On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 9:06 AM Glen Langston <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi_______________________________________________I use gnu radio pretty much every day and enjoy working with it.However I have to agree that the only way to use Gnuradio is to compile it yourself.The distributions are out of date.We’re working on high-school systems for radio astronomy and am afraid that gnuradio is outof reach of most every high school unless a professional sets it up for them.We’re putting together a version for the Raspberry Pi in conjunction with the PlutoSDRand a bunch of horn radio telescopes. The Pi’s all are running the same version of theOS copied to the other Pis and the Static IPs tweaked.Thanks for all your efforts folks. Probably the simplest and easiest documentation changeis to add the Gnuradio versions for which the documentation is valid. Don’t assumethat future versions will be compatible with the documentation unless it is checked.Best regardsGlenEach horn has it’s own Pi 4 (4GB) taking spectra of the sky and looking fortransient eventsOn Oct 15, 2019, at 10:53 AM, HansFong <address@hidden> wrote:
Because I never succeed with pyBOMBS and the distro packages are outdated.
I know I'm going to ruffle some feathers, but my intentions are noble, so here it is: GNUradio is by far the worst project I've seen in my 20 years are a Linux user when it comes to documentation. It's almost un-Linux how bad it is. Because with Linux you can RTFM (remember that one. Is hardly used nowadays, it seems) and then use google if the problem you are facing is very specific. If you still don't "get it" then maybe a question on a forum, or IRC.
With GNUradio the manual (read: Wiki) is a mess, with pages not in the index, old or missing information and broken links. Then there is also information on github, but non of the afore mentioned sources will give you a working installation, because you can't see the forests for the trees. If you are an insider, maybe yes. But to a interested newcomer, not.
Give you an example: compiled from source using the Wiki instruction. So GR did start up, but I got version 3.9! Isn't 3.8 the current version? But with the git reference on the Wiki you will download version 3.9. No hint whatsoever on how to install 3.8, which git reference to use, what to watch out for, etc. The Wiki has nothing on 3.8!!!!!!! This is really bad and will make for a very bad impression to people who want to try GR. There is this reflector to ask questions, but as I stated earlier, this isn't the right way to do things: RTFM, google, forum.
Then there is pyBOMBS, which is supposed to make life easier. It might, if it works, but it doesn't. Apparently GR is so complex that even GR insiders can't write a script that can grok everything that is needed to install GR. The complexity of dealing with many Linux distros is a factor I can understand, but then again, I'm using (K)ubuntu and if pyBOMBS can't even install successfully on Kubuntu then I think there is a serious problem.
I've been compiling software on Linux for the past 20 years, so in the end I just thought "what the heck" and did it myself. Wasn't too difficult and I did get a working piece of software, albeit not the 3.8 version I wanted. On Twitter people already told me how to compile 3.8, so I'll nuke my install and do it again.
The above isn't very positive, but it's not a rant, because ranting is not productive. But since you asked I do think I need to be honest in telling you what I think about GR and hopefully it will help getting a better understanding of how outsiders look at GR and maybe will cause some improvements. I can't be (and I know I'm not) the only one who has a not so favorable impression of GR, but we radio amateurs will still be trying to install and use GR, because in essence it is a good piece of software and we desperately need something like GR on Linux. But fun installing it ain't! For sure.
My suggestion for improving things: only release a new version when both the software and documentation are ready and then make a clear distinction between documentation for the old and new versions of the software.
73 and greetings from Taiwan
Hans
BX2ABT
On 10/15/19 6:21 PM, Müller, Marcus (CEL) wrote:Hi Hans,
I'm happy that Kyeong fixed that page.
But honestly, you shouldn't *need* to compile GNU Radio from source,
unless you want a recent development version of it. What's the reason
you're doing that?
Best regards,
Marcus
On Tue, 2019-10-15 at 08:13 +0800, HansFong wrote:Can somebody with the appropriate powers to change a GR wiki page please add the following to the install instructions (https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/InstallingGR)?
In the section "Compiling from source" after "make install" add the following:
sudo ldconfig
It took me half a day to compile GNUradio, another half to figure out this last step. I'm sorry to criticize, but in my experience GNUradio is one of the most frustrating pieces of software to install because the documentation is so incomplete or haphazard. This goes especially for GR noobs like myself. Cheers and 73
Hans
BX2ABT
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