Submission Guide

What to Submit

The IAC accepts submissions of AVS5 modules and AVS/Express projects for entry into the international public domain repositories. If you feel your work may be beneficial to other AVS users then please consider a submission to the IAC.

If you wish to submit an AVS/Express project, then please read the Project Organization Guidelines first, which details how your project can be sensibly structured. The guidelines offer substantial benefits for all users, by enforcing a consistent style upon the organization of the various modules and macros. Although we will accept projects in any format, we would be grateful if you could submit your project in the IAC style; this will make our task easier, and we will give higher priority to such projects.


How to Submit

Once you have the archive file containing the project directory, its V files for definition of the library hierarchy and the principle objects contained therein, C/C++/Fortran source code, HTML documentation, and the README and INSTALL files, you may send the archive file to us in one of three ways:

  1. Standard ftp protocol.
  2. Email.
  3. Posting a tape.

Contact Informaton

Several individuals have said they would contribute, but from past experience they knew they would be bombarded with questions about the code and did not have the time to spend replying to these questions. If you are in this situation, we will put a unique control number in the code and the International AVS Centre will act as the only contact between you and the world. Many of the questions will be fielded by the AVS staff, but if a question cannot be answered internally, you will only be contacted by the centre and not hundreds of individuals.


Standard FTP Submission

Connect to the ftp.iavsc.org FTP site. Once there you will see the following directories:

  • bin
  • dev
  • etc
  • incoming
  • lib
  • outgoing
  • pub

Change to the incoming directory, which has subdirectories for AVS5, Express and Miscellaneous submissions. The incoming directory is the only one that has write permission. In order to provide a minimum level of security to those who donate projects, and try to make sure others do not accidentally copy over their files, and to streamline the process of adding your project archive to the catalogue, we ask you to follow the following procedures.

When you "cd" to the Express subdirectory within the incoming directory, create a directory using mkdir as in "mkdir myname". This directory will be invisible and entry into this directory can only be achieved by typing "cd myname". When someone else logs in, they will see nothing, unless they know the name and unique number identifier. After you "cd" to your new directory you will be able to donate projects using standard ftp protocol. Detailed information is available in the ftp man pages, but you will only need to know a few basic commands such as bin, hash, prompt, put and mput. to donate your projects.

You should type "bin" at the command line to change to binary format, then type "hash" at the command line to show a # sign on your local machine that tells you things are working. You should then type "prompt" if you have more than one file as this lets you download multiple files at one time using mput without waiting for the prompt yes/no command. Then type the command "put myfile.tar.Z" (or whichever format you have chosen) or "mput myfiles" at the command line and they will download to the new directory you have created. We prefer and recommend that all files submitted are only downloaded in tar.Z, tar.gz or zip formats.

Note: If you logout and wish to make a change, you must remember the unique name for the invisible directory you were given or else start all over again.


Email Submission

We will accept email submissions to avs@iavsc.org, but ask that you use this method only if ftp is not available to you. Additionally, do not send files greater than 200k in size by email. Files may be included directly into the email, but should be separated by lines consisting of at least "*" characters. Alternatively an archive of the project (tar.Z, tar.gz or zip) could be uuencoded and placed into the email, thus saving some space.


Batch Tape Submission

To submit a project via tape, put the project archive file onto a tape (e.g., "tar -cvf tapedrive filename[s]"). Label the tape with the appropriate platform the project runs on (and the platform the tape was made on, if different), and mail it to us at:

The International AVS Centre
Manchester Visualization Centre
Manchester Computing
The University
Oxford Road
Manchester
United Kingdom
M13 9PL