Bug#395573: Visit: License Problems with SILO

[Alastair McKinstry <alastair.mckinstry@sceal.ie>]

Hi,

I contacted VisIt's upstream (via visit-users list) and found the same  
thing; they are
correcting the build notes that claim Silo is needed.

I hadn't tested it without Silo. I'm trying to build it now, but Visit  
1.12.0 needs
VTK 5.0.0c  : I tested against vtk 5.2 which is in Debian, and they're  
incompatible;
LLNL ship a VTK 5.0.0.c (with changes) tarball to build VisIt with; it  
doesn't build
on Debian, so back to working on the necessary fixes for visit 1.12.0  
with Debian's VTK.

(Some of these may be in the repo for visit ; they are currently  
working on visit 2.0
upstream, but I'm not sure it would be ready for Squeeze).

I need to resign up to ITP visit.

Regards
Alastair

On 7 Nov 2009, at 19:10, Francesco Poli wrote:

> On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:34:31 +0100 Francesco Poli wrote:
>
> [...]
> > On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:20:57 +0100 Alastair McKinstry wrote:
> [...]
> > > I've been looking at packaging SILO, a mandatory dependency of  
> > > VisIt.
> [...]
> > This seems to be very awkward: a Free Software application (VisIt)
> > which links with a non-free library (Silo) by the same authors!
> > :-(
> >
> > > AFAIK, this is a show-stopper for packaging VisIT.  We could write  
> > > to
> > > LLNL and see if they
> > > are willing to relinquish this,
> >
> > I think this should definitely be done.
>
> I got in touch with Silo's upstream.
> They quickly replied in an encouraging manner.
> First thing they told me is that Silo is no longer a mandatory
> dependency for VisIt: they say it's been an *optional* dependency for
> quite some time.
>
> Alastair, did you try building VisIt without enabling the Silo plugin?
>
> I think VisIt could be packaged for Debian (main) with the Silo plugin
> disabled, while we wait for upstream to re-license Silo in a DFSG-free
> manner...
> Does it sound feasible?
>
> > > but since I started this ITP, Paraview has been packaged for
> > > Debian, and it does my visualisation needs, so I am no longer
> > > packaging visit.
> > >
> > > Sorry about this,
>
> Alastair, does the above pieces of news change anything with respect  
> to
> your willingness to package VisIt?
>
>
> Please let me know: thanks in advance.
>
> --
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> ..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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