[PyOpenGL-Users] difficulties installing pyOpenGL on Linux

[Miriam E. <mi...@mi...>]

Hi folks,

I've run pyOpenGL on Win32 for a year or two now, but over that period 
have been gradually migrating to Linux -- specifically Puppy Linux. This 
has probably made installing pyOpenGL (and a few other things) harder 
than it needs to be because Puppy is a fairly young distribution. Its 
great advantages are its small size and its speed. Most modern Linuxes 
are going a similar bloated route to MSWindows.

Anyway... I have got python working fine with pygame, and can run all 
the demos except the glcube.py example. It prints "The GLCUBE example 
requires PyOpenGL". No problem, thought I. That's next on my list to 
install.

So I go to sourceforge and... ummm... an egg??? OK, so I read up about 
them (seems a little like making things more complicated to make them 
easier), download the required tools and install them, then install 
PyOpenGL-3.0.0a6. Everything seems to go fine.

I now try the glcube example again and it gives the same message:
"The GLCUBE example requires PyOpenGL"
Very odd...

I decide to try another example, just in case it is something related to 
that particular file. I select the dots.py example from the 
PyOpenGL_Demo-3.0.0a6 collection. This time the error I get is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "dots.py", line 24, in ?
     from OpenGL.GL import *
   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/PyOpenGL_Demo-3.0.0a6-py2.4.egg/PyOpenGL-Demo/da/__init__.py", 
line 2, in ?

   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/PyOpenGL_Demo-3.0.0a6-py2.4.egg/PyOpenGL-Demo/da/__init__.py", 
line 6, in ?

   File "build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/OpenGL/raw/GL/constants.py", line 6, 
in ?
ImportError: No module named ctypes

It is true I have no module named ctypes, but I haven't needed it 
previously when using Win32 and I can't find mention of it in the 
python2.4 documentation. Does anybody know what this means?

I was going to uninstall PyOpenGL-3.0.0a6 so that I could install an 
older version, but I can't find any mechanism for this. Previously I 
would just delete the folder in site-packages and the PyOpenGL.pth file, 
but they aren't there anymore -- there is a PyOpenGL-3.0.0a6-py2.4.egg 
file and an easy-install.pth file, but I'm a little reluctant to tamper 
with automated install systems in case I screw up info that they need 
...but I do it anyway (actually I move them to a safe place so I can 
restore them later if I want.

I try running python setup.py install on the PyOpenGL-2.0.2.01 source 
and after thousands of warnings scroll by it ends with
error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1
I've had no problems compiling the SDL libs and various other things, so 
I wonder if it doesn't know where to find some source files. Wouldn't 
they accompany PyOpenGL? I don't know. I definitely have OpebGL 
installed and working and can run many binary OpenGL demos. And I 
installed the nVidia driver for my card, which put a number of gl*.h 
files in /usr/include/GL/ which, I guess could be the wrong place... but 
I have no idea how to find that out.

Now I try a binary installable made for Fedora (shaky, I know, but I've 
had some success installing binaries for RedHat and Debian before). But 
this gives no joy at all. Running dots.py (or any other PyOpenGL demo) 
results in
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "dots.py", line 24, in ?
     from OpenGL.GL import *
   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/OpenGL/__init__.py", line 26, in ?
     from GL._GL__init__ import __numeric_present__, __numeric_support__
   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/OpenGL/GL/__init__.py", line 
2, in ?
     from GL__init__ import *
   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/OpenGL/GL/GL__init__.py", line 
5, in ?
     import _GL__init__
ImportError: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4' not found (required by 
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/OpenGL/GL/_GL__init__.so)

On my machine /lib/libc.so.6 does exist, but is a link to libc-2.3.5.s0
So does that mean I need a newer version of libc? And if so, why did the 
setuptools installer not balk at it? If it is a dependency then 
shouldn't it be included? or listed as a dependency? Or is it a result 
of me blythely dropping in an incompatible version?

Sheesh. Lucky I'm a ridiculously patient person. I've tried a few other 
times to install PyOpenGL on Puppy and run out of time after spending a 
day or so at it. This time I've finally decided to turn to the list...

Help!!! :)

Cheers,

	- Miriam

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Website: http://miriam-english.org
Blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/miriam_e/