's clearly not
working. It would seem that there is little or no testing of the
package, and as noted above the package is woefully out of date. The
Ubuntu/Debian package should be built and tested by users of VPython
and offered to those who assemble the next version of the Linux
distribution.

I'm guessing that for someone who knows Linux well, these tasks would
not be difficult, but they need to be done.

Bruce Sherwood

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