On 27/05/14 15:21, Tom Rondeau wrote:
On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Marcus Leech <mle...@ripnet.com
<mailto:mle...@ripnet.com>> wrote:
Ideally, end-users should never have to build from source--their
distrib-of-choice should simply have the latest Gnu Radio release in
 their repositories. The reality, however, is much
different. The Gnu Radio project has *very little* influence
over the policy and
 decisions with respect to which versions are carried in the
repos for which Linux distributions.
Â
So, there are two "easy build from source" options:
Â
 o build-gnuradio
 o pybombs
Â
But, well, here's the thing. There's no such thing as "The Linux
Operating System". Instead there are a couple of dozen different
 distribs each with their own way of doing things.  Both
"pybombs" and "build-gnuradio" try to encapsulate those
differences for
 *some* of the "top" distributions "out there", but can't
possibly cover all of them--not without serious amounts of maint
activity,
 which means many, many, many person-hours of dedicated time.Â
We all do this for free, in our spare time.
Â
Gnu Radio, like many modern pieces of software has a metric tonne
of dependencies. This is pretty normal. The only way to
 get away from that is to have the user population agree to a
sudden and massive loss in functionality, and a release schedule
 that is measured in decades, as the Gnu Radio crew try to
re-build all that functionality from "bare metal". Modern software
 does a *lot* of "standing on the shoulders of giants". That
isn't ever likely to change.  When you install from the "packages"
 offered by your favourite distrib, all of that pain has been
undertaken by the packagers, so all you have to do is "install".
 But you may end up with older Gnu Radio--sometimes, *much* older.
Â
Gnu Radio uses modern build tools, like Cmake, which actually do a
*LOT* of work to configure things so that the source builds.
 Sometimes, on some systems, that doesn't always work right.Â
Remember the *massive* diversity-of-Linux thing I talked about
 above? Well, the folks who write our Cmake files cannot, as a
matter of practicality, always get it right for every version of
 every Linux disttribution out there, so, bug reports come in
from the field, and the Cmake files become, over time, more
 "encompassing".
Â
So, short of the Gnu Radio project inventing their own,
yet-another-build-system, and ditching all the dependencies and
writing
 from "bare metal", I'm not sure that the path forward would be
any different than what we have now.
And I agree that it /should/ be easy. But the thing is, I think that
it /is/ easy. However... One issue is that the project has evolved a
lot over its lifetime and a lot even in the past year. So that means
that a) there's a lot of bad information out there about working with
older releases and b) people want the latest and greatest. So they try
one thing, and it only gives them an older version, like 3.6, so they
want to update. Without properly removing everything from their
system, they try and build from scratch or use on of the build tools
Marcus mention, which then causes conflicts. Many of the installation
questions are really related to Linux and it just happens to be GNU
Radio that's causing them to run into these OS problems.
Tom
Â
Â
on May 27, 2014, *Mike Harpe* <m...@mikeharpe.com
<mailto:m...@mikeharpe.com>> wrote:
I think the distribution and build system needs some improvement.
I say that because a disproportionate amount of traffic on
this list seems to pertain to building the software from
source. It shouldn't be this hard given the tools that are
available.
Â
Mike Harpe, N4PLE
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Ubuntu supplies 3.7.2 for 14.04, Fedora 20 and openSUSE supply 3.7.3 but
I prefer to build my own.
I use SDR apps such as quisk, qsdr and ghpsdr3-alex which have quite a
number of dependencies that help to reduce the number needed by
gnuradio. I needed only about 4 to build the latest git on Fedora 20.
Once I have built those apps, especially ghpsdr3-alex which details a
number of pre-reqs to be installed, it makes light work of building
gnuradio.
I use 3 cmake scripts, one for x86_64, one for Ubuntu x86_64 and one for
Ubuntu ARM.
x86_64 openSUSE and Fedora which use /usr/lib64
==============================
#!/bin/sh
cmake -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python2.7
-DPYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/python2.7
-DPYTHON_LIBRARY=/usr/lib64/libpython2.7.so -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr .
Ubuntu x86_64 which uses /usr/lib
=====================
#!/bin/sh
cmake -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python2.7
-DPYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/python2.7
-DPYTHON_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/libpython2.7.so -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr .
ARM Ubuntu on Pandaboard, ODROID-X and Parallella-16.
===================================
#!/bin/sh
cmake -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python2.7
-DPYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/python2.7
-DPYTHON_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/libpython2.7.so -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
-DENABLE_PYTHON=ON -DENABLE_VOLK=ON -DENABLE_GRC=ON ..
73 ... Sid.
--
Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot
Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support
Senior Staff Specialist, Cricket Coach
Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks
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