Responding briefly to Dave Nuttall and David Young, before I get back to some
other urgent things I have to deal with.
It sounds as if your change is local to the popvision package, so if one of you
sends me a 'fixed' version of popvision, I'll use it to replace the broken
version which is now included in the poplog "extras" from Birmingham, in Poplog
V16.
Background for anyone new to this list:
There are now two main versions of poplog. The 32-bit version that still works
but is essentially out of date except as a fallback in cases where the 64 bit
version is unavailable or not usable.
=======
32 BIT POPLOG
The 32-bit installation documentation is here I think, for ubuntu or equivalents
or fedora or equivalents.
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/latest-poplog#ubuntu
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/latest-poplog#fedora
I confirm that this worked in fedora on kernels up to
5.6.6-300.fc32.x86_64
although, for some reason, it was not possible to rebuild basepop11 after some
kernel change. I did not have time, competence, or motivation, to investigate.
But the changes in kernel 5.7 and later that stopped 64bit poplog working (until
the recent fixes -- which I still haven't had time to build into the main
download package) also made 32-bit poplog unusable.
I doubt that anyone has interest and time to fix 32 bit poplog for the latest
kernels. If anyone does produce a fixed version I am willing to use it to
replace the current downloadble version of 32 bit linux poplog.
========
64 BIT POPLOG
This is now available in
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/
described in
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/AREADME.html
which uses the latest 'core' poplog created by Waldek Hebisch in github.
When he produces a new core poplog package and provides a tar file, I combine it
with a collection of libraries and documentation, including the 'package system'
(added in Birmingham some time ago to replace the tangled collection of code and
documentation in core poplog library files).
I also provided some clumsy shell scripts to fetch and install the combination
of Waldeck's core and the remainder, as described here (with links to various
additional documentation files, e.g.
instructions for pre-installation of linux libraries:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/required-packages.html
)
and download instructions, which I think you have used, based on a getpoplog.sh
script as described here:
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/AREADME.html#installation-process
I am assuming you are using a pre 5.7 kernel, otherwise you would have needed
help to install the latest fixes to deal with linux kernel changes -- which I
have not yet had time to include in the download package.
One of the things the installation process does is fetch and unpack both
Waldek's core, and the Birmingham extras, and then combine them in a new
installation of 64 bit poplog.
Here's a high level description extracted from part of AREADME.html
BEGIN EXTRACT
At present, the getpoplog.sh script fetches four installation files with
different functions:
--
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/DL/latest_poplog_base.tar.bz2
(Provides the core Poplog files and installation scripts, mostly
derived from
the github Poplog site of Waldek Hebisch.)
-- http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/DL/docs.tar.bz2
Essential Poplog user documentation not yet in the github package,
copied from the Birmingham (UK!) Poplog installation.
-- http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/packages-v16.tgz
Various tutorial and application packages and additional documentation
provided by past users and collected at Birmingham University.
-- http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/build_all.sh
A script to use all the downloaded files to build a new Poplog
installation.
Previously build_all.csh.
Now replaced by build_all.sh after correction of faulty version by
Waldek Hebisch
-- getpoplog.sh downloads the above files to the current location, then creates
the main
installation directory poplog_base by untarring:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/DL/latest_poplog_base.tar.bz2
The script continues by running build_all.sh in the poplog_base directory.
It rebuilds the Poplog system downloaded from github, then uses the other tar
files to install documentation files, the packages directory, and 'startup'
information for local Poplog users (specifying the $usepop environment
variable, and additional environment variables and local directories to be
accessed by Poplog users.
-- A file USEPOP in poplog_base is created containing the main pathname needed
later for the
run_time environment variable $usepop, which specifies the root of the
directory tree
containing all the core Poplog program libraries, the editor, documentation
files,
executables, saved images. etc.
The file is created by the installation process, in the poplog_base
directory, by doing:
cd poplog_base
pwd > USEPOP
If you use sh or bash you can later set $usepop with this command run in the
poplog_base directory:
export usepop=`cat USEPOP`
csh/tcsh users can do this instead:
setenv usepop `cat USEPOP`
In both cases this should print out the full path name:
echo $usepop
If Poplog is installed at
/usr/local/poplog/V16/
then the 'echo $usepop' command, performed anywhere should
print out
/usr/local/poplog/v16/poplog_base
-- Once everything has been installed and $usepop set, a collection of required
environment variables can be set up as follows (e.g. in the user's login
script
if Poplog is used often):
sh/bash users
source $usepop/pop/com/poplog.sh
csh/tcsh users can do:
source $usepop/pop/com/poplog.csh
END EXTRACT
[There are additional instructions if you wish to use motif, recommended because
it extends the graphical facilities and adds useful menus to the Ved editor.]
I guess you must have been through all of that to install the version on which
you've been working on popvision.
Dave, if you (or David) can send me the fixed version of the popvision tree, as
a gzipped tar file, I'll then use that to replace the current version of
popvision in the birmingham packages tar file:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/DL/packages-V16.tar.bz2
The build_all.csh script should then reinstall poplog with the new popvision
library, but it is probably simpler for anyone with an existing installation to
simply unpack the new popvision tar to replace this sub-directory:
$usepop/pop/packages/popvision
I assume you have in effect done that in your system.
I'll later try to find time to recreate the installation packages with the new
popvision and also
-- the fixes produced and tested by Waldek, Steve Leach and Steve Isard to cope
with
latest changes to linux kernel (5.8 onward).
Waldek, are the required changes now in your github package?
If so, I'll try to recreate the tar-ball to be used in the Birmingham
complete download package.
(I am not a git hub user -- and now too old and too busy with other things to
start ...)
[DIGRESSION
My time is now mostly spent on writing stuff and giving talks on my claim that
anyone trying to understand intelligence needs to understand chemical
mechanisms, which are more fundamental and in important ways more powerful than
neural-net mechanisms.
E.g. chemical mechanisms suffice to give newly hatched animals sophisticated
spatial competences, including the competences of avocet chicks displayed in
this 35sec clip from the BBC Springwatch programme on 1st June 2021
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/movies/avocets/avocet-hatchlings.mp4
They have not had opportunities to learn to produce all those complex
behaviours. Instead, biological evolution must have learnt, over millions of
years, how to produce chicks with those competences -- and many other species
with different combinations of competences.
I need help from people who are cleverer than I am and have fresher, younger
brains.
]
Aaron
