Following recent messages about getting popvision to work, I have now installed
(with general approval from those involved) the changes implemented by Steve
Leach.
I have tested them *briefly* on my main machine running Fedora32, kernel
3.10.0-1062.1.2.el7.x86_64 and an old machine running Fedora 29, kernel
5.3.11-100.fc29.x86_64.
I've installed the changes to popvision in the latest download package (though
the issue of coping with different kernel versions when installing poplog from
Birmingham is not yet resolved).
I have done nothing about the sister package, popneural, also provided by David
Young.
In the past, popvision was distributed with the relevant pre-compiled C
libraries included. So after testing that they work on both my machines I've
included newly compiled versions in the current popvision package.
If they don't work on a particular linux version they can be rebuilt following
the instructions in $usepop/pop/packages/popvision using the command
$usepop/pop/packages/popvision/com/mkpopvision (after checking that required
linux libraries have been installed).
Coping with the different requirements for old and new kernels remains a
problem.
I have not yet altered the download mechanism to use the latest changes that
enable poplog to be installed easily on both older and newer versions of linux,
but since it seems that relatively few are now running kernel 5.7 or later, the
default download package still provides an oldpop11 (required for building the
poplog installation) that works on older kernels.
The recent change to
$usepop/pop/extern/lib/c_core.c
works with older kernels, but different versions of oldpop11 are needed
for boostrapping the build process on old and new kernels.
If both old and new versions of oldpop11 are included in the package, then
someone fluent at writing shell scripts could modify the install script to
invoke the appropriate oldpop11, before rebuilding poplog starts.
My download and install scripts could do with a serious facelift...
Everything remains available here:
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/AREADME.html
with more detailed instructions in files/scripts listed there.
The stuff to download (plus older versions for backup) is in
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/DL/
except for the download and install script
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/V16/getpoplog.sh
But there may be a cleaner solution that conforms better with standard
linux engineering conventions.
The Future:
Moving it all to github and repackaging to fit github mechanisms would be a
*huge* job, which is presumably why Waldek (wisely) chose to put only the core
of poplog into his github package.
I'm going to have to leave any redesign of the Birmingham installation process
for someone else to do, though I can test the results on my old and new PCs (I
still use the old one for backup, in another room...).
Is poplog unique in requiring an old *running* executable as part of the
installation process?
It is needed because so much of the installation process needs the power of
pop11, which, wasn't true originally around 1980 when the core executable was
written in C.
I won't be at all offended if someone comes up with a much better system
for fetching and installing poplog.
Aaron
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs
