Re: [Scidavis-contributors] Working on SciDAVis

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On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 01:53:16PM +0200, Nicolas Seufert wrote:
> Hi Russell, all,
> 
> 
> > Would you be prepared to work on SciDaVis if it were hosted on Github?
> Of course! I used to be a big fan of subversion, but I have heard of
> git's qualities in merging and would love to give it a try.
> 

Great! Well I'll move the repo across toute-de-suite.

> > What operating system are you using for development?
> At the moment, Crunchbang Waldorf (Linux 3.2.68), which I think is
> based on Debian Wheezy. But I'm also running Windows and would
> definitively try building/testing on it as well.

Sounds good. It is decidedly easier to develop on Linux, but it's good
to have Windows developers around as well to solve the particular
issues of that platform (and there are many :).

> 
> > Presumably, you are trying to build the code now? I would be keen to
> > know what you think needs doing to make this easier.
> I have built it now, yes (and was happy to have Python back).
> I will have a list of problems and changes by the end of (my)
> day, i.e. in about twelve hours, since I'll do a few tests first.
> 
> Irritating was, e.g.
>  - that CMake and Boost weren't listed as requirements
> even though liborigin needs them,
>  - that Qwt-6 is not compatible (which is known, but not documented
>    in the install guidelines,

True. Qwt6 is work in progress. Sadly, Qwt6 is a worse API :(

>  - that sip requires it PyQt4 (which is fairly obvious, but it did
>    not get pulled for me, maybe because of qt5),

IIUC sip is independent of PyQt, and both packages are dependencies..

>  - that QtAssistant is required (which on debian is no longer part
>    of the standard Qt package?) and

There is a macro for compiling without QtAssistant, who's only purpose
is to display non-existent document. 

>  - (probably the only real problem), that liborigin is not properly
>    built. I still have to verify if it was something that I caused,
>    but for me qmake/make did compile and build liborigin.a, but
>    compilation failed because it was missing.
>    That is probably just a build path/object dir thing, but I will
>    verify that.
> On that end, it might be worth a try to properly integrate the cmake
> build mechanism of liborigin into our qmake project tree (instead
> of calling cmake directly from the qmake project file and leaving an
> empty one in the lorigin directory. I don't know if that will even
> work or make any difference, but even if it is just semantics, I hear
> that semantics can be good for maintainability.
> 

This should be fixed at the repo head, though obviously it is still an
issue with the latest release. Are you compiling from the subversion
head, or scidavis.1.D8?

> Also we could adjust a single line in the install guide saying to
> include python.pri from scidavis/scidavis.pro for python support,
> because well-meaning users like me might add the line after not
> finding a commented-out one, when actually python.pri gets sourced
> from config.pri. That doesn't obviously break much, but not only
> does sip get called twice (no deal), but the sip files get added
> twice to $SOURCES which breaks compilation at the linking stage
> because qmake tries to link the object files twice.
> Obviously my (not so smart) mistake, but avoidable. Silly me^^.
> 

The idea (after several rounds with a volatile Russian), is for
python, liborigin and so on to be optional things specifiable on the
qmake command line. Most of this is done in the svn head, but hasn't
hit release yet. So when you want to compile for debugging, it
compiles just the core package. For final releases, or generation of
binary pacakges, the optional bits get enabled.

> Anyhow, I will get back to you once I have anything.
> 

Great. Suggestions are most welcome too.

> 
> Best,
> Nick
> 
> 
> On 06/29/2015 12:33 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 07:27:12PM +0200, Nicolas Seufert wrote:
> >> Hey guys,
> >>
> >>
> >> First of all: thank you for SciDAVis! :)
> >> I found it an amazing piece of software and very useful for my daily
> >> work.
> >> I have been wanting to join the effort for some time now and since
> >> I'll be using it on a daily basis for the next few month, now would
> >> be (is) the time. So, do I have to know anything or can I just send
> >> changes that work to the list? Do you have any *pointers for me?
> >>
> >> I would try to concentrate on small usability/UI improvements and
> >> documentation for now (I have very little "real" programming experience
> >> and since there is a lot I do not know about the app, I would start
> >> there).
> >>
> >> Also I am not certain if some of the problems I (and apparently quite
> >> a few people) had with building from source should be addressed
> >> upstream, I will update you on that as soon as I have done a clean
> >> test.
> >>
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >> Nick
> >>
> >
> > Hi Nick, thanks for considering working on SciDaVis. At the moment,
> > the source code is hosted on SourceForge's subversion repository, but
> > I was thinking of moving the code to Github. Github has two main
> > advantages, apart it's obvious popularity, it allows users to fork the
> > code, and contribute back via pull requests, avoiding the need to
> > apply for developer access to the code repository, and secondly, it
> > has superior code review tools.
> >
> > Would you be prepared to work on SciDaVis if it were hosted on Github?
> >
> > Presumably, you are trying to build the code now? I would be keen to
> > know what you think needs doing to make this easier.
> >
> > What operating system are you using for development?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> 
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Prof Russell Standish                  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
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