newRPL - build 1255 released! [updated to 1299]

[Claudio L.]

(12-24-2017 08:20 PM)BarryMead Wrote:  Claudio: Enjoy a Merry Christmas with your family. I have a second computer with Ubutntu 14.04 installed on it, so I tried the compile instructions on that computer and it worked perfectly. I can confirm that the issue is related to the changes made to Ubuntu for the 16.04 LTS release. Thanks for the tip, Barry

This morning I wrote instructions for Ubuntu 16.04, I followed them from a fresh install and worked fine. I saw a lot of extra warnings that weren't there before (I'll take care of them in due time) but it built just fine.

EDIT: I mean I wrote the instructions at the wiki, chapter 1. Not sure that was clear from the original post.

[BarryMead]

(12-25-2017 06:06 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  EDIT: I mean I wrote the instructions at the wiki, chapter 1. Not sure that was clear from the original post.

Claudio: I followed your new wiki instructions "to-the-letter" and still the compile fails at the build step on the newrpl-ui.pro project. I assume that there is an undisclosed dependency required that was not listed in your earlier post.

Until we get a full and complete list of dependencies for building the newRPL project, I have to believe that many people will run into this same problem if they try to compile a native Linux version of the simulator.

[Claudio L.]

(12-26-2017 08:59 PM)BarryMead Wrote:  Until we get a full and complete list of dependencies for building the newRPL project, I have to believe that many people will run into this same problem if they try to compile a native Linux version of the simulator.

You already have a complete list of dependencies, there's nothing else needed. There could be something wrong with the setup on that particular machine you are using, since you mention you had no issues on another machine.
I checked and one of the two Linux boxes I use is Lubuntu 16.04 (the other one has Linux Mint, based on 14.04), and I can confirm it builds fine on both. My experiment with a VM worked just fine. Until a few months ago one of my machines was freeBSD, and it built just fine (I need to test now how USB works on freeBSD, might need some tweaks).
On my machines, the -std=c++11 is added by default, if yours is not perhaps something is not setup properly, that's a first clue.

[Claudio L.]

(12-31-2017 06:05 AM)BarryMead Wrote:  Claudio: I had to abandon the emulator compile on Ubuntu 16.04, because I followed the dependency requirements, and compile directions exactly, yet the compile errors persist. I tried google searches of the error messages reported by the compiler to no avail, because the errors are simply too generic.

That's because there is no missing dependencies, something messed up your system headers, or the headers were moved to different folders.

(12-31-2017 06:05 AM)BarryMead Wrote:  Additionally on the Ubuntu 14.04 computer, the hidraw drivers refuse to load, and searches of the error show that the standard 14.04 kernel is built with options that prohibit hidraw and favor USB lib instead.

Can you post a link to where you found that info? I'm trying to search but all I see is people using hidraw as far back as 2009, so it's been enabled in Ubuntu's kernel for a very long time. I didn't do anything to enable it, it's enabled by default but you do need to follow the wiki to setup the permissions correctly.

(12-31-2017 06:05 AM)BarryMead Wrote:  Thanks for trying to help, I just don't see any way forward from here. I have dozens of calculators to play with, including my DM-15L, and WP-34s that seamlessly communicate with their desktop emulator counterparts using Ubuntu Linux 16.04. I had hoped that I could achieve this level of integration with the newRPL calculator/emulator. Perhaps when the project reaches the later beta or release stages I will try again.

There's an easy way forward: since your system is messed up, just install VirtualBox and run a fresh Ubuntu install on a virtual machine, you can easily map the USB device to the VM, works like a charm. On a fresh install, you'll have a working emulator in no time.

[TheKaneB]

Pro Tip: ALWAYS use a virtual machine when messing around with GCC, bintools, etc... even more so if you are setting up a cross compiler environment. GCC doesn't really like to be installed in multiple versions on the same system, since the paths will eventually get entangled and include / libs versions/archs will get mixed up badly.

That's a very old design flaw of GCC, there's nothing you can really do about it

VirtualBox is the way to go.

[BarryMead]

I tried to compile with virtual box, but got entirely different errors.
I followed the instructions in the wiki precisely, and when you try to open a project
in qtcreator it says "No Valid Kits found".

I repeated the whole process 5-times including starting from a fresh virtual box Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit image downloaded from this site: https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/
I installed all of the dependencies listed in the wiki and qt-unified-linux-x64-3.0.2-online.run each time. I think this project is cursed.

[pier4r]

little "unpopular" opinion. If someone wants to give up, one is free to do it. Your time is your time.

I write this because I have the perception, and it can be completely wrong, that Barry is trying a lot to justify that he is not giving up. In my opinion it is completely fine to give up.

[Massimo Gnerucci]

Oh well, at last I just bought another couple of 39gs, just to try it out!
:)

[Claudio L.]

(01-01-2018 08:16 AM)BarryMead Wrote:  I tried to compile with virtual box, but got entirely different errors.
I followed the instructions in the wiki precisely, and when you try to open a project
in qtcreator it says "No Valid Kits found".

I repeated the whole process 5-times including starting from a fresh virtual box Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit image downloaded from this site: https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/
I installed all of the dependencies listed in the wiki and qt-unified-linux-x64-3.0.2-online.run each time. I think this project is cursed.

Sometimes preinstalled images are minimalistic to reduce the download size. It's always best to download a DVD image directly from Ubuntu and do the install.
No Kits found is not what you get from a standard Ubuntu but it's easy to solve, QtCreator will let you know what's missing. Inside Qt Creator, go to Tools / Options / Build&Run (from the list on the left).
Go to the Kits tab, and select the Autodetected -> Desktop. On your system it might show a warning icon next to it if there's something missing.
The important parts are the compiler, make sure there's a C and C++ compiler selected, otherwise you need to install the gcc and g++ packages on your system.
There's also a couple of options for the debugger, as long as it's not empty you should be OK, if it's empty you need to install a gdb package.
Since you installed from the Qt installer, it should pick up the Qt library automatically, but sometimes your system might have another one (which is intended to run programs, not to develop, so it's incomplete), try selecting another one from the drop-down list to see if there's more than one.
If you do have a compiler, debugger and Qt version installed for sure and is not being detected (weird, but could happen I guess), you can go into the respective tabs and manually add the paths to the executables, which you can find out by doing on a terminal:

which gcc
which g++
(for the compiler)

which gdb
(for the debugger)

which qmake
(for the Qt library)

That should give you the paths that Qt Creator needs to know. Once you get your kit working, you'll be able to build.

(01-01-2018 09:42 AM)pier4r Wrote:  little "unpopular" opinion. If someone wants to give up, one is free to do it. Your time is your time.

I write this because I have the perception, and it can be completely wrong, that Barry is trying a lot to justify that he is not giving up. In my opinion it is completely fine to give up.

On the contrary, I have the perception that he is not giving up, rather than just trying to justify it. From my point of view he sounds frustrated, which is understandable, but not hopeless (it's hard to guess emotions from text, isn't it?). If he took the time to do the VM install, he hasn't given up at all, and I feel it's my obligation to try and help him until he does. Compile troubles are not fun for anybody, and I'm not really sure why he's having trouble but I'll do anything to help, I know after the struggle always comes the satisfaction of the job done, and the fun playing with it.
From Barry's own words, he is looking for a great level of integration between the simulator and the physical device. newRPL has more integration than all the other projects he tried, because you basically get the 2 calculators freely "remote-controlling" each other, which is fun to play with and not something that's been done before.
Barry just wants to have fun with newRPL, and he eventually will, but bear with the struggle. If it bothers other people, we can continue the struggle in private.

[Claudio L.]

(01-01-2018 01:42 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  Oh well, at last I just bought another couple of 39gs, just to try it out!

Excellent! I'd appreciate if you try to do the Ubuntu build that Barry is having trouble with. Somehow I don't get any trouble but if more people has problems it will help me pinpoint issues, even if it's just to adjust the wiki instructions.

PS: I'm working on a Fedora VM to write build instructions for a different distro as well. Too bad I don't have a Mac so I can't write instructions for it.

[Claudio L.]

(12-26-2017 10:20 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  Until a few months ago one of my machines was freeBSD, and it built just fine (I need to test now how USB works on freeBSD, might need some tweaks).

Done! Tested and working on freeBSD. The wiki now has instructions on how to build and set the permissions.

[pier4r]

(01-01-2018 03:06 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  Barry just wants to have fun with newRPL, and he eventually will, but bear with the struggle. If it bothers other people, we can continue the struggle in private.

It doesn't bother me (I cannot speak for the others). I had only a feeling and I wanted to voice that if one decides that "it is enough" it is ok.

I think that those attempts are the only one that poke at the documentation and help it to get better (so it is a process useful for all the others). Hopefully Mr. Search engine will index those posts so if one has a similar problem can find the discussion through proper keywords.

On the other side, I did not yet try*, but yes from the description it seems that the 50g with newRPL becomes a sort of remotely controlled system. Super cool.

*because I am wrestling with the prime and I use mostly a winXP system so far.

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(01-01-2018 03:19 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  

(01-01-2018 01:42 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  Oh well, at last I just bought another couple of 39gs, just to try it out!
:)

Excellent! I'd appreciate if you try to do the Ubuntu build that Barry is having trouble with. Somehow I don't get any trouble but if more people has problems it will help me pinpoint issues, even if it's just to adjust the wiki instructions.

PS: I'm working on a Fedora VM to write build instructions for a different distro as well. Too bad I don't have a Mac so I can't write instructions for it.

I will eventually do (they are coming from China at a standard pace): even though my main computers are Windows based, there's no pain in setting up another vm to try it out under Ubuntu.
Is a version preferred over another?

[Claudio L.]

(01-01-2018 03:53 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  Is a version preferred over another?

Nope, once you get past the hurdle of compiling it, the simulator is exactly identical on all systems so use whatever works best for you.

[BarryMead]

After 10 VirtualBox restarts, I finally got it to compile. Whew! While running the
installer from qt-projects.org I did not know that you had to open the fly-out menu
beside the Qt item. Inside this fly-out menu is where you can select the version of Qt that you want to install with QtCreator. Once I discovered this menu, I was able to select the 5.10.0 version of Qt mentioned in the wiki and things started to work.

Obviously the compiled newrpl-ui executable code will not work on my non-virtualbox
ubuntu 16.04 because the Qt5 libraries on my desktop Ubuntu are 5.1.1 not 5.10.0
so does anyone know if running the qt-unified-linux-x64-3.0.2-online.run installer on
my Desktop non-virtualbox computer will break anything, or will it just work.
My hope is that it will update Qt5 to version 5.10.0 without breaking things but that
might be risky so I won't attempt it unless someone has already confirmed that it works.

[Claudio L.]

(01-02-2018 02:14 AM)BarryMead Wrote:  After 10 VirtualBox restarts, I finally got it to compile. Whew! While running the
installer from qt-projects.org I did not know that you had to open the fly-out menu
beside the Qt item. Inside this fly-out menu is where you can select the version of Qt that you want to install with QtCreator. Once I discovered this menu, I was able to select the 5.10.0 version of Qt mentioned in the wiki and things started to work.

Obviously the compiled newrpl-ui executable code will not work on my non-virtualbox
ubuntu 16.04 because the Qt5 libraries on my desktop Ubuntu are 5.1.1 not 5.10.0
so does anyone know if running the qt-unified-linux-x64-3.0.2-online.run installer on
my Desktop non-virtualbox computer will break anything, or will it just work.
My hope is that it will update Qt5 to version 5.10.0 without breaking things but that
might be risky so I won't attempt it unless someone has already confirmed that it works.

Victory!
My apologies if that wasn't clear, I promise to write that part in more detail in the wiki, it's strange but the Qt installer doesn't choose the library for you, you have to explicitly select it otherwise you end up without one.
By the way, newRPL does not require the latest version, it should compile fine with any version. In theory you could select the 5.1 in the qt installer and you should be able to move your compiled binary out of the VM, but I have never tested this, and I think you had enough headaches already.

Regarding the last point: The Qt installer doesn't replace your system's Qt, it will install the new version alongside it (in /usr/local/lib, while the system libs are in /usr/lib), then you'll need to be careful in your "Kit" (in QtCreator) to make sure the one you installed is the one selected for compilation, you should see both in the drop-down box.

EDIT:
PS: Done, I added a better explanation to the wiki. Sorry you had to be the guinea pig, and many thanks for not giving up on newRPL. Now have fun!

[BarryMead]

(01-02-2018 04:41 AM)Claudio L. Wrote:  

(01-02-2018 02:14 AM)BarryMead Wrote:  After 10 VirtualBox restarts, I finally got it to compile. Whew! While running the
installer from qt-projects.org I did not know that you had to open the fly-out menu
beside the Qt item. Inside this fly-out menu is where you can select the version of Qt that you want to install with QtCreator. Once I discovered this menu, I was able to select the 5.10.0 version of Qt mentioned in the wiki and things started to work.

Obviously the compiled newrpl-ui executable code will not work on my non-virtualbox
ubuntu 16.04 because the Qt5 libraries on my desktop Ubuntu are 5.1.1 not 5.10.0
so does anyone know if running the qt-unified-linux-x64-3.0.2-online.run installer on
my Desktop non-virtualbox computer will break anything, or will it just work.
My hope is that it will update Qt5 to version 5.10.0 without breaking things but that
might be risky so I won't attempt it unless someone has already confirmed that it works.

Victory!
My apologies if that wasn't clear, I promise to write that part in more detail in the wiki, it's strange but the Qt installer doesn't choose the library for you, you have to explicitly select it otherwise you end up without one.
By the way, newRPL does not require the latest version, it should compile fine with any version. In theory you could select the 5.1 in the qt installer and you should be able to move your compiled binary out of the VM, but I have never tested this, and I think you had enough headaches already.

Regarding the last point: The Qt installer doesn't replace your system's Qt, it will install the new version alongside it (in /usr/local/lib, while the system libs are in /usr/lib), then you'll need to be careful in your "Kit" (in QtCreator) to make sure the one you installed is the one selected for compilation, you should see both in the drop-down box.

EDIT:
PS: Done, I added a better explanation to the wiki. Sorry you had to be the guinea pig, and many thanks for not giving up on newRPL. Now have fun!

First I tried it with Qt-5.1.1 expressly because it would be in sync with the Qt on my existing Desktop computer. But ALAS that failed. I had dozens of compiler errors with Qt-5.1.1 so after that failure, I started with a fresh virtualbox image and repeated it all over again to install Qt-5.10.0 as instructed in the wiki. With that version of Qt it did not fail.

[BarryMead]

TOTAL SUCCESS!!!!
I repeated what I learned with the 10 virtualbox tries, and ran the qt-project installer on my Ubuntu 16.04 desktop. This time everything worked perfectly. I have a newRPL emulator that runs on my native desktop computer without running virtualbox!
I also installed the "/etc/udev/rules.d/99-hidraw-permissions.rules" file with the line:
KERNEL=="hidraw*", SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", MODE="0664", GROUP="plugdev"

After making sure that my default login user is included in the plugdev group, and rebooting, the hidraw0 device has the correct permissions, and is in the plugdev group.
When I run the emulator the "Hardware->USB Connections->Select a USB Device" menu finds the USB connected calculator under Linux! I have achieved all of my newRPL goals! Happy New Year!!!

[BarryMead]

Claudio: I was curious how/where you installed your qt-project.org download file.
My guess is that in your case you installed it as root user and selected the nonstandard
install locations of /usr/local/Qt/ rather than /opt/Qt/... which is the default location if installed in root mode. I installed my copy in non-root (user) mode so it put the files under $HOME/Qt/...

From the directions you mentioned regarding the GDB debugger location it did not match my system. There was no executable gdb file installed by the qt-project run file. The only executable gdb on my system is /usr/bin/gdb

The installer installed NOTHING in /usr/local/bin . I only mention this because GDB instructions on the wiki still confuse me. Thanks again for all of your patience and help. You were right I was looking for any excuse to NOT GIVE UP. I want to apologize to the forum members if I sounded too negative. After scratching my head for 40+ hours I was a bit frustrated and didn't know where else to turn for help/answers. Thanks for bearing with me through that!

[TheKaneB]

Good job BarryMead! That's what I call persistence

@Claudio: do you think it's feasible to make some sort of automatic environment setup? I was thinking about some Vagrant script, or maybe just a plain preconfigured VM or some sort of package with all the configuration scripts and required libraries to be installed in one shot?

I'm not asking you to do so, just asking if you see any major obstacle, and maybe provide a bit of help to anyone who's willing to make such package.

Cheers!