Hi Bernd,
I'm moving this discussion to radiance-dev, since that's where it really belongs. (Feel free to subscribe if you aren't.)
Having compatibility links as an option during installation is fine with me if it defaults to "yes" or provides a clear explanation of the pitfalls of not installing the links. I guess we only need a link for genbox at this point, though I would like to keep "rview" in there as well for consistency with extant documentation.
None of the tools look in the $RAYPATH directories for executables, and I don't store any there.
-Greg
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From: Bernd Zeimetz <[email protected]>
Date: October 22, 2007 1:25:15 PM PDTHi Greg,
On closer inspection, my thought to check for "genbox" on inline
commands and print a deprecated warning isn't all that workable, since
there are so many places in Radiance where inline commands are
interpreted. It would require a lot of ugly and temporary code
changes. A better solution is to insert a "genbox" shell script that
prints out the deprecated message before calling "genrbox." However,
this still leaves an executable in the Radiance binary directory with
the "genbox" name conflict, at least temporarily. Unceremoniously
getting rid of genbox altogether would break 3/4 of the scene files out
there. This is not just a command entered by users -- it's in all our
scene descriptions, and changing it means changing thousands of user
files. Even if it's only a simple substitution, that's a lot to ask for
everyone to go in and change their data to accommodate a molecular
modeling system that in all likelihood hasn't yet caused a conflict for
any of us.Yeah, but the same problem have the molecular guys with their scripts...
Also instead of changing scripts I'd add a link, nothing really
complicated imho.I'm out of ideas. Anyone else with a brainstorm on this?
Question: Do the tools search in $RAYPATH for executables, too?
One idea: While installing the package I could ask the user if he'd like
to have compatibility links created and add those links. I'd have to
check if something like that would be allowed by the policy, though.
At least I can warn them.Cheers,
Bernd