Beta feedback (Giggi Liberti)

[Dave Offiler]

Giggi has not actually investigated thr package, but has provided some info on how he would have used it is he had...

For informaiton only - no action required

sincerely I have not yet used any version of ROPP mostly because the 
projects for
which I thougth I would need it:
- one was not accepted
- and another one just started with only 1 year of delay
In any case I will answer the questions.

Thank you
Giggi


>1) Have you downloaded the v0.9 Beta packages?
>
>  
>
NO

>- if no, do you intend to do so in the near future?
>
>  
>
NO

>- if still no, do you no longer wish to be a beta tester?
>
>  
>
YES

>- if yes, which ones?
>  TOOLS
>  IO
>  FM
>  1DVAR
>  Documentation (User Guide, Overview, README...)
>
>  
>
TOOLS, 1DVAR, Documentation

>2) What platform (operating system) and compiler(s) are
>you using, or intend to use, for the beta testing?
>
>
>  
>
LINUX-FEDORA, gcc

>3) What platform (operating system) and compiler(s) do you
>intend to use for an operational implementation ?
>
>  
>
NO oiperationa implementation

>4) Have you built/installed the downloaded packages?
>
>- if no, was this because there were problems in the ROPP build
>  itself, or in installing 3rd party dependency packages?
>
>  
>
NO, see above

>- if yes, did it go smoothly, or did you have to modify anything?
>  (And if so, what did you do to correct the problem?)
>
>
>5) Have you run any of the test scripts supplied with the packages?
>If so, which ones, and with what result?
>
>  
>
NO

>6) Have you reviewed how you would plan use the package an operational
>environment?
>
>  
>
I'm not planning any operational application

>- using the package tools as they are? Which application tools do
>  you plan to use?
>
>- porting (parts of) the code to use as callable subroutines
>  in your own applications? Which top-level routines would you
>  use?
>
>
>7) Is the documentation adequate to describe:
>
>- the overview of the packages and their functions
>
>- the build/install/test system and usage
>
>- the code descriptions
>
>
>8) Do you have any other comments about the beta package?
>What areas need to be improved?
>

[Dave Offiler]

Update from Eva.

Hi Eva,

> Thank you for your e-mail. Regarding to your notes I solved the netcdf
> problem and now I am using pgf95 (pgf95 6.1-6 64-bit target on x86-64 
> Linux)  and pgcc compilers.

We have had success with the ifort (v8) and latest (11 Jan) g95.
The pgf90 (v6) is also a good one. The NAG is one we have most problems
with. GFortran (GNU rival to G95) still has too many internal bugs.

>  And  am using the  configure_pgf_linux.sh script modyfied
>  version which includes the path of the netcdf lib and include directories.
> The tools are installed now.

Glad to hear it. You could have copied the netCDF files to the
ROPP target directories instead, or (better) put softlinks
in the ROPP directories pointing to their installed locations.
(In fact, I would be interested to hear if that last option
works with the original configure script)

> 
> Now I am working to install the other third party softwares .
> Maybe in the future version to provide these binaries lib and include files
> would help more users.
> 
I don't think we can provide binaries for 3rd party packages
under the licence. In any case, we would have to compile them for every
possible f90 compiler (lib*.a files are generally incompatible between
compiler vendors, and *.mod files certainly are (and even between
versions of the same vendor - yesterday I had to re-compile all the 3rd
party libs with g95 because the newest release couldn't read mod
files compiled with g95 only 2 months ago). We can't even provide
binaries of the ROPP tools, because shared libraries need to be
installed on the target machine (despite using -static).

> I will let you know the results,

Please do.

regards,
Dave