How is OS X development proceeding?

[etrepum]

At least, in that case, give us an option of choosing between fullscreen or windowed. I myself particularly dislike fullscreen apps, even if they run better. Even the few open GL games I play, I run in a windows.

There's no way I'd make it fullscreen-only, it's godawful to debug fullscreen applications (with only one computer).. fullscreen isn't even likely to be available (or at least, well supported) in the first finished port because you'll be losing the new UI elements I've added and I sure as hell don't have time to write OpenGL surface versions of them all from scratch or devise some weird shim to get them to work in fullscreen OpenGL.

[HankR]

Actually, the original GLUT-based Mac OS X port runs okay on 10.2, at least for me.

The modifier keys have been remapped, so you use the command key (instead of control) for the right mouse button functions. And you use the control key to pop-up the command menu (which is no longer in the menubar).

The modifier key state is still somewhat flakey, but not a lot worse than before.

Also, I'm not able to use the large earth texture that was previously working.

Otherwise, things seem to work about as well as before. But of course, we're all anxiously awaiting the many new features in Celestia 1.2.5!

- Hank

[Matt McIrvin]

My experiences with the old GLUT port on Jaguar are similar. The worst problem (as I stated before) is just that pushing the video card to the limit with huge textures can cause the system to lock up hard, and I think this is a fundamental problem with Jaguar/Quartz Extreme, not a Celestia bug.

Other people (on Macintouch) have reported similar things happening with OpenGL screensavers on systems with less texture memory. I saw it myself when an OpenGL screensaver came up while Celestia was open, among other situations. (Actually, I haven't tried tempting fate in this way with 10.2.1; maybe it's better than before.)

Otherwise the existing Celestia port still works OK.

I just had another thought, and I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way, since I appreciate everyone's existing efforts immensely and understand their time constraints-- God knows I have my own:

Has anyone tried getting the Unix/X11 version of Celestia to build on Mac OS X with XFree86/Darwin? While it would be no substitute for that nice Cocoa port, it might in principle be the easiest port of Celestia to Mac OS X, and the fastest way to maintain version parity.

(Or maybe not, since the basic porting work on the GLUT version is essentially already done. But it still might be an interesting exercise.)

Matt

[Matt McIrvin]

Has anyone tried getting the Unix/X11 version of Celestia to build on Mac OS X with XFree86/Darwin? While it would be no substitute for that nice Cocoa port, it might in principle be the easiest port of Celestia to Mac OS X, and the fastest way to maintain version parity.

Just tried it myself to see if by some miracle it would just work. Well, I ran into major compilation problems almost instantly, as I suppose I should have expected. And now it's looking way too much like my day job...

[Guest]

Any new news on OSX development? I'm really excited for a new version, but understand how busy you guys are and how much time it takes. Just thought I'd ask since nothing had been said for a while.
-Rodago

[BusError]

Well, I had lobbied for keeping the GLUT version working during the crocoa experiments, but etrepun had made the original port and had CVS access, so he could do as he wished.

So he snubed GLUT and left crocoa in a completely unusable state, moreoever, since his changes conflicts directly with a command-line kind of build, we can't rebuild a working version.

But yeah, you can't build it, but it has a DRAWER! how cool.

[chris]

After a few changes to some paths, I have Celestia building on OS X. However, I hit some errors when I try to run it.

--Chris

[Guest]

Great! Good to hear there's been progress. I'm excited to see! Thanks for all the hard work.
-Rodago

[boertje]

Maybe Chris you need to get yourself a 23" cinema display too to focus more on oSX
No but really: a new version for osx (supporting dds-textures) would be sooo great.

[BusError]

Well I managed to get the GLUT version to build, but it took me considerably more than just some path tinkering.
The version appears to be almost running, but it seems to fail to load resources.

I did change a bit the loading so it does a normal 'unix' absolute chdir(0 to it's resource directory, but no luck

Code: Select all

nStars: 112520
Parent body 'Sol' of 'Mercury' not found.
Parent body 'Sol' of 'Venus' not found.
Parent body 'Sol' of 'Earth' not found.
Parent body 'Sol/Earth' of 'Moon' not found.
Parent body 'Sol/Earth' of 'Mir' not found.
snip... there are 50 or so like that
Parent body 'Sol/Earth' of 'Gemini' not found.
Parent body 'Sol/Earth' of 'Friendship 7' not found.
Parent body 'Sol/Mars' of 'Mars Odyssey' not found.
Parent body 'Sol/Mars' of 'MGS' not found.
Parent body 'Sol/Earth' of 'Skylab' not found.
Error loading font; text will not be visible.


[BusError]

Well, now I can no longer even run the configure script; thats progress, I supose

Code: Select all

configure.in:11: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE
configure.in:12: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_CONFIG_HEADER
configure.in:14: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_ACLOCAL_INCLUDE
configure.in:38: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL
configure.in:146: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_PATH_GTK
configure.in:184: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_CONDITIONAL
configure.in:193: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_CHECK_COMPILERS
configure.in:194: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_ENABLE_SHARED
configure.in:195: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_ENABLE_STATIC
configure.in:201: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PATH_KDE


Geez, and I really tought the original purpose of those 'config' stuff were to make the code more portable. Every bloody time you DO have a portability problem, you spend more time fixing the fragging configure crap than actualy fix the code.

[HankR]

Is anyone else beginning to doubt that there will ever be an up-to-date version of Celestia for Mac OS X? I don't mean this as a criticism, just a reluctant conclusion. I'm as guilty as anyone of being unwilling or unable to contribute to getting the job done. (I particularly don't mean this as a criticism of Chris, whose talents are much better utilized in enhancing Celestia's core capabilities than in porting to a marginal platform.) But whatever the reasons, it does appear that at present the Celestia community doesn't have the resources to support a Mac OS X version. Anyone disagree?

- Hank

[Rassilon]

Yeah...sort of...I want MACS to continue and not phase out like the Amiga did...someday I would like to take this M$ machine and throw it in the river...Maybe the idea of building the MAC version can justifyably be done for the sole purpose of that...Dont let the big companies push everything out...Pretty soon we will all be wearing grey under a giant flag that resembles the windows logo...if were not already...Ok that was a bit extreme...no really the reason can be as its Apples one last hope or glimmer of support and its left in our hands...I only wish those machines werent so damned expensive!

[selden]

Amiga? Phased Out? Since When?

Two new Amigas based on 700MHz G3 and 800MHz G4 PPC chips are supposed to be available before Christmas. Unfortunately PPC AmigaDOS 4.0 won't be ready until spring, so they're shipping with Linux and the UAE Amiga emulator.

Or so they say.
http://www.amiga.com/

Maybe something will actually come of this newest incarnation. Apple's prices are high because that's where they make their money. The PPC Amiga motherboard prices don't seem too outrageous. (800 Euros)

[BusError]

Could we stay on topic please? I don't have just this forum to read all day, so the "Microsoft will eat us all" and "Nah, Amiga will, thats cool" don't help anyone *here*.

IF you are an expert at automake + autoconf, or have some practical insigh as to OSX development of celestia, I'm sure everyone else will be happy to get it.

[selden]

Since the new Amigas will be running Linux, there is a very good chance that Celestia will port to that platform with relatively little effort. It's too bad they aren't including higher performance AGP slots. 2X seems somewhat limited these days.

[Matt McIrvin]

Is anyone else beginning to doubt that there will ever be an up-to-date version of Celestia for Mac OS X? I don't mean this as a criticism, just a reluctant conclusion. I'm as guilty as anyone of being unwilling or unable to contribute to getting the job done. (I particularly don't mean this as a criticism of Chris, whose talents are much better utilized in enhancing Celestia's core capabilities than in porting to a marginal platform.) But whatever the reasons, it does appear that at present the Celestia community doesn't have the resources to support a Mac OS X version. Anyone disagree?

- Hank

My impression is that it will only take one or two people with the time and inclination to learn the code base and figure out what's already happened and what needs to be done. Since there are people who already have that knowledge (but don't have the time), with some communication it could be done.

The question is just who our hero is. Unfortunately I don't think it's me, given that my sum total of experience with Cocoa amounts to about three hours, and most weeks, more software development is the last thing I want to do after coming home from work. But that's the way it always is with open-source projects. You never know; it only takes one person to step into the breach.

[chris]

My impression is that it will only take one or two people with the time and inclination to learn the code base and figure out what's already happened and what needs to be done. Since there are people who already have that knowledge (but don't have the time), with some communication it could be done.

You're correct . . . it won't take much time to get an updated version of Celestia for Mac OS X. I desperately want to do this, but I'm completely swamped at work (D3D driver development for the NV30--very fun stuff!) and with other Celestia items. I do have it at least compiling again on my Mac . . . but it crashes before bringing up the GUI. Bob, help us!
[/quote]

--Chris

[BusError]

Well if you'd check it in as is, I could give it as spin. My problem isn't with C++ or GL, it's with autoconf !

[Guest]

Hey! Has there been any recent progress with this? I only ask because it has been more than a month since anything was said, and I'm really excited about it. I'd help if I could, but I'm afraid my knowledge on the subject is pretty limited. Thanks!