Re: [Flexradio] Visual multi-OS Platform for developing SDR software.

[Philip Covington]

Hi Cecil,

See answers below:

On 10/7/05, KD5NWA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  Mono has the advantage that its being worked on all three platforms of
> interest to me. And SharpDevelop looks quite usable.

I always get the latest SharpDevelop source code from SVN.  It is easy to build and does not take much time. Basically after updating it with SVN ( I use TortoiseSVN ) you enter the src folder and run clean.bat then build.bat.  Anytime you want to update it from SVN you should run clean.bat first before updating.  The SharpDevelop.exe is placed in the bin folder after building so I just make a shortcut to the binary and place the shortcut on my desktop.  That way I am always running the latest development version.  

>  Let me ask you a dumb question, I'm not familiar with .NET at all. Mono
> says it supports .Net for those different environments, so with Mono, could
> you could write a application using .Net and would it be recompilable in all
> three platforms?  The feeling I get in browsing through their site is that
> the answer is NO!

Actually the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no.

For example, if I take my SharpDSP library and compile it under .NET 1.1,  I can then copy the DLL file over to my linux machine WITHOUT recompiling and it will work fine.  This is the DLL that was compiled on Windows in with the .NET 1.1 ccs compiler.  Now that is pretty impressive.

I have tried this with assemblies that use System.Windows.Forms compiled in Windows with .NET 1.1 and most of the time I can just copy the assembly over to Linux and run it.  Whether that will work or not depends on if you are using something in System.Windows.Forms that is not yet implemented in the Mono library.  With version 1.1.9 I have not had anything that won't run on Mono/Linux that I have developed on .NET/Windows.  

Of course, to be sure,  you can use the Mono mcs compiler on Windows.  That is what I usually do.  You just need to select the Mono mcs compiler in the SharpDevelop project properties dialog instead of the .NET csc compiler.  

>  I was looking at SharpDevelop and saw no mention of it being transported to
> Linux or OS X, is there any effort in that direction by some group? I
> noticed it's written in C#, but then the libraries used may not be
> available.

Actually, MonoDevelop was a port of SharpDevelop to Linux.  Unfortunately the MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop folks have not shared much code since then and the two diverged.  MonoDevelop lacks the System.Windows.Forms designer that SharpDevelop has.  I think this is mainly because the System.Windows.Forms library is relatively new in Mono.  Before it used Wine based System.Windows.Forms on Linux which was really crappy.

Of course, if someone was ambitious enough they could port SharpDevelop as it exists now over to Linux.  SharpDevelop is written completely in C#.

The only time that I have had problems is when a library or assembly uses interop to load an unmanaged DLL.  Of course you cannot use the unmanaged Windows DLL on Linux.  So for example, you could not use the DttSP, PortAudio, FFTW, etc... DLLs of PowerSDR in Linux.  You can recompile DttSP, PortAudio, FFTW, on Linux as shared libraries and then use interop to load the shared libraries.  I usually handle this by putting #ifdef  WIN32 ... #else directives in the code so that you either select the <mylibrary.dll> in Windows or <mylibrary> in Linux to select the appropriate library name and then it just works on both platforms whether you compiled it with Mono or .NET.

73 de Phil N8VB

>  Thanks
>
>
>  
>  At 01:13 PM 10/7/2005, Philip Covington wrote:
>  
> Hi Cecel,
>
>  The MS C# Express Beta uses the .NET 2.0 Beta framework.  There were
>  not too many problems changing the PowerSDR code to get it to compile
>  on .NET 2.0 last time I tried (around version 1.2.x).  After you
>  convert the PowerSDR source code project to .NET 2.0 people will not
>  be able to open in in VS 2003 (which is ok if you do not intend to
>  redistribute the code changes you make or if you do, the other people
>  are using C# Express).
>
>  The C# and VB Express versions and the VS 2005 Beta 2 does require a
>  lot of resources - both memory and CPU.   It runs ok on my development
>  machine (AMD Athlon 3200+) w/ 1 GB ram but I would not want to run it
>  on anything slower.  The new IDE is very nice as long as you have the
>  machine to run it.  I don't know if this will improve when they
>  finally release the production versions or not ( I doubt it).
>
>  I have been following the Mono project for a long while.  They have
>  finally got the System.Windows.Forms library up to the point where it
>  is usable in ver 1.1.9.1. [Hint: pass export MONO_THEME=nice as an
>  environmental variable before invoking Mono and the
>  System.Windows.Forms stuff will look cool].  I have been doing some
>  work with SharpDevelop targeting the Mono framework.  Since
>  SharpDevelop will not run on Linux I develop the System.Windows.Forms
>  GUI part of the application in SharpDevelop in Windows.  The code then
>  can be developed in either SharpDevelop on Windows or MonoDevelop on
>  Linux (or in vim or emacs ;-)) MonoDevelop does not have a GUI
>  designer like SharpDevelop has (for System.Windows.Forms).
>
>  Another option is to use the Glade interface designer (which runs on
>  Linux or Windows) to do your GUI design with Gtk+.  You will then have
>  cross platform development of the GUI.  You have to have Gtk+ and
>  libglade installed in both Linux and Windows to develop your app on
>  both.  I have done this and it works very well too.
>
>  73 de Phil N8VB
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  On 10/7/05, KD5NWA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  >  This is related to SDR sort of. I'm looking for a visual multi-OS
>  > programming platform to create modified versions of the SDR software on
>  > different OS.
>  >
>  >  For the last year or so I've been looking on and off for a visual
> platform
>  > that will let me generate applications for Windows, Linux, and OS X
> without
>  > having to do 20 jumps through hoops or have to borrow money from the bank
> to
>  > pay for it. The only thing so far that fits the bill is Lisp, incredibly
>  > powerful but there is a huge learning curve associated with it.
>  >
>  >  I downloaded MS C# beta version from their web site and set it up, and
> I'm
>  > not impressed. I don't have fastest PC on the Planet but I also don't
> have
>  > the slowest, It's a 1700MHz Athalon with 1.5 Gig of Ram and a 1.2
> Terabyte
>  > HD drive array (I use it for video editing).
>  >
>  >  The IDE was so incredibly slow, it would take several seconds to do
>  > anything, click on a button to see the code, wait. open a file, wait,
> call
>  > up a tool bar, wait. It's to the point where is not very productive,
>  > anything you do is accompanied by having to wait.
>  >
>  >  For the folks out there that use MS C#, is that your experience or did
> you
>  > have to buy a really fast machine to get it to move it's carcass?
>  >
>  >  Frustrated!
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >  Cecil Bayona
>  >  KD5NWA
>  >  www.qrpradio.com
>  >
>  >  I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the
> same
>  > results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't; only a few
> more
>  > tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ...
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>  >
>  >
>  >
>
>  
>  --
>  Philip A Covington
>  http://www.philcovington.com
>
>  Cecil Bayona
>  KD5NWA
>   www.qrpradio.com
>  
>  I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the same
> results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't; only a few more
> tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ...


--
Philip A Covington
http://www.philcovington.com