Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Request for Wiki update.

[Marcus Müller]

Hi Hans, hi Glen and Barry and everyone in this thread,

I had a longish answer written out to this, addressing all the things
that I agreed to, and explaining quite a fair bit of where you're
wrong, but I decided to scrap it and reduce it to three bullet points:

1. A very honest: Thank you for the feedback!
We are aware that installation of our ca. 400000 lines of code project
is non-trivial, and that we've been so busy releasing 3.8 that we
couldn't keep up with installation instructions. I'm honestly sorry
about that, but it's not easy on us, either, though we've made stellar
progress in the last couple of years.

2. You (specifically) shouldn't be in a position where you need to
compile things from source code or use PyBOMBS to build it. You want to
use GNU Radio, not develop it itself (for now). New users wanting to
try GNU Radio are the last people I want to compile GNU Radio from
source. That'd be plain stupid. This isn't the 90s.
Unless you really can pinpoint why you need 3.8 instead of the 3.7.13.4
(or .5) that Kubuntu packages, I'd encourage you to just go and install
via `apt install gnuradio`. Many ham-relevant GNU Radio projects have
not even been ported to GNU Radio 3.8+ yet, officially (gr-osmosdr, for
example, but I'm hearing good things about the state of forks of that);
certainly, not getting more people to run GNU Radio 3.8 won't exactly
help that, but since you're clearly in no position to contribute a lot
of code to these at this point, doing your learning on a stable,
universally supported 3.7.13.x doesn't hurt you or the project, I
think.
When Ubuntu finally gets around copying the work that Maitland does for
debian (which already has 3.8 packages), you'll enjoy that, too!

3. As project maintainer, my priorities are making recent GNU Radio
package installation feasible to you, and we have multiple people
working on packaging for different platforms, and on working on
providing regular packages etc. The outlook of making source builds
easier on people that struggle a bit with reading the versioning files
and git usage: VERY desirable, but not high priority for now. If a set
of build instructions is easy enough for a beginner to copy without
mistake, then that set of instructions should become a build script for
a binary package and be upstreamed to the favourite distro of the user,
preferably.

In that effort, I can only ask you to help: If you encounter build
problems, report them in detail. 

Best regards,
Marcus

On Tue, 2019-10-15 at 22:53 +0800, HansFong 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
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
> > > address@hidden
> > > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
> 
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