Re: OpenFoam

[Gerber van der Graaf <gerber.vdgraaf@gmail.com>]

I do not know if the software is very old, but I fully agree that the
building system it uses is quite strange and looks uncommon to me. The
question is if it is really needed to create a complete new building
system and, if so, which one: Automake, cmake,...? And also, will the
upstream developers adopt a newer building system in their package? This
might ease the maintenance work for newer releases. 

What is for sure that software included in OpenFoam and also already in
Debian/Unstable or Testing of identic or newer release, (like gcc,
Openmpi,..) will have to be removed from the OpenFoam. Also I think the
upstream OpenFoam package will have to be splitted into different Debian
binaries, like, at least, a library and an ´executable´ package containg
the program(s). 

As I am completely new to Openfoam, I will try to build it from source
in the way it is in order to learn all the bits and bytes. And then, bit
by bit, cutting out all unnecesary extra software that comes with
upstream Openfoam, reducing/removing all these weird macros etc.

I started this thread in order to see if there would be sufficient
interest in having Openfoam in Debian and if there is a DD to sponsor
and upload the package. This type of software is niche software, used by
a very small group of users. There will probably not be a DD out there
who will use the software and is willing to sponsor it. Not finding a
sponsor is quite frustrating, is my experience. At least, there seems to
be some interest from users side and I will go on to struggle in
building and debianizing the software. Thanks for the feedback until so
far. 


Gerber