New Celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2 Version for Download

[julesstoop]

Thanks gentleman, for the new version!

[t00fri]

Great work Toti, Fridger.

I have one issue, though I'm not certain where the problem lies.

In Windows, I get the Galaxies as expected.

Under Linux, same computer, I don't see the galaxies. This is with Galaxy Rendering on (U). If I use ')' to brighten all the way up, I get the purple galaxies I had before, with no Milky Way. It doesn't seem to be affected by Render Path.

I'm not discounting a problem in my GTK interface, but I was wondering if it's just me.

Hi Pat,

it sounds improbable to me that this is due to FT1.2, since I checked ALL Linux versions (kde,gnome & GTK) explicitly for their compiling and galaxy display. Did you really do a /fresh/ install?? Are your galaxy templates in the models/ directory?? Did you take the latest deepsky.dsc? Mixing with pre7 stuff may easily go wrong towards what you describe...

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

In my hotel one hour of internet connection essentially at modem speed was 20 R which is ~ 8 Euro or 10 $!

u$s 10 for a whole month of 6000 Kbit DSL line (flatrate) connection is a true bargain!

Yes, it's not bad, but of course there are the 25 Euros/month in addition for leasing the 6000 Kbit line...

Bye Fridger

[suwalski]

it sounds improbable to me that this is due to FT1.2, since I checked ALL Linux versions (kde,gnome & GTK) explicitly for their compiling and galaxy display. Did you really do a /fresh/ install?? Are your galaxy templates in the models/ directory?? Did you take the latest deepsky.dsc? Mixing with pre7 stuff may easily go wrong towards what you describe...

It's a fresh install because it's in a different prefix. The data path, is, after all, hardcoded in the binary.

Is it possible you missed a new file in the Makefile or something so that it does not install? Have you tried installing to a different prefix yourself?

I believe this is a very simple oversight.

I just spent 5 hours hacking on the GTK tree. It's 0300. I'm going to sleep.

[t00fri]

it sounds improbable to me that this is due to FT1.2, since I checked ALL Linux versions (kde,gnome & GTK) explicitly for their compiling and galaxy display. Did you really do a /fresh/ install?? Are your galaxy templates in the models/ directory?? Did you take the latest deepsky.dsc? Mixing with pre7 stuff may easily go wrong towards what you describe...

It's a fresh install because it's in a different prefix. The data path, is, after all, hardcoded in the binary.

Is it possible you missed a new file in the Makefile or something so that it does not install? Have you tried installing to a different prefix yourself?

I believe this is a very simple oversight.

I just spent 5 hours hacking on the GTK tree. It's 0300. I'm going to sleep.

No, I always install to the default path (/usr/local/share). But --compared to the CVS-- I have also never changed any files to be installed, except the *.pts templates into models/. This change is trivial and path independent. Any other path dependent install problems must also be in pre7 for example.

Now perhaps you also check first whether you get the right behaviour in the default path. The only /new/ install of FT1.x is really the templates in models/. Deepsky.dsc is different in its content, but NOT in its location from pre7. NO other new files!

You did not reply yet, whether after your install, you got the *.pts templates in models/!?

Bye Fridger

[Boux]

Hey Boux,

just as a little "present" , I now built also the glut version of FT1.2, JUST for you...

Result: NO problems whatsoever. Straight compile and running without any error messages or warnings.

Cheers,
Fridger

Hi, Fridger,
Please see your PM. Thanks.

[maxim]

Am I the only one who can get this version to freeze by hoovering over the menu line?

An example: Move to 'View', leftclick, hoover with your mouse to the left over 'Render' and 'Time'. Rendering will freeze now. CPU usage goes and stays at 100%. Menues and Window min/max/close still work but Celestia doesn't render anymore. Seems to work with other menupoints too as long as you hit at least three of them.

Any clues? My personal problem?

maxim


BTW: I'd like to see something like '1.4.0-pre7 FT1.2' in the 'info' dialog, so it's more easier to check what version you have currently running.

[t00fri]

Maxim,

Am I the only one who can get this version to freeze by hoovering over the menu line?

I have certainly not seen a trace of this, but will check again.
Is the problem absent in the recent 1.4.0pre7? You know that you may install it in parallel e.g. for testing without problems...

BTW: I'd like to see something like '1.4.0-pre7 FT1.2' in the 'info' dialog, so it's more easier to check what version you have currently running.

Well, in all Linux versions I have indeed adapted the version info to the current one (celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2). For Windows, celestia FT1.2 is in the install directory, in the control->add and remove installed software listing (!), and the Desktop icon.

Bye Fridger

[selden]

Maxim,

I'm seeing something similar. Celestia stops updating the screen and its clock when I follow your instructions. It resumes if the menu is closed and the cursor is moved elsewhere.

After I did this several times, and sped up time to 10000x so I could see the Earth rotating quickly, Celestia FT1.2 stopped updating the screen even though the clock was still advancing.

Celestia v1.4.0pre7 pauses while the dropdown menus are open, but always resumes when they are closed. Sometimes it leaves fragments of menus on the screen, though.

Apparently some of the "close menu" paths don't fully clean up after themselves.

System:
1GB 3.4GHz P4-550, WinXP Pro SP2
128MB GF 6600GT, ForceWare v81.87
Celestia v1.4.0pre FT1.2

[Toti]

Hi,

I suppose it's not, but just in case: is this bug present in FT-1.0 or FT-1.1 ?

[maxim]

Sorry, I haven't checked against other versions - but Toti has done in the meantime, obviously.

Yes, the app sometimes leaves portions of the menues on the screen. AFAICS its always a portion of the 'Render' menu in my case. And other than selden reported, in my case the rendering always freezes forever. I can close the menues, minimize the window, do something else and reopen the window again - the window border and the menu line will reappear, but the render area stays empty (white). Its a plain installation with no altering or addons.

Well, in all Linux versions I have indeed adapted the version info to the current one (celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2). For Windows, celestia FT1.2 is in the install directory, in the control->add and remove installed software listing (!), and the Desktop icon.

Yes, but I will still not know which version I started if I was distracted anyhow ('on which of the icons did I click?') so I have to close and explicitly restart it again to be shure. That only happens sometimes when I work on several screens at the same time, but it can be annoying.

maxim

[Toti]

Sorry, I haven't checked against other versions - but Toti has done in the meantime, obviously.

No, I don't have a Windows compiler nor any FT Windows version. I ask because I don't recall any changes in the Win-specific files other than the --config ==> --conf one.

[t00fri]

Sorry, I haven't checked against other versions - but Toti has done in the meantime, obviously.

No, I don't have a Windows compiler nor any FT Windows version. I ask because I don't recall any changes in the Win-specific files other than the --config ==> --conf one.

That's correct. But nevertheless things can manifest differently, as we saw in case of the flickering add-on problem that only occured for Windows, despite common code. I shall examine the issue again tonight.

I have FT1.1, FT1.2 and 1.4.0pre installed in parallel under Windows on my desktop machine at home.

Bye Fridger

[suwalski]

You did not reply yet, whether after your install, you got the *.pts templates in models/!?

Ah. They were missing. Checking the binary version on the celestia binary showed that while I did a "make" in the right directory, I ran "make install" in a different terminal where I was working on my GTK stuff. So it installed the wrong version.

The .pts files are there now, as is the rest of it, and I'm certain it will work now. But I did this all over SSH and cannot test it from work.

BTW: All of the files in your distribution seem to be executable for some reason. Also, when you edited the configure.in file to bump the version, the spacing was changed on every line; maybe it was intentional, I do not know.

One more note about a clean extract:

pat@inspiron ~/Development $ du -hs celestia
44M celestia

pat@inspiron ~ $ du -hs celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2
81M celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2

Yikes! No wonder the download is so big! Using .tar.bz2 will save a few megabytes as well.

[t00fri]

Pat,

You did not reply yet, whether after your install, you got the *.pts templates in models/!?

Ah. They were missing. Checking the binary version on the celestia binary showed that while I did a "make" in the right directory, I ran "make install" in a different terminal where I was working on my GTK stuff. So it installed the wrong version.

The .pts files are there now, as is the rest of it, and I'm certain it will work now. But I did this all over SSH and cannot test it from work.

Good to hear. That should be it.

BTW: All of the files in your distribution seem to be executable for some reason. Also, when you edited the configure.in file to bump the version, the spacing was changed on every line; maybe it was intentional, I do not know.

That comes from the fact that the same sources were repeatedly moved to Windows via an intermediate vfat file system to do the compilation there as well. This file system implies this "nice" feature that it generally makes all files executable. That's the same when using Cygwin, for example. But in this intensive testing phase of the new FT code, I consider it important to test always the /identical/ code wrto Windows /and/ the various Linux flavors.
But I'll reinstall the original permissions next time. Thanks.

One more note about a clean extract:

pat@inspiron ~/Development $ du -hs celestia
44M celestia

pat@inspiron ~ $ du -hs celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2
81M celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2

Yikes! No wonder the download is so big! Using .tar.bz2 will save a few megabytes as well.

Thanks for pointing this out.

On the one hand, our present distribution contains also the /complete/ sources for building under Windows, including all extra libraries and project files (~3.5 MB). Also the models are ~1.7 MB and notably deepsky.dsc > 5 MB.

However, the main "burden" are /left-over/ Windows files 'celestia.pch' in each 'Release' dir that have not been deleted with the VC+ 'clean' command. These are many MB's and will certainly be absent in the next FT distribution!

So I suppose after deleting these, and adding another 10000+ set of clusters and nebulae from NGC/IC,
the unpacked FT2.0 shall only be about 10 - 15 MB larger than the standard Celestia distribution.

Bye Fridger

[suwalski]

That comes from the fact that the same sources were repeatedly moved to Windows via an intermediate vfat file system to do the compilation there as well. This file system implies this "nice" feature that it generally makes all files executable.

You can avoid this by telling vfat to mount with the option "mode=0644" or possible the binary inverse. I have done it before.

On the one hand, our present distribution contains also the /complete/ sources for building under Windows, including all extra libraries and project files (~3.5 MB). Also the models are ~1.7 MB and notably deepsky.dsc > 5 MB.

Is there a need for the sources to libjpeg, png, xml, z and lua? Are there no pristine binary sources for them? It seems silly maintaining them in the celestia tree.

However, the main "burden" are /left-over/ Windows files 'celestia.pch' in each 'Release' dir that have not been deleted with the VC+ 'clean' command. These are many MB's and will certainly be absent in the next FT distribution!

Looks like it might not be too hard to change the nmake files to clean them.

So I suppose after deleting these, and adding another 10000+ set of clusters and nebulae from NGC/IC, the unpacked FT2.0 shall only be about 10 - 15 MB larger than the standard Celestia distribution.

Deleting the extraneous Release and Debug files, as well as using bzip, saves a little bit of space:

pat@inspiron ~ $ du -h cel*.tar*
33M celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2.tar.gz
26M celestia-clean.tar.bz2
28M celestia-clean.tar.gz

[t00fri]

Hi Pat,

Is there a need for the sources to libjpeg, png, xml, z and lua? Are there no pristine binary sources for them? It seems silly maintaining them in the celestia tree.

Sorry that was a misunderstanding. The archive contains all *.dll's, and two additional lib and inc directories with all the libs required to do the compilation under Windows.

Don't forget, with the new "Forum interface" (rather than the developer list), /many more/ people now help testing, but often have much less experience as to compiling themselves etc. So it's good to just provide /everything/ necessary, like also the nmake Makefiles (batch) and the VS++.net project files. So we don't fiddle with different libs etc.

On the other hand a substantial number of Windows users now have a try at compilation and it seems there is quite a steep learning curve at work...

Just consider that meanwhile (via this Forum interface) we managed to have an almost synchrone release of FT-OSX, including lots of valuable feedback from the MAC
community!

However, the main "burden" are /left-over/ Windows files 'celestia.pch' in each 'Release' dir that have not been deleted with the VC+ 'clean' command. These are many MB's and will certainly be absent in the next FT distribution!

Looks like it might not be too hard to change the nmake files to clean them.

Right you are . It's utterly trivial...But I am usually compiling with the VS.net 2003 GUI...

Deleting the extraneous Release and Debug files, as well as using bzip, saves a little bit of space:

pat@inspiron ~ $ du -h cel*.tar*
33M celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.2.tar.gz
26M celestia-clean.tar.bz2
28M celestia-clean.tar.gz

It's definitely LESS than I hoped for...


Cheers,
Fridger

[suwalski]

Sorry that was a misunderstanding. The archive contains all *.dll's, and two additional lib and inc directories with all the libs required to do the compilation under Windows.

I would be happier if there were a separate celestia-dev pack, much like the -dev packages on Linux. The instructions would be very simple, just extract into the regular source directory. But that would be with the formal release, it's not an issue at the moment.

Don't forget, with the new "Forum interface" (rather than the developer list), /many more/ people now help testing, but often have much less experience as to compiling themselves etc.

I think that if the forum wasn't here, the same would happen on the mailing list. 95% of the open source projects out there don't have forums.

On the other hand a substantial number of Windows users now have a try at compilation and it seems there is quite a steep learning curve at work...

Just like with celestia/gtk/win32. It took me 5 minutes to modify gtkmain.cpp, and another few days to figure out how to build the damned thing with msvc.

Just consider that meanwhile (via this Forum interface) we managed to have an almost synchrone release of FT-OSX, including lots of valuable feedback from the MAC community!

This is great news. Are they using gcc or something a la Codewarrior? I expect that building the GTK version on OSX would be easy with the built-in X server running. By next year I expect that it will run completely natively. Check this out:

http://micke.hallendal.net/archives/200 ... acosx.html

I'm sure that when they get it more solidified, the theme engine will use the native widgets just like in Windows. I believe they also plan to abstract the menubar rendering so that it shows up at the top like it should.

[t00fri]

I think that if the forum wasn't here, the same would happen on the mailing list. 95% of the open source projects out there don't have forums.

Here I disagree. As a respective test, I copied my FT1.2 release post into the developer list [as you know well] .
The reaction was close to zero, while here the thread already has >1100 hits and almost 60 (!) posts by the users, just three days after the FT1.2 release...Many people have put forward test reports already in this short time.

In the "list", all we got was Chris' somewhat 'phlegmatic' mail, yesterday

In an effort to actively involve myself in Celestia development again
(while at the same time dodging the important and inevitable drudgery of
merging changes from Celestia-FT), I've implemented a new date picker for
the Windows version of Celestia.

This message also passed by without any "echo".

Hmm...

Bye Fridger

[Malenfant]

Fridger is right - regardless of whether or not one likes the forum interface, one can't deny that the forum gets a lot more traffic than the mailing list does. Yes, some of that is noise on the development board, but a lot of it isn't. I think the extra comments also give an added impetus to developers to keep working because they're getting more feedback and they know that people are encouraging and helping them to reach their goals.