[Gate-users] Linux OS compatibility

Sun Mar 9 23:36:11 CET 2008

Most of the problems I've seen with GATE (and STIR) are problems migrating form GCC version 3 to GCC version 4. I've loaded GATE onto Fedora Core 7 and 8. These use GCC 4 and I think I only had to load one dependency.

A core problem seems to be that people can't get permission to connect their Linux box to the Internet. Without a connection to the internet, it is difficult to update packages which 
might be the source of bugs. I suspect that such users should favour Scientific Linux (http://www.scientificlinux.org/). 

Compiling Gate using Cygwin (on Windows) doesn't really solve the problem. It still requires the same process of fetching package updates from the Internet. It is still prone to the same problems which happen on linux. 

I think that distributing Gate as a Windows application (binary) might sound tempting. However, I think that Gate is more a "build environment" than it is an application. Distributing it as an application would isolate the user from being able to compile in useful patches. It would also mean that developers wouldn't get instant feedback on patches.

Nevertheless, my experience of the Gate community in Sydney is that most people find Linux difficult.
I don't feel that it should be difficult. Nearly all of these people are using Linux for the first time, so it's probably no surprise that they would do at least one thing wrong.

Cheers,

Robbie

Medical Physicist
Westmead Hospital
Sydney Australia

-----Original Message-----
From: gate-users-bounces at lists.healthgrid.org on behalf of Simon Stute
Sent: Fri 3/7/2008 3:33 AM
To: KRiley at rmdinc.com
Cc: gate-users at lists.healthgrid.org
Subject: Re: [Gate-users] Linux OS compatibility

Hi Kent,

2008/3/6, Kent Riley <KRiley at rmdinc.com>:
>
>
> Dear Simon and other GATErs,
>
> On the topic of using a different OS....
>
> Has anyone tried porting GATE to Windows using Geant4 and MSVC (or other
> compiler)?  Any success?

Yes I already tried but using mingw cross compiler (that is totally free and
that doesn't use any dynamic library). I succeeded in compiling clhep but I
had to remove some parts using drand48 random generator (that do not exist
on windows and that is not used by Gate), then I succeeded in compiling
Geant4 libraries too (except for the OpenGL related one), but it took very
long time to modify a lot of little parts of code that gives errors with
mingw. After that I took ROOT precompiled libraries (with the aim to later
entirely compile ROOT with mingw, in order to get the executable files *) to
see what packages could miss to compile Gate. And I saw then that I needed
the xml2 package, the xml2-config program and other stuffs that I don't
remember yet. Because at this step my computer had some problems and I
nevertheless succeeded to make a backup of what I have done before it
completely died... And after that I never had the courage to reinstall all
the environment but I will do it some days when I will have time to do
this... To finish I will have to compile all the OpenGL package, the xml2
package and the other ones that I don't remember, then ROOT and finally Gate
:-)

* Because with the downloadable executables (compiled with cygwin or VC, the
only ones that the CERN gives us) you have to always have a dynamic library
that is under special licence and that avoid you to freely distribute any
program that uses this library. That means that any people who wants to use
your program have to download the cygwin distribution or VC utilities, and
my aim was to be able to freely distribute windows executables that work
without anything under licence different than the LGPL one.

I think that with a complete VC package this is much easier to succeed and
with a cygwin package too. So maybe it will be better to give up with mingw
and try with cygwin I think (because it is free), but Users will have to
install cygwin environment first (that is very heavy) before using the Gate
package. And if anybody wants to do that job, he is welcomed ;-) Because
once somebody has done this, the good point on Windows (yes, there are some
!) is that everybody could directly use the executables without compiling
again.

Cheers,
Simon

Regards,
> Kent
>
>
> Simon Stute wrote:
> > Hi Freddie,
> >
> > I think that as Gate and Geant4 are C++ code, they ideally could be
> > compiled on every platform (it is really true for Geant4 at least).
> > Especially on any Linux OS because Geant4 is developed on scientific
> > Linux and Gate is developed by several people but always on Linux
> > (with different OSes) and sometimes Mac. So on any Unix platform you
> > will not have too much difficulties to compile it and it will work
> > fine. Personally I have already used Gate and Geant4 on Linux (Fedora,
> > RedHat, Ubuntu and Suse), on MacOS (I don't remember which) and on IBM
> > with PowerPC processors (cluster), and at the moment I always use it
> > on Fedora (cluster) and Ubuntu (laptop). Morever Geant4 is even
> > developed in order to work on Windows with VC compiler ! So don't
> > worry about using Gate on any Linux OS.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Simon
> >
>
> > 2008/3/5, Freddie <freddie.781 at gmail.com <mailto:freddie.781 at gmail.com
> >>:
>
> >
> >     Hi all,
> >
> >     I am attempting to install a fresh copy of GATE, Geant4, etc. onto
> >     a new OS. I wanted to know if GATE can be installed and used on
> >     any Linux OS - I have gotten it to work on Red Hat, but was
> >     wondering if it would work on Ubuntu, Mandrake, etc. Please let me
> >     know of any compatibility issues between GATE and the Linux OS.
> >     Are there any OSes in particular for which GATE was designed to run?
> >
> >     Thank you,
> >
> >     Freddie
> >
> >     _______________________________________________
> >     Gate-users mailing list
> >     Gate-users at lists.healthgrid.org
>
> >     <mailto:Gate-users at lists.healthgrid.org>
>
> >     http://lists.healthgrid.org/mailman/listinfo/gate-users
> >
> >
>
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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