[daip] Question re AIPS compatibility with the latest RedHat rev

[Eric Greisen]

Samuel Conner writes:
 > 
 >   The nrao website notes a variety of compiler issues which I will take into account. The latest RedHat revision mentioned in the AIPS pages is "RedHat 9", which is no longer commercially available or supported by RedHat (though ISO images are still available for download).
 > 
 >   Unless there is a good reason not to, I would prefer to use the latest revision of RedHat for standalone PCs, which is "RedHat Professional". 
 > 
 >   I have two concerns:
 > 
 > 1) is there any reason to believe that AIPS might not run properly under this version of Linux? If I have to, I could download ISO images of the early RH9, though I am a little intimidated by that, having not done it before.

          I would expect AIPS to continue to work, but changes in the
kernel can cause compilation problems particularly in C routines.  I
just moved an interesting but unused C routine out of the way because
of reports of trouble in the latest fedora kernels.

 > 
 > 2) Can I confidently use an older version of the gnu compilers, such as the gnu 2.95.3 revision, in more recent revisions of Linux?
 
No and I hope that is not what is said on our site.  The 3.2.2 and
3.2.3 gnu compilers are in widespread use with aips and should be
okay.  The 3.3.2 may be okay although there were some worrying signs
and 3.3.3 and 3.3.4 have had major failures reported (although I have
not been able to test them).

RedHat has price out out of their market but I do not know what we
will do in future.

Eric Greisen