Re: Poll for macosx and windows users

On 2/26/25 6:27 PM, Camm Maguire wrote:

> Greetings!  On a related topic, do macosx users typically use macports,
> homebrew, or compile on their own?  Likewise to windows users use cygwin
> or compile on their own?
I use macports, but only because I found that first. If I did actual 
maxima work on macosx, I would, of course, build it myself. I don’t do 
that much anymore.
> Take care,
>
> David Scherfgen<[email protected]> writes:
>
>> Maybe a good compromise would be to:
>> - not bundle GMP with GCL
>> - use the system's libgmp by default
>> - but allow the user to specify a specific GMP library when configuring, e.g. --with-gmp=/path/to/custom/gmp
>>
>> That would allow users with an older OS to still build their up-to-date GMP version locally (without installing it, which might cause trouble?) and make GCL use
>> that.
>> Or maybe that's already possible with the current configuration script?
>>
>> Best regards
>> David
>>
>> Am Sa., 22. Feb. 2025 um 21:35 Uhr schrieb Robert Dodier<[email protected]>:
>>
>>   On Sat, Feb 22, 2025 at 10:22 AM Camm Maguire<[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>   > I was actually thinking of removing the convenience copy of gmp, as it
>>   > appears virtually everyone is dynamically linking against the system gmp
>>   > shared library.
>>
>>   Camm, I'm an outsider to the GCL project, and I haven't been following
>>   carefully. But anyway my advice is to avoid bundling GMP with GCL
>>   itself, and link against an externally installed library.
>>
>>   That will work for any system which is less than some number of years
>>   old. The trade off is that it might not work for very old systems
>>   (where very old = at least 10 years old; maybe someone has a more
>>   specific number).
>>
>>   I think that's an acceptable trade off. Maintaining backwards
>>   compatibility means there's less time for moving forward --
>>   essentially taking away from all newer systems to benefit a much
>>   smaller number of old systems.
>>
>>   FWIW
>>
>>   Robert
>>
>>   PS. I guess one might find some inspiration in other Common Lisp
>>   systems which make use of GMP or similar libraries -- I have no idea
>>   which those are, or how they go about it.
>>
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