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Attempting installation on an unsupported architecture

As far as UNIX-like platforms are concerned, it should not be too difficult to port SifDec. This might require, however, a number of changes in several files. We suggest in this section where some of these modifications could take place. Additional modifications may be necessary, depending on your local system.

First, the installation scripts themselves may need to be altered, for compatibility reasons: the local C shell, if there is one, may be different, or require different command-line options. For example, the very first line of install_sifdec may be #!/bin/csh under Solaris, but has to be #!/bin/csh -f on LINUX machines. All the scripts included in the SifDec distribution are thoroughly self-documented and should be rather quickly understood by anyone familiar with the UNIX environment and the C shell. Similarly, as all the SifDec scripts use the C shell, they may all need corresponding modifications.

Depending on your local architecture, you may have to create a new machine.cf file and alter install_sifdec correspondingly. The custom size may itself be viewed to help design a new installation, as it may easily suit your local hardware. The file where custom size may be tuned is size.custom and may be found in $SIFDEC/build/arch.

Make sure that the last part of the file name

compiler.machine.os.compiler,

i.e. , the compiler part, is identical to the symbol representing this compiler in the Umake configuration files. Also make sure that new compilers that you define there appear in

$CUTER/build/arch/f.arch or $CUTER/build/arch/c.arch

for Fortran and CC++ compilers respectively, with matching symbols. More specifically, if you compiler name is abc, then the symbol which represents it in the configuration file must be ``Isabc'' and the block defining your compiler must look like

#ifdef Isabc
#define CompilerTagId           abc
#define umakeCompilerFlag       -DIsabc
#define CompileCmd              abc -c
#define LoadCmd                 abc
#define CompilerIsF9095         yes
#define Compile9095Cmd          abc90 -c
#define Load9095Cmd             abc90
#define FortranFlags            -O
#define NumberOfBytes           8
#endif

If your system does not support man pages, these will be provided in pdf and other formats on the SifDec website, as will updates to this general documentation and other information.

Fortran 77 files should be standard and compatible for the most part. Check your local compiler documentation for possible incompatibilities. If there is no available Fortran 90 compiler on your platform, you will not be able to use those tools (unless you write one).

If your new installation procedure is a success, we will be pleased to include it in the next releases of SifDec, with proper credits. In this case, please send detailed information on your changes and on your local system. On the other hand, please feel free to contact us if you think we may be of some help.

Many thanks and again, good luck!


next up previous contents
Next: Future versions of SifDec Up: Installation and usage Previous: The sifdecode command   Contents
Dominique Orban 2004-09-16