Question to users who know C++

Paolo · Post #41by **Paolo** » 30.10.2003, 10:04

I would like add another idea to this brainstorming about the add-on management.
In order to solve some problems about coherence of modifications of system data and add-on data, probably and add-on editor for ssc, xyz and dat file should be very useful.

Many folks have tried to do this in the past.
An integrated solution or a separate editor should solve definitively the problem.

This should be another main task indeed.

Bye - Paolo

don · Post #42by **don** » 30.10.2003, 17:00

We've strayed too far from the topic of this thread. I copied the discussion about Add-On Management and will reformat the text and post it into the Developer forum. (See: http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25283#25283)

For now, let's get this thread back on-topic. Here is the original message:

Greetings to all Celestia users,

If Celestia has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people (or 2 million as Frank says in his User Manual), then why are there only a handful of active posters in the forums (mostly add-on and texture creators), and even fewer people willing to offer their programming experience?

I would *really* like to hear from the people who have downloaded Celestia and know C++, as to why they don't want to help with it's coding. If we don't know "why", then we can't fix "why", and Celestia will never get more programmers.

Is the Celestia code not documented enough (objects, classes, etc.)?

Is the code too complex to follow / figure out?

Do you not have a couple hours a week to offer?

Do you not want to download and install Unix environment software on your Windows system?

Is SourceForge / CVS too much of a pain to use?

Have your questions not been answered in the past?

Other?
Other?
Other?

Please help us to make it easier for experienced C++ programmers to come on board the Celestia Open Source project!

Thank you,

-Don G.

Troy · Post #43by **Troy** » 30.10.2003, 23:08

Wow, this is kinda exciting. I don't post around here much, ( in fact I haven't really checked the forum for a couple of months. ) so if no one knows who I am I'll forgive ya. :wink:

I'm a C++ programmer w/ Qt GUI experience and basic OpenGL experience. I didn't realize the Celestia project was recruiting, or I would have shown up much sooner. However:

1) My free time is kinda short. ( Also maintaining my own project, http://knights-chess.com )

2) Hardware acceleration of OpenGL currently isn't working for me under Linux. ( Damn ATI drivers )

If I can at least get #2 working so I can compile and test, I'll be happy to help in any way I can.

Post #44by **Christophe** » 31.10.2003, 00:21

Troy wrote:Wow, this is kinda exciting. I don't post around here much, ( in fact I haven't really checked the forum for a couple of months. ) so if no one knows who I am I'll forgive ya. :wink: I'm a C++ programmer w/ Qt GUI experience and basic OpenGL experience. I didn't realize the Celestia project was recruiting, or I would have shown up much sooner. However:

1) My free time is kinda short. ( Also maintaining my own project, http://knights-chess.com )

Knights is a very nice project. It makes me wish I were better at playing chess.

Troy wrote:2) Hardware acceleration of OpenGL currently isn't working for me under Linux. ( Damn ATI drivers )

If I can at least get #2 working so I can compile and test, I'll be happy to help in any way I can.

You'd be welcome to join! I'm glad that at last another KDE/Qt developer is speaking up in the forums :-)

jamarsa · Post #45by **jamarsa** » 31.10.2003, 00:26

Troy wrote:If I can at least get #2 working so I can compile and test, I'll be happy to help in any way I can.

That would be fantastic, Troy!! But I think don is looking for Windows GUI programmers... :roll:

I'm sure, however, that don and all the development team would welcome any contribution from you (hey, perhaps even from me!!). Including bug fixes, of course.

Hardware acceleration of OpenGL currently isn't working for me under Linux. ( Damn ATI drivers )

That's also my most recent situation with the newest Mandrake 9.2 (damn Kyro drivers). :wink:

Post #46by **Christophe** » 31.10.2003, 00:33

jamarsa wrote:I'm sure, however, that don and all the development team would welcome any contribution from you (hey, perhaps even from me!!). Including bug fixes, of course.

Certainly also from you, jamarsa.

jamarsa wrote:
Hardware acceleration of OpenGL currently isn't working for me under Linux. ( Damn ATI drivers )

That's also my most recent situation with the newest Mandrake 9.2 (damn Kyro drivers). :wink:

You can't be wrong going with NVidia ;-)

jamarsa · Post #47by **jamarsa** » 31.10.2003, 00:41

Christophe wrote:You can't be wrong going with NVidia ;-)

Yes, it's a matter of time (and specially money...) ;-)

Harry · Post #48by **Harry** » 31.10.2003, 07:26

Christophe wrote:You can't be wrong going with NVidia

Though the drivers crash for me now and then when X shuts down (prior to reboot/system shutdown). Was already a problem a long time ago, and still is - but I'm still trying to fix it.

You don't want to use reiserfs with this: it's journal remembers that files have been deleted or truncated, but not the new data that got written to them before crash, and a lot of files get rewritten when shutting down

astro · Post #49by **astro** » 31.10.2003, 20:50

Hi All

I am not a good programmer, nor have I much time to spare, but I might be interested to do some programming for Celestia.

It seems to me from some posts I read in the forum that most of the development is done on Win 32 and that the programming on Linux mainly consists in GUI devel. I'd rather like develop in a Linux environment and work on something else than UI (for example the celestial mechanics engine).

Also is there a "to do list"/"wish list" somewhere or something like that so that I can get some ideas of what I could do?

Thank you.

Post #50by **Christophe** » 31.10.2003, 20:58

astro wrote:It seems to me from some posts I read in the forum that most of the development is done on Win 32 and that the programming on Linux mainly consists in GUI devel. I'd rather like develop in a Linux environment and work on something else than UI (for example the celestial mechanics engine).

There is no reason why you or anybody else couldn't do core development on Linux. There are no Win32 requirements here!

astro wrote:Also is there a "to do list"/"wish list" somewhere or something like that so that I can get some ideas of what I could do?

Just ask Don ;-)

Paolo · Post #51by **Paolo** » 31.10.2003, 21:06

astro wrote:Also is there a "to do list"/"wish list" somewhere or something like that so that I can get some ideas of what I could do?

Thank you.

Hi Astro

I have prepared an entire website collecting feature requests submitted by forum visitors. I consider it my personal wish list. Perhaps you'll find some inspiration. :roll:

See: http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/pangeli ... quests.htm

A request for an official todo list was submitted to Chris several times.

See: http://ennui.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtop ... 5f7a8f58d7
And in other previous threads.
But unfortunately... since now is still not available. :cry:

Bye - Paolo

don · Post #52by **don** » 02.11.2003, 19:49

Howdy Troy,

Sure glad you stopped in!

Reading some of your experience, I'll bet Christophe (our only Linux developer) is jumping up and down. :lol:

Troy wrote:I didn't realize the Celestia project was recruiting, or I would have shown up much sooner.

My initial post was basically out of pure curiosity, wondering why there weren't more folks actively involved, since Celestia has been downloaded nearly 2 MILLION times.

Troy wrote:1) My free time is kinda short. ( Also maintaining my own project, http://knights-chess.com )

Very nice project Troy!

Troy wrote:2) Hardware acceleration of OpenGL currently isn't working for me under Linux. ( Damn ATI drivers )

Are you using the basic ATI drivers or the Catalyst drivers? I'm not familiar with Linux, so I'm not sure which ones are used. I use an ATI 9700 Pro with WinXP and the Catalyst drivers, and it seems to be working okay.

Troy wrote:If I can at least get #2 working so I can compile and test, I'll be happy to help in any way I can.

Thank you Troy! Yipieee! It's great to have some new folks join in the fun.

-Don G.

don · Post #53by **don** » 02.11.2003, 20:25

Howdy Javier,

jamarsa wrote:But I think don is looking for Windows GUI programmers...

Windoze, what's that? :lol:

Actually, my initial message was just wondering-out-loud if there really are more C++ programmers hiding somewhere here in the Celestia community, and if so, how we can help them to be part of the inside fun instead of just the outside (user-end) fun.

jamarsa wrote:I'm sure, however, that don and all the development team would welcome any contribution from you (hey, perhaps even from me!!). Including bug fixes, of course.

Now that is the understatement of the year.

Not only would we welcome contributions, I will shave off my beard and mustache (see end of message) if we can get 5 or 10 more active contributors, on any platform, (C++, GUI, video folks, astronomical wizzards, web spinners, Lua folks, etc., etc.). Now, this is definately a recruiting challenge! :lol:

I think not only the existing developers, but every Celestia user, would very much welcome every little contribution, no matter how small, and not only from C++ programmers, but from anyone who has a few minutes in their week to offer Celestia -- to make it a better program.

And yes, of course Celestia would like to have some contributions from you Javier.

Okay, here I am, with beard and mustache...

If any of you want to see me without them, join the development team and contribute some time.

If we get 5-10 new contributors by the end of the year (2003), I will shave them off.

By the way, I'm just another Celestia user / fanatic -- not currently a member of the developer team (don't know C++), but I'm contributing where I can (forums, scripting guide, testing, etc.).

-Don G.

don · Post #54by **don** » 02.11.2003, 20:56

Howdy astro!

Glad to have you join in.

I'm sure the existing developers will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a high level of experience is required as much as a high level of enthusiasm -- since there are some highly experienced coders here whom I hope would be willing to help out with making someone elses code contributions more efficient, more OOP, quicker, better ... whatever. It's just a matter of getting the code written to begin with.

astro wrote:I'd rather like develop in a Linux environment and work on something else than UI (for example the celestial mechanics engine).

As Christophe wrote, the core of Celestia is cross-platform (Win, Linux, Mac, etc.). Only the GUI portions are platform-specific. So yes, you could certainly work on any of the core code sections in Linux.

astro wrote:Also is there a "to do list"/"wish list" somewhere or something like that so that I can get some ideas of what I could do?

I just love Christophe's reply to this, "Just ask Don ;-)

".

He wrote this because of my recent, and quite loud, complaints about reported bugs not being fixed in Celestia (sorry, I'm a perfectionist, what can I say :oops:

). I have since purchased VC++ 6.x, will be installing WinCVS (and other stuff), and will learn C++ and dig into bug fixes myself. I would LOVE to have some company doing this, but if you know celestial mechanics, I'd say GO FOR IT!

Some of the things I think Chris is thinking about for the next version (1.3.2) include the following, which were mentioned in the publicly available Developer's mailing list archive (located at http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=9864):

Code: Select all

 - Precessing elliptical orbits
 - Custom orbits for Phobos, Deimos, and Triton
 - Improved moon orbits based on ELP2000 theory
 - White dwarf spectral types
 - More Lua script commands
 - Add-on management (Christophe? :) )
 - New 3D model format (as discussed a few months ago in the forum)
 - More accurate illumination models for planet surfaces
 - New atmosphere model (unify haze and atmosphere parameters)
 - Use Grant's star colors based on black body spectra (at least as an option)
 - Fix alt-azimuth mode
 - Azimuth markers
 - Option to render the ecliptic
 - RA/Dec and Alt/azimuth coordinate display
 - Show arc size of selection

Keep in mind that Chris is still trying to get 1.3.1 FINAL out-the-door right now, so bug fixes would probably be the most important contributions for the current release, to get it as clean as possible. However, there is no current build available in .exe form, since 1.3.1 pre 11, so I'm not sure what bugs have / have not been fixed / checked-in.

Welcome aboard astro! Hope you have lots of fun!!!

-Don G.

PS. If anyone wants to attack bugs, just take a look through, or search, the Bugs forum.

astro · Post #55by **astro** » 03.11.2003, 20:37

Downloaded the ?latest? celestia sources using:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/celestia co celestia

But there is no configure script in the files I got.
How can I compile it?

Thank you.

don · Post #56by **don** » 03.11.2003, 21:01

I haven't gotten that far yet, so I hope one of the other developers will jump in.

-Don G.

Post #57by **Christophe** » 03.11.2003, 21:06

astro wrote:Downloaded the ?latest? celestia sources using:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/celestia co celestia

But there is no configure script in the files I got.
How can I compile it?

Thank you.

You need the autotools installed. automake >= 1.6 and autoconf >= 2.5x (not sure about which x is needed).

then do a make -f Makefile.cvs, that will generate the configure script.

Otherwise just grad the latest snapshot here.