On Thu, 14 Jan 1999 mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu wrote:

: This creates the following problem.  One of the features of scilab (which
: some people probably never use and others probably use a lot) is that you
: can write a fortran (or C) code routine, and from within scilab, have the
: function built and dynamically loaded.  However, all the compiler
: information that scilab uses is done at compile time.  Hence, if I build a
: binary package on a machine with egcs so that /usr/bin/f77 exists, I can't
: use the dynamic linking feature on a machine without /usr/bin/f77 even if
: I have f2c!  I hate to force everyone who wants this package to have
: f2c installed.

Since egcs is NOT a released bit of NetBSD yet, this *shouldn't* be a
problem.  Packages built with egcs will *require* -current to run (since
libg2c is shared), and packages built with 1.3.x will need 1.3.x, but also
f2c (err, now fort77).  So...

.if !exists(/usr/bin/fort77)
DEPENDS+=  fort77-....
.endif

Note that I use `fort77' which is what the Single UNIX Specification
specifies, and what both egcs and the fort77 pkg now provide in their latest
incarnations.  DEPENDS= ensures that you get this at runtime, too.

: Also, scilab can use PVM.  Scilab can certainly be built on a machine
: without the pvm package, just give --without-pvm as a configure option.
: But, some people may want this option.  If scilab is built pvm, it can run
: on a machine without pvm installed, you just cant make useof the pvm
: features.  So once again, should everyone be forced via 
: DEPENDS+=	pvm*:../../parallel/pvm3
: to have the pvm package if the want scilab even if they don't care about
: ever using the pvm features?

Depends on how big PVM is.  If it's ~small, add the dependency (this is like
JPEG/TIFF/giflib in graphics packages).

: There's also some sort of TCL/TK interface too.  The same question
: applies.  I've never used this feature and don't want to have to install
: tcl and tk on my machine, but someone may want it.

A separate `scilab-tk' pkg.  This sounds like something that requires much
integration into the package.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)