Re: New (experimental) PETSc Debian package

[Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu>]

Barry Smith wrote:

>   Adam,
>
>    Please feel free to contact us (petsc-maint@mcs.anl.gov) with questions,
> suggestions on PETSc installation. We don't know anything about debian but are
> interested in helping (a little :-)).

Thanks very much, I'll ask as they come up.  Most of what I'm dealing with now is
packaging issues.

>   If you like eventually we can keep a debian package version of PETSc at
> our web site once it has evolved a bit.

Thanks for the offer, but due to the nature of the Debian package management
system that won't be necessary.  I'll provide more details if you like.

If I could ask one favor though, mention of the Debian package on the PETSc
website (perhaps on the download page) would let Debian users they don't need to
build it from scratch.  When it is mature and on the mirroring system, something
like the following download page entry will suffice:

"For Debian: the packages petsc1 petsc-dev petsc-doc are in the unstable
distribution."

(That is, until the next release of Debian, at which time it will go into the
stable distribution.)

For the next week or two, testers can get it at
http://lyre.mit.edu/~powell/petsc.html .

>   Unfortunately the configure stuff in PETSc doesn't work (it seems pretty
> complicated to get it working on all machines since we use a lot of system
> stuff.)

Okay, I understand, I'll stick to the current scheme of patching files in
bmake/linux.

Thank you for your feedback,

-Adam P.