Celestia Forums

Dear members of the Celestia forum:

I am new to this wonderfull application, and I managed to install the 1.5.1 version into my Ubuntu (Karmic Koala version) laptop. For this, I have used the Synaptic package manager.

However, I knew about the new 1.6.0 version and tried to install it from the sources. And here I have no success, although I progressed in some aspects that were missing in my Ubuntu laptop. First of all, I got a proprietary driver for my Nvidia Geforce graphics, which introduced hardware accelaration in great style. The improvement in FPS went from average 15 to average 300!

I have also installed a missing GNU C++ compiler, g++. The configuration went a little bit further and then complained about a missing zlib library. My Ubuntu version uses a version with the name "zlib1g", and I even installed the old zlib in my laptop, but the result was always the same: it could not found this library.

The last attempt with the configure was:

./configure --with-gnome --disable-rpath --disable-libtool-lock

Anyone has installed this new version into Ubuntu?

Any hints to overcome the not found zlib?

Or maybe I just have to wait for Synaptic to update the precompiled version for Ubuntu...

Anyway, thanks for the developers of Celestia for this great product!

I have no problems compiling the latest SVN version from source under Xubuntu 9.10. I haven't tried the 1.6.0 source though, you may run into issues with the version of g++ being stricter about certain coding techniques that may prevent compilation.

Remember you need the -dev versions of the libraries to do the compilation, i.e. for zlib this would be zlib1g-dev.

ajtribick wrote:Remember you need the -dev versions of the libraries to do the compilation, i.e. for zlib this would be zlib1g-dev.

Thanks for the quick answer. As I am a newbie also to Ubuntu and this compiling stuff, I really overlook the development library for zlib1g. But even with that library installed, it does not compile. In the meanwhile, I have found some advice on this error on Ubuntu Forum. It seams that it is a "good old" error in compiling Celestia in this operative system.

If I have any success with the remedy, I will post back to this topic.

Weeeell, still no success, but a quick update.

It seams this is a old problem when compiling in a number of Linux OS, not just with Ubuntu. The "zlib not found" message is misleading, because that is not the problem.
I have tried an old remedy, installing the libcompress-zlib-perl library, but that did not make the trick.

The most probable cause is a missing development library for X11, and in a post I found it should be a "X11-dev (package/pattern)", but this was reported for another OS (OpenSuse), and I did not found anything like that in synaptic.

Another forum user reported on some utilities to help, like ldd and rpm. With this, it is possible to obtain a list of library dependencies for an installed program (e.g. ) and then the respective packaging. The question is that I found 93 library dependencies for Celestia 1.5.1, so imagine the work of pinpointing the respective X11 package that is missing (a kind of "reverse engineering").

So, except if someone reports on which X11 (dev) library packages to install in Ubuntu (using synaptic, preferably), in order to compile Celestia 1.6.0, I will stick to the 1.5.1 version.
Or maybe I will search for this "SVN installation"...

--- edit ---

john Van Vliet wrote:the code from sourceforge for 1.6 will NEED to be hacked inorder to build with gcc 4.4

John,

I don't know what problems you are referring to. I use gcc 4.4.1 under openSuSE 11.2 for compiling the 1.6.x SVN code without ANY problems. And I compile the SVN code almost daily. For the Qt4 version I use Qt-4.6.2 along with the Qtcreator IDE.
Also the gtk and gnome versions compile without problems, just as celestia-kde.

Yes, I am not using libpng14 for a number of reasons. The libpng maintainer is a user of CelestialMatters, actually.

In my opinion, it is all a matter of using a consistent, well debugged set of libraries, no need for the very latest "bleeding edge" patch.

@3oCalhau:

The zlib issue is nothing special, it is just a familiar manifestation of limited configure diagnostic abilities . Often configure reports e.g. that zlib or other libs are missing while unexperienced users are ready to bet that they have all of them installed . What usually happens there is that the respective tests are made by configure wrto the presence of the INCLUDE files not the libraries themselves. Just have a look at the code of the configure script. It's quite easy to follow. In those cases of error usually some dev/devel packages containing required headers have been forgotten. Also it can happen that the lacking package is just before the one that is reported missing etc.

Fridger

3oCalhau wrote:The most probable cause is a missing development library for X11, and in a post I found it should be a "X11-dev (package/pattern)", but this was reported for another OS (OpenSuse), and I did not found anything like that in synaptic.

For Ubuntu 9.10, it would probably be simplest to get xorg-dev. (For historical and other reasons, different distros refer to their X-related packages in different ways; many now use "xorg" instead of "X11".)

xorg-dev is a "meta-package" which actually refers to a collection of X-related development packages. Installing it should automatically install them all, which is wise (assuming your system has the disk space). It's pretty much mandatory if you ever want to build software such as Celestia which uses the X Window System.

I did not try to install the "xorg-dev" with synaptic yet, but anyway, now the problem changed to a make error, for the configure now runs to the end, with the following message:

***************************************************************
** Celestia configuration complete. Now do a 'make' followed **
** by 'make install' **
***************************************************************

Front-End: Gnome
Use Cairo: yes
Use Lua: yes
Use Theora: no

The packages I have installed from synaptic so far:

libxaw7-dev
libxi-dev
libgl1-mesa-dev
libgnomeui-dev
libgtkglext1-dev
liblua5.1-0-dev

They have their own dependencies, off course, so the total of libraries actually installed is around 100, but synaptic takes care of that.

I am attaching the output of make in the file "makemsgs.txt.zip", so that somebody can give me a hint to what is still missing in my system. I thought everything would be solved when the configuration has ended successfuly...

Well, at least the infamous "zlib not found" error is overcome, I guess I am on a different level of the game now.

t00fri wrote:

john Van Vliet wrote:the code from sourceforge for 1.6 will NEED to be hacked inorder to build with gcc 4.4

I don't know what problems you are referring to. I use gcc 4.4.1 under openSuSE 11.2 for compiling the 1.6.x SVN code without ANY problems. And I compile the SVN code almost daily.

He didn't say the 1.6.x SVN code, he said the code from sourceforge for 1.6. He also said that SVN builds fine for him, so I think he means the 1.6.0 release tree. And that's what 3oCalhau is trying to build.

From the attachment 3oCalhau included:


Ugh, that does sound quite broken. Looks like something's messed up with how the code is using C++ stdio.

And it seems to have been fixed with this change. So it looks like John Van Vliet's supposition was correct.

--- edit ---

I see the discussion moved into more specialized areas. I do not have the skills to do this "hacking" on the sourceforge distribution tar file, even if it seems simple (is it really just a matter of one missing include for cstudio?)

But if this version 1.6.0 does not really compile with the most recent versions of g++, should I expect for a new, corrected version of Celestia in Sourceforge?

Note that the Ubuntu 10.04 repositories contain Celestia 1.6.0. Doesn't help for 9.10 I know, but something to consider.

One thing you might want to try is to use Subversion (sudo apt-get install subversion) to download the code from Sourceforge.

Instructions for doing that are on the Celestia Wikibook. Basically it boils down to


where you replace "directory" with the location where you want the source to be downloaded to. I haven't tried compiling this on Ubuntu yet, so I'm not promising this won't need hacking.

If instead of 1.6.0 you want the current bleeding-edge version (previewing 1.7.0), use instead


again replacing "directory" with the location where you want the source to be downloaded to. This compiles fine under Ubuntu 10.04 and 9.10.

ajtribick wrote:One thing you might want to try is to use Subversion (sudo apt-get install subversion) to download the code from Sourceforge.

Instructions for doing that are on the Celestia Wikibook. Basically it boils down to

Code: Select all

svn co https://celestia.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/celestia/tags/ver1_6_0 directory

where you replace "directory" with the location where you want the source to be downloaded to. I haven't tried compiling this on Ubuntu yet, so I'm not promising this won't need hacking.

I think it will need hacking, since the difference I pointed out was present in the Subversion repository. The 1.6.0 in Subversion 1.6.0 is just like Sourceforge's tar archive for 1.6.0--as it should be, otherwise everyone would be confused.

It would be better for him to use Subversion to get the source for a newer branch or the trunk.

Dear Sirs:

I have followed your instructions and now I have version 1.6.0 installed and running from the SVN trunk. Or so it says in the "Help - About".
I had to install the automaker facility and I have run the build-dep for celestia as instructed in the wiki page mentioned in your post. Besides a few warnings during make, everything run OK.

This version is far more complete than the previous 1.5.1 I had installed, namelly concerning textures, and the display runs much more smoother when making the goto travels. I feel this is a big improvment, so at the end, the effort was worthwhile, and I have learned a few things about Celestia, installing from sources in Ubuntu and the SVN.

I used the SVN client before, but in a windows environment and in connection to Enterprise Architect (for MDA and UML modelling).

Thanks for all the support, and perhaps one day, when I have less work to do, I give a look to the development tutorials you have published.