[PD] Re: Extended installers feedback: win/osx/linux
Hans-Christoph Steiner
hans at eds.org
Mon Feb 27 03:34:17 CET 2006
Thanks for this report, this is the kind of stuff we need more of so
that we can make actual stable releases. The RC releases are now
officially released, so point people to:
http://puredata.org/downloads
My test release site is now really only for test releases, including
the very broken 0.39.2 build I put up there not so long ago.
The rest of my comments are inline:
On Feb 25, 2006, at 9:44 PM, derek holzer wrote:
> Hi HC and the gang,
>
> I just gave a PD workshop at Denver University. There were three or
> four Windows users, almost a dozen Mac users with various versions
> of OSX 10.3 or 10.4 and one Debian user. Only one had any previous
> experience either installing or using PD. This was a pretty typical
> workshop group in my experience in terms of both platform and
> experience levels, although I would assume that out in PD-UserLand
> you would find Linux users much better represented demographically.
>
> As an experiment, I had everyone use the extended installers to see
> if it would save us some time. In the past, installation has often
> taken up a full day or more depending on architecture and whether
> or not PDP is being covered.
>
> Some feedback:
>
> 1) Windows
>
> * Pd-0.38.4-extended-RC8.exe installer
> * Installation seemed fine.
> * Gem and many other windows-supported externals seemed OK
> * [joystick] refused to load
jsarlo's [joystick] is not included, so [joystick] would be the
abstraction based on [hid], which doesn't work on Windows yet.
> * [playlist] refused to load
A couple of Yves' GUI objects are not currently ported to Windows.
Carmen Rocco ported them, but the changes got overwritten in CVS.
They are still there if anyone wants to dig them up and submit them
to Yves.
> * Not enough time to test all externals
> * This installer probably saved a lot of time over the MSP
> installer because of the included externals. I'll continue to
> recommend it for windows users.
>
> 2) OSX
>
> * Pd-0.38.4-extended-RC8.dmg
> * PDP copied from Pd-0.38.4-extended-RC5.dmg (I made the install CD
> for the workshop before HC updated the RC8 installer).
> * As I've reported several times before, the GUI ranges from slow
> to unresponsive. The -nrt flag does seem to help fix this problem,
> although I'm not sure if that means more audio glitches or not. The
> only other workaround seems to be to reduce patch complexity and
> the number/update times of GUI elements.
> * [hid] broke down frequently for several workshop participants,
> particularly when opening the help patch. It has worked flawlessly
> with the 0.38.4-extended-RC8 for me under 10.4.4-10.4.5, so I
> cannot explain why it instantly crashed for others. We tried it
> primarily with Logitech and Sidewinder joysticks.
Its pretty buggy on Mac OS X, and much more stable on GNU/Linux since
the Linux API is so much nicer. I am trying to find time for a much
needed overhaul of the HID stuff, hopefully that will help with this.
> * PDP did not get the testing it needed because most participants
> neglected to install X11.
> * I'd like to be able to factor "user error" into some of this
> (with [hid], for example), but we really all went through the same
> install together, including copying over the proper plist file. So
> I really don't know. Maybe different OSX versions? I won't be
> seeing most of these students again, so I won't have time to
> individually troubleshoot and make bug reports for each situation.
> Sorry...
> * As a side-note: in contrast to what Sara Kolster and I reported
> earlier, her old 0.37 installer was slow/unresponsive when audio
> processing is turned on, and sound breaks up even in a patch with
> only three objects, one GUI element and a MIDI input. Sara uses
> 0.37 for Gem only, which works fine with the 0.37 installer but is
> unresponsive with the 0.38 ones.
> * I still find the terrible response-times of the GUI the biggest
> problem to work with under OSX, with the unpredictability of [hid]
> coming in a distant second.
> * In general, however, using these installers saved me a tremendous
> amount of time on OSX. Thanks!
> * I don't think that time would be saved if OSX workshoppers had to
> get PD+friends from Fink or Darwin-Ports (I recall long ago having
> to get people to install Fink just for PDP/PiDiP!), but if a non-
> Aqua interface would speed up the PD GUI under OSX I'd support
> further investigation into that. Perhaps a DMG installer based on
> such a Fink/Darwin-Ports compile would follow on the heels of
> committing PD to one of these package manager systems?
The idea here is a Fink distro for advanced users. It would not
replace the Pd-extended.app, but in addition to the native app.
> 3) Debian/Linux
So far, Pd-extended on GNU/Linux was kind of a second class citizen.
I was contracted to make matching Windows and Mac OS X builds, so I
thought I could make a basic GNU/Linux build without too much extra
effort. There was some talk of using the Pd-extended build system to
build the Debian packages, since Pd-extended has its roots in
Günter's build system, which is what is used for the Debian
packages. Let's hope that happens so we can combine efforts.
> * Pd-0.38.4-extended-RC8-linux-i686.tar.bz2
> * This participant had problems with the Debian and DeMuDi packages
> for Gem, and Jack support was also missing, so we used HC's installer
> * Most externals tested seemed OK.
> * I can't recall if JACK support worked, I'll check back on Monday.
> It would be good to make sure it's compiled with both Jack and ALSA-
> MIDI support.
The final release compiled with Jack, which means it requires Jack,
specifically the version in Debian/stable, which I think is
libjack-0.80.
> * Gem did not work--the library refused to load. Using "locate", we
> could not find a Gem.pd_linux or gem.pd_linux anywhere on her
> laptop. Only gem_counter.pd_linux appeared in a search for "gem".
> Has it actually been included?
Gem is not included yet since its not building from source as part of
the Pd-extended build system yet. On Windows and Mac OS X, the Gem
binary was included. Gem and flext still need to be added to the Pd-
extended build system, any volunteers?
> * PDP seemed OK, more details soon.
> * I'll be testing her laptop again on Monday, so more specifics
> will be available then.
> * Once Gem works, and if Jack/ALSA-MIDI is there (apologies if I
> missed it!), this installer will also save a ton of time during
> workshops.
> * Can anybody suggest an x86 Linux liveCD with a full PD
> installation that actually works? By this I mean fast OpenGL/3D/
> Accelerated Graphics drivers, Jack, ALSA-MIDI and externals without
> broken dependencies (all problems I've encountered with live CDs +
> PD before). I'm guessing the Apodio one might be the ticket, but
> I'm still open to suggestions. Isn't Apodio only in French?
I think pure:dyne aims to be this LiveCD:
https://puredyne.goto10.org/
> I hope this is feedback you can use. Again apologies for less-than-
> specifics at times, but with 15 people in a two hour session
> there's just not much time for it. All in all, thanks for keeping
> these going HC!
People are writing a ton of great code for Pd, both as compiled
"externals" and as Pd objects. If we could get all this included
into an easy to setup and use package, Pd would be far and away the
best media platform out there. The major sticking point right now is
that most Pd devs use their own build system, instead of all us using
one. If we all used the same build system, all of this integration
would happen more or less automatically.
.hc
>
> best,
> derek
>
> --
> derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
> ---Oblique Strategy # 130:
> "Question the heroic"
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