[Roottalk] Request for new library

The library shuffling that happened in release 1.18 leads me to make a request on behalf of myself and all other developers who support a program that uses Root I/O.

Please build a static library containing just what is necessary to read and write Root files. In earlier versions this required just 3 libraries: libCore, libCint, and libTree. I want it static so I never again have subtle Root-version bugs when my users have a different version of Root installed. Note it is infeasible for me to require my users to build from source. I would like this to be a supported capability, so I can migrate to newer versions of Root without problems. Please make it work sensibly even if Root is not installed and ROOTSYS is not defined (1.12 works, but emits an obscure warning that confuses my users).

At present I am building with Root 1.12, and include a copy of the 3 shared-objects in my distribution, along with scripts that find them at run time independent of any Root installation. But I do not think it is wise to remain frozen using an ancient release of Root (I can probably migrate to 1.16, but that is not a permanent solution).

In the past there was "RIO", which appeared to do this. I never used it because it did not seem to be "real" Root. What is the relationship between that and Root itself? Is that a viable solution to this?

Note that I support Windows, Mac OS X (Intel), and Linux (Intel), so a portable solution is preferred.

Tom Roberts Received on Fri Jun 20 2008 - 16:57:23 CEST