Several folk have offered advice on previous request and this has helped
put into perspective the issue, but has not resolved it for me, likely
because I am not sufficiently knowledgeable (nor wish to become so) on
the innards of the compile/build setup for Linux i.e., pkg-build,
autoconf, automake, make, etc. Note that there is a U in OCLUG.
The outcome is that the requirement I have is as follows:
Be able to get source code (likely from a developer cvs) and
build a test version of that code.
This is for me a volunteer activity, in that I've been asked, and am
quite willing to, create test spreadsheets for Gnumeric and other
spreadsheet processors that are beyond the current "see 1+1=2" level.
You can see a first cut as the trig.xls file on the Gnumeric site
(testing tools). Gnumeric is the package I'll need to compile so I can
test new versions to see if inaccuracies are gone. While there may be
some occasion to write about this activity, it doesn't really qualify as
research, but I can probably find a few $100 to pay someone to help set
up an environment that will let me do this, and hopefully some scripts
or recipes to do the setup on other systems sensibly.
There is also a proposal to add an audit trail to Gnumeric that so far
is lacking in nearly all spreadsheet tools.
In that there may be other folk with expertise who want to do builds for
similar purposes, I am hoping to be able to share the "build" knowledge
in the form of a HowTo for non-Developers. And of course, the test
spreadsheets are intended to document the tests, which are usable in
checking other computational codes.
Get in touch off-list if you are intersted so we can work out details.
JN
--
John C. Nash, School of Management, University of Ottawa,
Vanier Hall 451, 136 Jean-Jacques Lussier Private,
P.O. Box 450, Stn A, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5 Canada
email: nashjc on mail server uottawa.ca, voice mail: 613 562 5800 X 4796
fax 613 562 5164, Web URL = http://macnash.admin.uottawa.ca
"Practical Forecasting for Managers" web site is at
http://www.arnoldpublishers.com/support/nash/