pyILPER 1.8.5 released

[jsi]

pyILPER 1.8.5 production has just been released on GitHub.

A new device type "virtual raw disk device" supports virtual disk drives for the HP-Portable Plus computer. See the pyILPER online manual for details.

Other changes and fixes are documented in the release page.

Note: In preparing the support of Python 3.9 I accidentally checked in a 1.8.4 development version instead of the 1.8.3 production version in the Anaconda channel. This 1.8.4 development version was probably installed by a number of pyILPER users. You find the pyILPER version number in the title of the main pyILPER window. This development version is almost a 1.8.3 version with a small fix for the virtual HP 7475 plotter. Therefore, there will be no 1.8.4 production version to allow everyone for a clean upgrade to 1.8.5.

Devopment/beta and production versions of pyILPER use a different set of configuration files. If you upgrade from a 1.8.4 development version, you can copy the configuration files from the development to the production version by running pyILPER with the -cc option once from the command line.

Regards,
Joachim

[Sylvain Cote]

Thank you Joachim for this new update and for keeping your project alive.

Current working configuration:

Code:

macOS      12.1
lifutils    1.7.10
conda       4.11
python      3.9.7
qt          5.9.7
pyqt        5.9.2
pyserial    3.5
pyilper     1.8.5

The --instance option is great for me, I have run two instances of pyilper/pilbox all weekend doing HP-IL tracing with the Scope tab on.

Sylvain

[twoweims]

Yes, Thank you Joachim.

I am up and running with 1.8.5. Blinking some Arduino lights via PIL-IO and HP-71B.
Looking forward to testing the Raw Disk with my Portable Plus.

I have the same configuration and program versions as Sylvain has shown in his post.

[dayd]

Hi, I'm running into unusual issues installing pyilper in a new computer. Following install instructions, I get a 'PackagesNotFoundError' after the 'conda install pyilper' command.
Any ideas why?
--Also a Big Thanks Joachim for your great work on this project--. André

[floppy]

(11-11-2022 06:10 PM)dayd Wrote:  Hi, I'm running into unusual issues installing pyilper in a new computer. Following install instructions, I get a 'PackagesNotFoundError' after the 'conda install pyilper' command.
Any ideas why?
--Also a Big Thanks Joachim for your great work on this project--. André

What OS? (linux? this is what I have).
Package missing?
you forgot this?.. "conda config --add channels bug400"

[dayd]

thanks for the reply Floppy,
I'm on MacOs Ventura on M1 mac, I already try to add the channel again and got 'Warning: 'bug400' already in 'channels' list, moving to the top'

Quote:~ % conda install pyilper
Collecting package metadata (current_repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.
Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.

PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

- pyilper

Current channels:

- https://conda.anaconda.org/bug400/osx-arm64
- https://conda.anaconda.org/bug400/noarch
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/osx-arm64
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/osx-arm64
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch

To search for alternate channels that may provide the conda package you're
looking for, navigate to

https://anaconda.org

and use the search bar at the top of the page.

[Sylvain Cote]

(11-11-2022 10:52 PM)dayd Wrote:  I'm on MacOs Ventura on M1 mac, I already try to add the channel again and got 'Warning: 'bug400' already in 'channels' list, moving to the top'

Hello,

I run pyILPER on macOS Monterey (12.6.1) over Intel Core i9 CPU. (2019 MBP)
I am not sure that pyILPER currently support the M1 processor.

pyILPER uses:

• PyQT is a C++ GUI framework that need to be natively compiled for a specific OS-CPU combo
• pySerial is a serial port library that has parts that are OS/CPU specific
  

After looking at the anaconda repo for osx-arm64 combo, I see PyQT and pySerial there, so these packages should be available for you.

When I do the following conda command: conda info I get:

Code:

     active environment : base
    active env location : /Users/[username]/opt/miniconda3
            shell level : 1
       user config file : /Users/[username]/.condarc
 populated config files : /Users/[username]/.condarc
          conda version : 22.9.0
    conda-build version : 3.22.0
         python version : 3.9.13.final.0
       virtual packages : __osx=10.16=0
                          __unix=0=0
                          __archspec=1=x86_64
       base environment : /Users/[username]/opt/miniconda3  (writable)
      conda av data dir : /Users/[username]/opt/miniconda3/etc/conda
  conda av metadata url : None
           channel URLs : https://conda.anaconda.org/bug400/osx-64
                          https://conda.anaconda.org/bug400/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/osx-64
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/osx-64
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
          package cache : /Users/[username]/opt/miniconda3/pkgs
                          /Users/[username]/.conda/pkgs
       envs directories : /Users/[username]/opt/miniconda3/envs
                          /Users/[username]/.conda/envs
               platform : osx-64
             user-agent : conda/22.9.0 requests/2.28.1 CPython/3.9.13 Darwin/21.6.0 OSX/10.16
                UID:GID : [user-id]:[group-id]
             netrc file : None
           offline mode : False

Then when I look at Anaconda pyilper page → https://anaconda.org/bug400/pyilper
I do not see osx-arm64 there, I only see these ones: linux-64, linux-32, osx-64, win-64, win-32

I summary, Python, PyQT and pySerial are available for osx-arm64, but not pyILPER.
You should contact Joachim and ask him if he could add osx-arm64 combo to his application.

Sylvain

[dayd]

Merci Sylvain,

I finally get it to work! I don't known much about python and conda but try to run it in x86 architecture. So after conda install & adding bug400 channel I created a different conda environment like this:

Quote:CONDA_SUBDIR=osx-64 conda create -n envi_x86 python=3.9
conda activate envi_x86
conda config --env --set subdir osx-64

and proceeded with pyilper install;

Quote:conda install pyilper

I connected the PIL Box on a usb-c port via an adapter and pyILPER had no trouble finding it during configuration.
Now each time I have to start a new shell window to use pyILPER I have to switch to this environment;

Quote:conda activate envi_x86
pyilper

Maybe Joachim packages can run on arm (I don't know), but for now it's no trouble

André

edit: added third line of code that I used (ensures that conda installs x86 versions of packages in the active environment 'envi_x86').
Now how do I get this in iPad/iPhone ?..

[jsi]

The ANACONDA team released a native M1distribution this summer, but without Qt support, which is essential to run pyILPER.

At the moment the ANACONDA/MINICONDA distribution is stuck to QT 5.x, which is a very outdated version that will never run on a native M1 platform.

The current Qt version 6.2 is supported for the M1 platform.

Thereupon I created pyILPER 1.8.6 which supports QT5 (with the PyQt language bindings) and QT6.2 (with the PySide6 language bindings) in a single source, see this post. I released this version a few weeks ago.

If you would like to have native M1 support, then download a Python binary from the Python website and proceed as described in installattion with Qt6 and PIP.

Do not activate any ANACONDA/MINICONDA environment in this case.

Unfortunately I do not have a M1 system. Therefore I could only test the pyILPER Qt6/PIP installation on a mac OS INTEL system.

Regards
Joachim

[born2laser]

Sharing my experience here so others can benefit, if more knowledgeable members want to correct any mistake, please feel free to have at it.

I have a very old computer that I am repurposing for playing with toys, so I set it up with a Lubuntu distro, I followed the clear instructions for installation of pyILPER in github (thanks Joachim!) and even though the installation through conda went apparently well, and it downloaded a whole bunch of packages, the help/manual would not work, it complained about bindings not being available. I believe it is the same incompatibility mentioned in previous posts.
I managed through trial and error to make the software work and communicate with my 41, but really wanted to see the documentation, so I googled around (a lot) until I found a trick that worked for me.
I installed through conda the missing bindings with the command below:

conda install conda-forge::pyqtwebkit

At some point it asked for confirmation because it was downgrading some of the already installed packages, I gave it the go ahead and now everything works

Hope this is useful,

Juan

[jsi]

Thank You for the tip. I looked into that matter and found, that beginning with the December release of Miniconda, the Python QtWebengine bindings (which is the current version of that bindings) are broken on Linux and MacOS. The conda-forge repositories are regarded experimental and I cannot recommend a long-term use.

On Windows 10 I got it working after installing the additional pyqtwebengine package.

Therefore, I do not recommend to do new pyILPER installations with the Miniconda environment any more and to use alternative methods (Qt6/Pip) described in the installation instructions. Please use Python 3.11 in this case.

Linux users can install the necessary components to run pyilper from their default software repositories. On DEBIAN bookworm they are: python3, python3-pyqt5, python3-serial. If the bindings for the pyILPER manual viewer are missing you can either install python3-pyqt5.qtwebkit or python3-pyqt5.qtwebengine to fix it.

Then download the pyILPER release zip file, unpack it to an arbitrary location and run start.py.

You may also be able to install the bookworm debian installation package. This will automatically install the required dependencies.

I'll revise the pyILPER installation instructions.