[Magic-dev] Re: Now that Tim has formalized the development home for some EDA tools ...

[David Fang]

> I have recently installed Debian 3.1 and tried to complie and install Magic
> on it. I must say that it was very frustrating. I downloaded all of the
> Magic versions that I can get on the web. However, none of them can be
> compiled on Debian. I was even forced to use older version of gcc (2.9.x)
> instead of 3.3.x. Fortunately, I installed Red Hat Linux 9 then and the
> compliation passed finally.

Hi,
	If 7.1 was one of the versions you tried, the released
distribution on the web is rather outdated, unfortunately.  For a better
chance at 7.1, you'll have to checkout the latest revision in CVS,
instructions posted on the web site.  However, that alone may not compile
on anything newer than gcc-2.9x.  I've posted a patch months ago to make
it compilable on Mac OS X with gcc-3.3 and 4.0, most of which are
platform-independent fixes to the source, and may be of help to you.
That patch (with comments and instructions) can be found at:

http://www.csl.cornell.edu/~fang/sw/magic-7.1-osx.html

Hopefully, one of the maintainers will get around to checking this in one
day and releasing an updated 7.1.  *ahem* :)  If that still produces
problems, post a build log, and we may be able to help further.

For more recent versions of Magic, Tim's should be able to provide some
answers.

> Take a look at this mailing list. Quit a large portion of questions is about
> compilation and installation. Some of them have not been answered (and maybe
> resolved) yet. I really think that the Magic team should make more efforts
> on this issue.
>
> For the long term development, I would suggest getting more people involved
> in this project; even the people who do not have a PhD from Ivy League or
> other famous universities. Build a better forum, such as using phpBB,
> instead of this stone age mailing list. Organize people who specialize in
> specific topics. Each group has developers and modulators working on that
> topic. Just like any other successful open-source projects.

Stone age?  Yeah, it DOES feel old... doesn't it?


David Fang
Computer Systems Laboratory
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Cornell University
http://www.csl.cornell.edu/~fang/
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