Re: [PATCH] Add gctp

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 11:05:40AM +0200, Thomas Danckaert wrote:
> From: Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>
> Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2016 21:39:26 -0400
> > Should we package GCTP separately in that case? Is it used by anything
> > besides HDF-EOS5? Or, should we just package HDF-EOS5?
> 
> The only other use I'm aware of is in HDF-EOS2, which is a separate library
> from HDF-EOS5, built on HDF4 instead of HDF5, and which also bundles gctp. I
> intend to package HDF-EOS2 as well, once HDF4 is included.
> 
> > We usually don't accept bundled code, but it sounds like GCTP no longer
> > exists as an independent project. Is that right?
> 
> That is my impression, too (broken urls and undeliverable e-mails). The
> package is quite small anyway, so perhaps bundling with the 2 HDF-EOS
> libraries is acceptable?

It sounds like you've tried emailing the authors for advice. Is that
right?

> The archive does not contain an explicit version number or changelog (it
> just says it's the “new C version of the GCTP” -- before that, it seems
> there were some Fortran routines).  I've also found a gctpc2.0 archive,
> which *does* have a changelog, and on closer inspection (comparing the
> source of this package with comments from the changelog from 2.0), it seems
> that this code corresponds to version 1.3... (though e.g. Debian also calls
> it 1.0).  It's quite messy actually. I'll see if HDF-EOS5 builds against
> gctp-2.0 (for which a I've found a cleaner archive), and maybe package that
> instead...

It looks like this gctp-2.0 is bundled with wgrib2 [0]. If there is no
independent repository for GCTP, I'd assume that GCTP is altered
independently for each application that it's bundled with. If so, I
think it makes sense to use the bundled copy of GCTP.

Otherwise, we are basically forking GCTP and creating a new distribution
of it, and that would require us to maintain it and test its integration
with HDF-EOS5.

What do people think? Should we use the bundled GCTP in HDF-EOS5 and,
later, HDF-EOS2?

[0]
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/codes/nwprod/util/sorc/wgrib2.cd/grib2/wgrib2/Introduction.txt