Hacking on GSL

The GSL hacker needs some stuff that the end users don't:

* you must have a recent automake (1.3 or greater) from
ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/automake/

* you must have the latest autoconf from
ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/automake/

* you must have the texinfo 3.11 with Brian's mathematical hacks; it
is in ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/gsl/

* you must have a recent CVS (at least 1.9) from
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/u2/emacs/

Once you have this stuff, you can get the repository and start
working from your own machine.  To do the initial checkout of the
repository try (bash syntax):

# PEOPLE WITH CVS WRITE ACCESS:
export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs -d sourceware.cygnus.com:/cvs/gsl checkout gsl
[from now on you can just do "cvs update" in the gsl directory]

# ANONYMOUS CVS USERS
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.cygnus.com:/cvs/gsl login
     (password is ``anoncvs'')
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.cygnus.com:/cvs/gsl checkout gsl
[from now on you can just do "cvs update" in the gsl directory]

# PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO BROWSE THE CVS REPOSITORY
point your web browser to
  http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/gsl?cvsroot=gsl

# PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT A WORKING VERSION
grab the latest bundled release at
  ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/gsl/

Let me know (rosalia@lanl.gov) if any of these steps don't work.  I
have tried them out on swift and they seem to work.

---------- submitting patches

The best way to send us a patch is to compile from an anonymous CVS
checkout and to use a nice cvs diff option, like "cvs rdiff -u".

---------- some special targets

To check for ansi compliance try, 'make strict'. This compiles with the
following CFLAGS:

    -ansi -pedantic -W -Wall -Wtraditional -Wconversion -Wshadow
    -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-qual -Wcast-align -Wwrite-strings
    -Waggregate-return -Wstrict-prototypes -fshort-enums -fno-common
    -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Werror -g -O4
    -Dinline=''

I recommend having a bash alias,

    makestrict () { make $* CFLAGS="-ansi -pedantic -Werror -W -Wall -Wtraditional -Wconversion -Wshadow -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-qual -Wcast-align -Wwrite-strings -Wstrict-prototypes -fshort-enums -fno-common -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Dinline= -g -O4" } ;

which lets you type things like

    makestrict check

If you can compile your code with 

    makestrict
    makestrict CC=c++ 

then that's a good test for portability.

---------- warning about picking up old header files

When compiling the library it's important to use the local copies of
the header files, and not ones that have been installed previously in
/usr/local/include.

There can be confusing errors if the installed and local copies of the
headers get mixed up!  (In particular, some of them only show up when
doing 'make distcheck')

To put the local copies on your include path you need, in your Makefile.am,

INCLUDES = -I$(srcdir)/..

srcdir is always your working dir, and so $(srcdir)/.. is the
top-level dir where gsl_math.h and gsl_complex.h are located.

---------- fixing Makefile.am

To rebuild the top-level Makefile.am use

./libfixmk.pl 

in the top-level directory. It rewrites the dependencies for libgsl.a.