In article <Pine.GSO.4.53.0303301152250.15852@blastwave> , Dennis Clarke 
<dcl### [at] blastwaveorg>  wrote:

>   I have just read this thread and am filled with the urge to ask the same
>   question that I have asked many times before :
>
>  Why is there no Official build for Solaris?

The team has one maintainer for every platform with official support.  And
official versions require official support.  Which requires detailed
knowledge about the system being supported.  It is more than just compiling
POV-Ray.  So we just follow a conservative approach in not making official
versions available we cannot promise we will be able to support.  There is
nothing keeping from anybody else making unofficial versions available.  In
essence, official support is the only difference between official compiles
and unofficial compiles of the official source code.

>   In the past I have exchanged emails with Mark Gordon on this topic and
>   the answer is generally the same every time : you need the Sun hardware.

Indeed, without it is hard.  Of course, those are easy to get access to for
some people, but access and time are two different stories ;-)

>   I have wanted to build a correct and optimized build of POV-Ray for quite
>   some time.  Building the previous revisions was no big deal but the latest
>   rev caused me some issues.  Yes, I am sure that I can build it in its most
>   recent edition but that is not the point.

Well, the build issues on various non-Linux Unix versions are being
addressed, and some pieces of it (like 64 bit compatibility) will be
available in 3.51 source code.  It will only get easier to compile and run
POV-Ray on multiple Unix platforms in the future.

>   Since I have
>   built and funded the site, and Sun Microsystems is behind me on this, why
>   is there no official build for POV-Ray for Solaris?

Well, just having the hardware and software obviously isn't enough for an
officially supported version as pointed out above.  There is more to it, and
there is also a "political" aspect: Once we soften our stand of when a
compile is official, we also get users of other platforms asking for the
same.

The users of Power, MIPS, PA-RISC or Alpha based systems with their
multitude of Unix (-like) systems will want their official version as well.

>   After all, doesn't POV-Ray deserve to be chewing up CPU cycles at every big
>   Sun server farm all over the world?  :)

Well, given that the POV-Ray 3.x does not support multithreading or any
other means of easy way to run efficiently on multiprocessor systems with
all features working, there isn't too much point to it.  Otherwise I would
really love to run compile and run POV-Ray on this
<http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/hpc/SUN/index_e.html> baby at my current
university assuming I would find the time next to graduate studies ;-)

So it is not lack of interest that prevents an official version, but it is
lack of feasibility taking into account all of the various issues I pointed
out above.

Sorry!

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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