[Developers] Do you use Borlands compiler? we are considering dropping it.

[Arni Magnusson]

Having more than one C++ compiler on the same machine can be problematic, 
but there are two ways to go about it.

1. Call me nuts, but I currently have 19 different C++ compilers on my 
machine. The best way to "switch" between compilers is to write tiny 
simple scripts (like gcc462.bat) that set the environment variables 
required by each compiler (only PATH in the case of GCC). Typing 'gcc462' 
in a shell will then activate that compiler for that shell session.

For test purposes, I also have 10 ADMB installations on the same machine, 
switching between ADMB versions using the same shell scripts. If you 
collect shell commands (coreutils etc.) you may also need to keep those 
from conflicting, again by using shell scripts.

We can add a short sentence about this to the ADMB installation readme, 
pointing to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variable and 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batch_file.

2. If you want to make life easy, keep only one C++ compiler on your 
machine. If the GCC compiler that came with Rtools is making life 
difficult, remove it. When you install Rtools you can uncheck the "R 
toolchain" option.

---

If you're looking for a C++ compiler for Windows, 
http://admb-project.org/community/related-software/gcc has a few, 
originally provided by MinGW and Rtools.

Arni



On Fri, 23 Mar 2012, Mark Maunder wrote:

> The non-conflict with rtools was one reason to keep it, but I am not 
> sure if that remains a problem with the other compilers.
>
>
>
> From: Ian Taylor
> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 3:08 PM
> To: Mark Maunder
> Cc: developers at admb-project.org
> Subject: Re: Do you use Borlands compiler? we are considering dropping 
> it.
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> What was the conclusion of your survey about the Borland compiler?
>
> I'm working on improving the installation instructions and would happily 
> leave off anything about Borland.
>
> -Ian
>
>
>
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2012, Mark Maunder wrote:
>
> Can you please send us an e-mail letting us know if you use the Borland 
> 5.5 compiler for your ADMB or ADMB-re modeling and why you prefer to use 
> the Borland compiler. Maintaining this compiler has some issues so we 
> are considering dropping it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark
>