<div dir="ltr">Hi Jon,<div>Thanks for your thorough write-up of your installation efforts and the list of recommendations. I think that your review document touches on a number of key issues facing the ADMB project.</div><div>
<br></div><div>I obviously can't speak for the project as a whole, but can provide some information on a few of your points. </div><div><br></div><div>First of all, I agree that everything is more complicated than it should be. I think there's hope that this process will be simpler. However, keep in mind that Johnoel was asking for feedback about something that's in development rather than a polished official release.</div>
<div><br></div><div><div>In theory, ADMB has a "<a href="http://www.admb-project.org/developers/release-procedure">release procedure</a>" which would have a core team of developers thoroughly test all releases and update the documentation before each official released. This would protect the average user, septuagenarian or otherwise, from any broken code or incomplete documentation. However, it's my impression that the <a href="http://www.admb-project.org/developers/core-team">ADMB Core Team</a> is too small and too busy with other stuff to do all the work that needs to be done under this procedure. Also, I get the feeling that not everybody involved with ADMB does well with the idea of procedures in general. So the result has been a large number of discussions about ADMB development occurring on the users list including requests for help with testing things that are less refined. </div>
</div><div><br></div><div>Regarding changes between versions, there are files CHANGES.txt and NEWS.txt that are included in the distribution (I'm don't remember if there's a reason to have both). CHANGES.txt is also linked in the most recent <a href="http://www.admb-project.org/news/admb-11.1-is-available" target="_blank">new version announcement</a> on the ADMB website. Many of these changes were discussed at length on the ADMB Developer's email list (<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/admb-developers" target="_blank">archived here</a>) and others on the ADMB Users list (<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/admb-users" target="_blank">archived here</a>). In particular, having "safe" be the default compile method has been suggested for years.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I doubt that the day will come when a single installation procedure will work for everybody. I think the best approach will be describing in detail the simplest installation method possible for any operating system, which would be recommended as the default, while also providing space on the ADMB website for documentation of alternative procedures. This could be accompanied by a table discussing the pros and cons of each approach. Definitely the out of date installation instructions on the website could use some cleaning up.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Thanks again for the feedback--hopefully your recommendations will lead to some improvements.</div><div>-Ian</div><div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 12:38 AM, Jon Schnute <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:schnutej-dfo@shaw.ca" target="_blank">schnutej-dfo@shaw.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">Johnoel and Dave (and many others) – At last I’ve managed to build ADMB in Windows with mingw. Great work making this possible! I’m genuinely impressed.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">After this initial step, I decided to test things more completely. I enclose a report that describes my results and suggestions in complete detail. We still have bugs in the scripts adcomp and adlink, and I really hope these can be fixed. Also, changes from past versions of ADMB make the current version confusing. For example, the script admb.cmd now has different arguments than it once did.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">So I’ve used this occasion to pull my experiences together in hopes that we can make ADMB easier to install, understand, and use. I hope you, other developers, and general users find them useful.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">I have one more suggestion not mentioned in the enclosed file. Please also explain how to obtain a 64-bit version of mingw and build a 64-bit version of ADMB.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">Best wishes to all,<span><font color="#888888"><u></u><u></u></font></span></span></p>
<span><font color="#888888"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">Jon<u></u><u></u></span></p>
</font></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">PS – I’m willing to help with the documentation after we get everything working and I understand more completely how the package is supposed to work.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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