On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Kripken <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 9:27 AM, Ryan McDougall <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Kripken <[email protected]> wrote: >> > From a talk on IRC, I guess that there is still no Linux support for the >> > realXtend viewer as of the 0.0.2 release. I'd like to ask, >> >> I am not sure what you mean by "support". There is a wide variety of >> things implied, and my version has Linux quite supported. >> >> The essential problem is this: >> >> realXtend is not a monolithic company. We are essentially a non-profit >> consortium who's membership is variable by funding and project status. >> Member companies and even different individuals have differing >> perspectives and interests. >> >> We do however have a charter, and this project *IS* cross-platform as >> a founding principle. However, as usual, there is a gap between >> principle and reality. >> >> When 0.0.1 was developed we had about ~10 people (some not entirely >> full-time), of which only one person used Linux full time (me), and >> two had a Linux partition they would boot into occasionally to test. >> Naali compiled on Linux, and with the few amount of features we had at >> the time, that was "Linux support". We had, and now have, zero Apple >> machines available for testing, and zero people with experience with >> Mac development. >> >> With 0.0.2, we have gained some new people, and I gather at least one >> of them (besides me, I'm not developing full time) uses Linux >> regularly. Naali still compiles on Linux, but now that we have >> features, we can say which of these features work and which don't. >> What you appear to be referring to was threading issues I was having >> on 0.0.2. >> >> Threading bugs are notoriously difficult to solve as they are largely >> non-deterministic. They result not from inattentive programming, but >> no doubt some small subtlety in threading behaviour between platforms. >> It's a huge priority for me, as I cannot run Naali without it being >> fixed. It is a priority for the project to have working binaries for >> Linux by the 0.1 release early 2010. >> >> Apple support however is much more sticky. I think we'd need to have >> someone donate some hardware, and perhaps contract out an Apple dev in >> order to get that up to speed. Or the community could chip in an do >> some testing and patching for us. >> >> Please keep in mind we've labelled this version with two zeros in the >> front for a reason -- we are that far away from having the things we >> want happen, so have patience as users, or chip in as developers. >> >> > 1. When (and whether) is such support planned, and what priority is this >> > for >> > realXtend? >> >> See above. >> >> Also recall this is an open source project. If someone (you?) decide >> to make it your priority then it instantly becomes "our" priority. >> > > First, thanks for all the clarifications above. I was looking for exactly > that - an overview of the state of realXtend on Linux. > > Regarding this point, to be honest I have less free time for this than I did > last year (when I submitted patches for Linux support), so basically what I > was looking for now is to see 0.0.x running, to check it out, and then, > depending on my impressions, to use it&contribute back.
What's almost as helpful as a patch is a bug report. Were you able to file one? > Anyhow, now that I have an idea of the situation from your post, I will > continue to wait patiently. > > >> >> > 2. What are the current issues preventing the viewer from running on >> > Linux? >> >> It appears to be threading issues in the Texture Decoder. Perhaps one >> dead-lock and one or two crashers. >> >> > 3. Will the viewer require closed-source tools (e.g. Cg), or will it be >> > runnable entirely using FOSS components? >> >> I don't see how it might be presumed by any comment or document that >> we'd require closed-source tools. >> > > > I didn't mean to presume anything here - I was just asking a question. The > reason I asked, is because on IRC I was told that the Linux problems might > be Cg related. I guess I wasn't on IRC at that moment, so I'm unable to comment. To ensure everyone sees your problem, you can send your issues to this list, or file a bug report and poke someone if they haven't noticed it. > >> >> Nearest I can tell you're referring to the fact that, Ogre3D, the >> _LGPL_ licensed (up until 1.7 is released) rendering engine we use has >> Cg support. If you think that is restrictive to your freedoms, you'll >> have to take it up with the upstream project, as we use their engine >> as-is. >> > > > My concern is not about the existence of support (e.g. Ogre also supports > the closed-source DirectX), but whether realXtend is using Ogre in a way > that makes Cg necessary. > > That is, Ogre can be used with and without Cg, so my question is - is > realXtend using Ogre in a way that requires Cg, or not? I don't believe we are at all, but it's hard to say what's happening without the context of your previous conversation on IRC. > - kripken Cheers, --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend http://www.realxtend.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
