[PD-dev] pd-double builds are actually double now

katja katjavetter at gmail.com
Fri Oct 21 13:43:10 CEST 2011


Starting on October 20, nightly builds tagged as pd-double are really
built in double precision. All earlier builds were single precision or
a mix of single and double.

In double precision, only Linux builds succeed, partly. From the logs,
you can see gcc exiting with an error when compiling creb. The package
contains everything which was built before creb: the Pd core and a few
external libs. On OSX, no package is produced at all. It will take
considerable time before all libs will even compile in double
precision, since all fixes have to be properly tested before commit.

In the meantime, double precision Pd builds were prematurely announced
on puredata.info on Otober 4. We have two weeks of wrecked pd-double
builds on the autobuild pages, but the pd-double announcement is
already leading it's own viral life, see for example an aside in this
thread (Pd forum):

http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-6287-filter-object-bug-iemlib

I am now looking for a way to better manage info and support on this
topic. The double-readiness of pd core code is a modest achievement, a
seed from which double-precision-enabled Pd / Pd-extended will
hopefully grow. This perspective may be easily be overshadowed by
reports of disappointment when pd users can not find executables, or
even worse, test the wrecked builds. An early conclusion will be that
double-precision Pd is a pathetic failure, and this may in turn
discourage further development.

Would it be possible to have double-precision vanilla Pd builds
produced for all OS'ses, and make them available via puredata.info? I
can include test- and demo-patches, and we could set up a place to
collect such patches from users. This would be a positive way to get a
taste of double-precision Pd. The nightly pd-double builds instead,
are at the moment only useful for hardcore testers, devs and
maintainers, they can not help in promoting the topic among pd users.


Katja



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