Sorry everyone, seems I created a lot of problems by unwittingly building Simple IDE on a broken Debian install. Lesson learned.
Certainly nothing to be sorry about, you and others have gone above and beyond the call of duty in giving Parallax a hand in moving into the cross platform and open source world.
I think the lesson is that Parallax needs to decide on at least a few popular Linux platforms to officially support and have build VM's for each one that are used for builds only and kept in a stable state.
Somehow there are a lot of packages in the world that run on many different Linux distros but are not using the distros packages manager.
For example, this is how I install Firefox now:
fetch the Firefox package from Mozilla.org. Be sure to get the latest and the correct architecture and language variant:
$ tar -xvjf firefox-27.0.1.tar.bz2
$ ./firefox/firefox
Now this is nice because:
1) It does not mess with your operating systems packaging system (Like the way I installed Firefox from a deb package before)
2) I can arrange to put the final directory any where I like.
It has the hassle that I have to make my own desktop icon for it. That is no worry to me.
Thanks Heater., it works, just like you said it would. The only thing that I could add to this discussion is do not forget to add yourself to the dialout group, I guess that is still important. Thanks ctwardell for the steps to installing it correctly, you may want too add the thing about dialout group in your excellent directions.
Thanks Heater., it works, just like you said it would. The only thing that I could add to this discussion is do not forget to add yourself to the dialout group, I guess that is still important. Thanks ctwardell for the steps to installing it correctly, you may want too add the thing about dialout group in your excellent directions.
On my Ubuntu64, I deleted the 0-9-45 and tried the 0-9-47 64 model. I don't have to be root, just ran ./setup.sh and on we go. The only thing is, that it will not save my new font, I have selected, and the version on the popup is still 0-9-45.
Good job.
Here is how I added an item to my menu for SimpleIDE.
This was for Debian 7/64.
I'm sure the command line jockeys probably have a better way...
From the debian gnome desktop:
Applications > Accessories > Main Menu
The Main Menu dialog appears
- Click 'Applications' in the left panel to select it
- Click 'New Menu' button
- Enter 'Parallax' in the Directory Properties dialog and click 'OK'
- Click 'Parallax' in the left panel to select it
- Click 'New Item' button
- In the Create Launcher dialog
- Type = Application
- Name = SimpleIDE
- Click the 'Browse' button and navigate to your simpleide file
In my case it was '/home/chris/SimpleIDE-0-9-47/simpleide'
- Click the 'OK' button
- Close the Main Menu dialog
You now have Applications > Parallax > SimpleIDE...but it doesn't work...
The menu tool doesn't let you set a working folder, so the simpleide script fails.
What to do, what to do...
Open Applications > Accessories > gEdit Text Editor
Close the empty document in gEdit
Now on the menu open Application > Parallax and drag the SimpleIDE menu item onto the gEdit editor area.
It should open a file called alacarte-made.desktop (name may be a little different if you have other custom menu items)
Find the line "Exec=/somepath/simpleide"
Insert a line above it that reads "Path=somepath/" where the path is the same as in the Exec line.
Are you guys willing to test the distribution that Parallax finds acceptable once I have working 64bit images?
Yes, I will also be able to test, I just set up a fresh Debian 64-bit box.
Now that we have instructions as to how too install SimpleIDE, I guess now we need some instructions as too how to remove the install, completely. I guess the more automated the procedure becomes, it becomes easier to explain the install too new people.
The more automated the procedure becomes the more likely it is to screw up.
Every Linux machine is different as we have seen.
Then the harder it is to explain to the user how to fix it.
@jazzed
From what I have observed, the "Linux stuff" hasn't been finished for quite some time.
The problem comes from two ends -- one is that no one seems to have the desire to maintain a respository of working Linux binaries for 64bit and 32bit, both for Red Hat/Fedora and Debian.
And the other is that, there are a lot of newbie Linux users that are not ready to compile their own binary from the source code.
From what I can tell... Simple IDE did or does work on Linux. It is just that the Windows installer mindset doesn't transfer to Linux. MS built it popularity by providing a mindless install process.
Somewhere in the snags is the requirement for QT4 or QT5 to be included in the build or installation.
I'd strongly recommend an installation that sits in the /home directory of the individual user if at all possible. Brad's Spin Tool does that and it easy to install or remove.
Binary distribution is a problem as the is no "one true Linux" there are many distos and things are changing all the time. Notice how BST does not run on some new Ubuntu or whatever now. Since its frozen in time as a binary it is slowing dying.
It's unlikely that at all varieties of Linux can be supported. Debian and RedHat based would be a good start. Having proper deb and rpm packages would be ideal, although I would also favour just a tarball. Firefox for example comes as a simple 32 and 64 bit tarballs that run just about everywhere. As does the Qt libs and tools if you get them from the Qt Project. As does the Altera FPGA dev tools, XMOS dev tools and so on.
Making deb and rpm packages is a big job because apart from being a unknown black art to most people it's also complicated by the fact that we should not just have a single package. There is one for propgcc, one for openspin, one for SimpleIDE and perhaps some other bits I have forgotten.
The issue is not about "Linux newbies". Do your really want to have to do all this http://the.linuxd.org/building-propgcc-for-the-raspberry-pi every time you want to install SimpleIDE? Never mind that it takes 20 hours to build on a Raspberry Pi it's the same manual steps on a PC.
"Newbies" might be youngsters who barely know what a micro-controller is or what programming is about. There is no point in making a thing called "SimpleIDE" if they have to learn how to do all that stuff first!
Qt4 is not an issue, all distros have a package available to install that. Qt5 is currently as it is very new.
I am thinking that maybe we should spread out the test boxes that we will test. I think Frida is doing Ubuntu, Heater. and ctwardell are doing Debian, mindrobots is doing Linux Mint 16 (I think) and Debian. I think that I might get rid of the Debian box setup and do a Fedora, if I get another empty box showing up, then maybe I will try openSUSE. Of course we will be testing 64-bit versions?
One thing that might be nice to have is a Live CD or DVD with the Parallax tools.
Yea, but are we sure that the target audience would know how to create a live disk from an .iso download? You just might end up answering a bunch of questions about how to create a disc and then how too use it. For a personal copy, that could be an interesting idea, who knows how too create live discs?
Yea, but are we sure that the target audience would know how to create a live disk from an .iso download? You just might end up answering a bunch of questions about how to create a disc and then how too use it. For a personal copy, that could be an interesting idea, who knows how too create live discs?
I think the point is to do all the work for the target audience (hoping their old beat up PC can have a second useful life).
I'm a firm believer in wanting to package dev-tools in a product. I designed a Propeller-USB plug that would hold the dev-tools in the MicroSD and would be the development board. Very handy in my opinion. No one else seems to get it though.
RE Fedora, yes it would be good to install the latest for a test.
Yea, but are we sure that the target audience would know how to create a live disk from an .iso download? You just might end up answering a bunch of questions about how to create a disc and then how too use it. For a personal copy, that could be an interesting idea, who knows how too create live discs?
There will likely be some people that might have trouble with that, but I think that group would be much smaller than the group that would have trouble with installing the tools separately.
It also should be feasible for Parallax to make physical media available, at low or no cost along with the order of one of the products that would benefit from having it.
Parallax got out of providing 'physical media' such as CDs quite some time ago. I don't think they want to get back into managing such an inventory.
I suspect that using the installation of Simple IDE on the Raspberry Pi as an example is a special case.
Ubuntu did do something to break the installation of Brad's Spin Tool in about v 12.04, It seems to have broken rank with Debian on support of legacy software. But just about any other Debian fork will support Brad's Spin Tool.
I am a bit uncertain about the argument that there are just too many distros of Linux to support with binaries. The Linux distros really are pretty much forked to the Red Hat/Fedora installation or the Debian installation (with Ubuntu having become now questionable).
I postponed loading SimpleIDE just because I was having trouble with Brad's Spin Tool in Ubuntu. Now that I have settled in with Debian and abandoned Ubuntu, I will give it another try.
Well I installed Fedora, the latest download. I also downloaded the SimpleIDE-0-9-47 and I get this:
Installing ./simpleide as ray
Found /opt/parallax/bin
On first run ./simpleide will install ~/Documents/SimpleIDE .
Remove ~/Documents/SimpleIDE to get a new copy of the workspace.
Previous users should remove ~/.config/ParallaxInc/SimpleIDE.conf .
Setup complete. To run program use: ./simpleide
[ray@localhost SimpleIDE-0-9-47]$ ./simpleide
/home/ray/Downloads/SimpleIDE-0-9-47/bin//SimpleIDE: error while loading shared libraries: libpng12.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[ray@localhost SimpleIDE-0-9-47]$
So the fun begins, anybody have a translation of what that error means? What would be the next step?
The other problem I just ran into with the Fedora box, I get - error GL/gh.h No such file or directory, when I try too build the latest PropellerIDE. Not sure if this is an indicator for future problems. It seems like maybe Fedora is taking the same route as Ubuntu.
I'm a firm believer in wanting to package dev-tools in a product. I designed a Propeller-USB plug that would hold the dev-tools in the MicroSD and would be the development board. Very handy in my opinion. No one else seems to get it though.
You mean like those USB 3G USB sticks that appeared to be storage devices with "convenient" driver files for Windows. What a pain that was if you have a Mac or Linux or the wrong version of Windows. We get it. It does not work. We don't want it. It's a dead end.
The whole talk of "physical media" is bizarre . That is so 1995.
The Raspberry Pi is a special case. In one build you reach an audience of two million Pi owners. Many of whom might be interested in what a Propeller can do for them. That is not to be sniffed at.
Ray,
No idea yet about your error re: libpng12.so.0 but the GL/gh.h thing is to do with Qt5 as used by PropellerIDE not SimpleIDE. Therfore off topic for this thread.
You mean like those USB 3G USB sticks that appeared to be storage devices with "convenient" driver files for Windows. What a pain that was if you have a Mac or Linux or the wrong version of Windows. We get it. It does not work. We don't want it. It's a dead end.
Well, no that's not what I meant. It would be a Propeller development board that plugs into your USB that just happens to have a removable MicroSD card with all necessary software to get you running on any platform. And it would get you through security without someone asking "What's with all the wires? Is it a bahhh?"
Mission accomplished. I must admit that I used Google rather than going to the Parallax site, and that only turned up the 0-8-5 version of SimpleIDE for Linux.
I will proceed to load. Actually, I don't anticipate much of a problem. It was just awkward to find the latest version... Google seems to haven't kept up.... and offers a fragmented view of where SimpleIDE code is kept.
Nah. It's spring time. Temperatures just recently went positive! Any way I'm not quite sure what you were getting at there.
The dev system on the dev kit idea is not bad as such. Only as soon as you commit anything to media like that it's obsolete!
It kind of reminded me of that annoying thing that every gizmo one buys comes with a CD full of drivers and useless software that is immediately tossed into the bin.
Comments
Ray is correct. In the Parallax package INSTALL.txt it refers to:
"b. On first run ./simpleide will install ~/Documents/SimpleIDE files."
It's a typo. The actual run instruction is correct.
What a difference two characters make.
@Heater, we need to get the plinrelease.sh script to work. It is the only one that creates a package that Parallax will distribute.
Thank goodness. Something works!
Sorry everyone, seems I created a lot of problems by unwittingly building Simple IDE on a broken Debian install. Lesson learned.
Certainly nothing to be sorry about, you and others have gone above and beyond the call of duty in giving Parallax a hand in moving into the cross platform and open source world.
I think the lesson is that Parallax needs to decide on at least a few popular Linux platforms to officially support and have build VM's for each one that are used for builds only and kept in a stable state.
Thanks again for your help and patience.
Chris Wardell
Somehow there are a lot of packages in the world that run on many different Linux distros but are not using the distros packages manager.
For example, this is how I install Firefox now:
fetch the Firefox package from Mozilla.org. Be sure to get the latest and the correct architecture and language variant:
$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/latest/linux-x86_64/en-GB/firefox-27.0.1.tar.bz2
Unpack and run it:
$ tar -xvjf firefox-27.0.1.tar.bz2
$ ./firefox/firefox
Now this is nice because:
1) It does not mess with your operating systems packaging system (Like the way I installed Firefox from a deb package before)
2) I can arrange to put the final directory any where I like.
It has the hassle that I have to make my own desktop icon for it. That is no worry to me.
Ray
Ray
Yes, Heater's new distro runs like a champ!
dgately
Good job.
Sing me up, I got a clean Linux Mint 16 install on a tiny Netbook just waiting.
Yes Steve, I saved a clean clone of my VM before I tried the last round of installs.
I can setup VM's for other Linux flavors that need tested as well.
C.W.
This was for Debian 7/64.
I'm sure the command line jockeys probably have a better way...
From the debian gnome desktop:
Applications > Accessories > Main Menu
The Main Menu dialog appears
- Click 'Applications' in the left panel to select it
- Click 'New Menu' button
- Enter 'Parallax' in the Directory Properties dialog and click 'OK'
- Click 'Parallax' in the left panel to select it
- Click 'New Item' button
- In the Create Launcher dialog
- Type = Application
- Name = SimpleIDE
- Click the 'Browse' button and navigate to your simpleide file
In my case it was '/home/chris/SimpleIDE-0-9-47/simpleide'
- Click the 'OK' button
- Close the Main Menu dialog
You now have Applications > Parallax > SimpleIDE...but it doesn't work...
The menu tool doesn't let you set a working folder, so the simpleide script fails.
What to do, what to do...
Open Applications > Accessories > gEdit Text Editor
Close the empty document in gEdit
Now on the menu open Application > Parallax and drag the SimpleIDE menu item onto the gEdit editor area.
It should open a file called alacarte-made.desktop (name may be a little different if you have other custom menu items)
Find the line "Exec=/somepath/simpleide"
Insert a line above it that reads "Path=somepath/" where the path is the same as in the Exec line.
Mine looks like this:
#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Icon[en_US]=gnome-panel-launcher
Name[en_US]=SimpleIDE
Path=/home/chris/SimpleIDE-0-9-47/
Exec=/home/chris/SimpleIDE-0-9-47/simpleide
Name=SimpleIDE
Icon=gnome-panel-launcher
NoDisplay=false
Save the file.
The menu item should now be working.
C.W.
Now that we have instructions as to how too install SimpleIDE, I guess now we need some instructions as too how to remove the install, completely. I guess the more automated the procedure becomes, it becomes easier to explain the install too new people.
Ray
Every Linux machine is different as we have seen.
Then the harder it is to explain to the user how to fix it.
From what I have observed, the "Linux stuff" hasn't been finished for quite some time.
The problem comes from two ends -- one is that no one seems to have the desire to maintain a respository of working Linux binaries for 64bit and 32bit, both for Red Hat/Fedora and Debian.
And the other is that, there are a lot of newbie Linux users that are not ready to compile their own binary from the source code.
From what I can tell... Simple IDE did or does work on Linux. It is just that the Windows installer mindset doesn't transfer to Linux. MS built it popularity by providing a mindless install process.
Somewhere in the snags is the requirement for QT4 or QT5 to be included in the build or installation.
I'd strongly recommend an installation that sits in the /home directory of the individual user if at all possible. Brad's Spin Tool does that and it easy to install or remove.
SimpleIDE has been running on Linux for ages.
Binary distribution is a problem as the is no "one true Linux" there are many distos and things are changing all the time. Notice how BST does not run on some new Ubuntu or whatever now. Since its frozen in time as a binary it is slowing dying.
It's unlikely that at all varieties of Linux can be supported. Debian and RedHat based would be a good start. Having proper deb and rpm packages would be ideal, although I would also favour just a tarball. Firefox for example comes as a simple 32 and 64 bit tarballs that run just about everywhere. As does the Qt libs and tools if you get them from the Qt Project. As does the Altera FPGA dev tools, XMOS dev tools and so on.
Making deb and rpm packages is a big job because apart from being a unknown black art to most people it's also complicated by the fact that we should not just have a single package. There is one for propgcc, one for openspin, one for SimpleIDE and perhaps some other bits I have forgotten.
The issue is not about "Linux newbies". Do your really want to have to do all this http://the.linuxd.org/building-propgcc-for-the-raspberry-pi every time you want to install SimpleIDE? Never mind that it takes 20 hours to build on a Raspberry Pi it's the same manual steps on a PC.
"Newbies" might be youngsters who barely know what a micro-controller is or what programming is about. There is no point in making a thing called "SimpleIDE" if they have to learn how to do all that stuff first!
Qt4 is not an issue, all distros have a package available to install that. Qt5 is currently as it is very new.
Cut out as much as possible to keep the size down.
I can see just having the Parallax tools and a decent web browser plus some basic accessories like a simple text editor.
It seems like it is usually pretty easy to get an old laptop that could very easily become a dev machine this way.
C.W.
Yea, but are we sure that the target audience would know how to create a live disk from an .iso download? You just might end up answering a bunch of questions about how to create a disc and then how too use it. For a personal copy, that could be an interesting idea, who knows how too create live discs?
Ray
I'm a firm believer in wanting to package dev-tools in a product. I designed a Propeller-USB plug that would hold the dev-tools in the MicroSD and would be the development board. Very handy in my opinion. No one else seems to get it though.
RE Fedora, yes it would be good to install the latest for a test.
There will likely be some people that might have trouble with that, but I think that group would be much smaller than the group that would have trouble with installing the tools separately.
It also should be feasible for Parallax to make physical media available, at low or no cost along with the order of one of the products that would benefit from having it.
C.W.
I suspect that using the installation of Simple IDE on the Raspberry Pi as an example is a special case.
Ubuntu did do something to break the installation of Brad's Spin Tool in about v 12.04, It seems to have broken rank with Debian on support of legacy software. But just about any other Debian fork will support Brad's Spin Tool.
I am a bit uncertain about the argument that there are just too many distros of Linux to support with binaries. The Linux distros really are pretty much forked to the Red Hat/Fedora installation or the Debian installation (with Ubuntu having become now questionable).
I postponed loading SimpleIDE just because I was having trouble with Brad's Spin Tool in Ubuntu. Now that I have settled in with Debian and abandoned Ubuntu, I will give it another try.
Should I just use ver 0-8-5 ?
Ray
Ray
The whole talk of "physical media" is bizarre . That is so 1995.
The Raspberry Pi is a special case. In one build you reach an audience of two million Pi owners. Many of whom might be interested in what a Propeller can do for them. That is not to be sniffed at.
Ray,
No idea yet about your error re: libpng12.so.0 but the GL/gh.h thing is to do with Qt5 as used by PropellerIDE not SimpleIDE. Therfore off topic for this thread.
Must be cold up there tonight
Mission accomplished. I must admit that I used Google rather than going to the Parallax site, and that only turned up the 0-8-5 version of SimpleIDE for Linux.
I will proceed to load. Actually, I don't anticipate much of a problem. It was just awkward to find the latest version... Google seems to haven't kept up.... and offers a fragmented view of where SimpleIDE code is kept.
The dev system on the dev kit idea is not bad as such. Only as soon as you commit anything to media like that it's obsolete!
It kind of reminded me of that annoying thing that every gizmo one buys comes with a CD full of drivers and useless software that is immediately tossed into the bin.