[Playerstage-developers] Player/Stage ported to Solaris

[brian g. <bg...@po...>]

*** my apologies if you receive this more than once (i know i will) ***

hi,

I'm happy to announce that Player & Stage now run on Sparc/Solaris.  For those
interested in trying it out, status and instructions are below.

We're not making a proper release, because the code is neither stable nor
documented, but it mostly works.  Rather I've just tagged the CVS repository
so that people can easily try out the code, while being insulated from daily
changes.

Let me know about your experience.

FYI, thanks to Sourceforge's compile farm, we'll soon also be running on OS X,
as well as Linux on various non-x86 architectures....

        brian.

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Current status:

  - Player & Stage both build and run on machines that report themselves
    as "SunOS 5.6" and "SunOS 5.8" (what is the relation between Solaris and
    SunOS, anyway?)

  - Player only works with Stage.  I haven't tried Player's physical device
    drivers (e.g., sicklms200), but i would *not* expect them to work.

  - The udpbroadcast driver causes Player to hang for some reason; don't
    use it.

  - The GTK-based (i.e., RTK-based) GUI works.  I can't speak for the new
    GNOME-based GUI.

  - The C++ and libplayerc client libraries work; Tclplayer is broken.

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How to try it out:

  - check out the source from CVS
      $ cvs -d:pserver:ano...@cv...:/cvsroot/playerstage login
   (When prompted for a password for anonymous, simply press the Enter key)
      $ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:ano...@cv...:/cvsroot/playerstage co -r solaris-snapshot-1 player stage

  - make sure that 'gtk-config' is in your PATH:
      $ which gtk-config
    if that doesn't report a valid path, then find 'gtk-config' and add its
    directory to your PATH.

  - build Player
      $ cd player
      $ ./bootstrap
      $ make
      $ make install
    you'll get an error at the end of the install, cause the docs aren't
    ready; ignore it.

  - build Stage
      $ cd stage
      $ ./bootstrap --without-rtvg
      $ make
      $ make install
    you'll get an error at the end of the install, cause the docs aren't
    ready; ignore it.

Player & Stage are now installed in $HOME/player-1.3 and $HOME/stage-1.3.  You
should add the following directories to your PATH:
  $HOME/player-1.3/bin
  $HOME/stage-1.3/bin

You can test Stage, e.g.:
    $ stage $HOME/stage-1.3/worlds/everything.world
Then try your favorite Player program; maybe one of the examples.
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