20050224: Mac support (cont.)

[Unidata Support <support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From: Steven Businger <businger@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Organization: University of Hawaii
>Keywords: 200502082026.j18KQmv2018041 MacOS-X

Hi Steven,

Sorry it took so long to reply to your inquiry...

>Thanks for the prompt reply to my previous questions.  I plan to probe  
>the issue further with an email to the user lists as you suggest.

OK.

>In terms of responding to the Unidata RFP, would you/Unidata view an  
>effort in Hawaii to construct a Mac OS-X lab, with all that implies in  
>terms of software development, as a contribution that broadens Unidata  
>community capabilities (or advancement of technology)?  Let me know if  
>you think I am barking up the wrong tree.

One of the main hurdles to adopting MacOS-X at the moment is the lack
of support in the OS for SYSV message queues.  Here is the email that
Steve Chiswell sent to a GEMPAK user on this topic just last Friday.

  From: Steve Chiswell <chiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:18:11 -0700
  Organization: UCAR/Unidata
  
  Antti,
  
  MacOSX is not a platform that I support at this time for GEMPAK
  due to the limitation of the OS support for the SYSV message queues.
  
  The package will build using open motif and g77/gcc ( I tested using Fink's
  distributions). Decoders and GUIs will run, while command line programs that
  use message queue's build will not. Developers environments for X11 and
  Motif are needed.
  
  At the time I tested, the Apple gcc/g77 had a version incompatibility with
  libg2c, which led me to use the Fink version.
  
  Steve Chiswell
  Unidata User Support

So, the stumbling block is not Unidata packages, but, rather the OS
support for facilities needed by our packages.  Interestingly, the
MacOS-X libraries have entry points for virtually all of the routines
that our packages need, but a number of them are simply stubs that
allow for successful linking, but not successful execution.  In
particular GEMPAK routines can not be run from the command line since
the routines need message queues.  The graphical application NMAP2, on
the other hand, does work under MacOS-X.

At some point, the MacOS-X developers may finish fleshing out the library
stubs into working code.  Until then we will not be able to add MacOS-X
to our list of fully supported packages.

I hope that this perspective was useful in your planning.

>Aloha and regards, Steven

Cheers,

Tom
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>From businger@xxxxxxxxxx  Mon Feb 28 16:33:15 2005

Tom,

Thanks to you and Steve for the added insight.

Steven