pybombs confusions

[Lukas Haase]

Hi,

On an Ubuntu 18 system I would like to use multiple gnuradio+uhd instances in 
parallel (3.7 with python 2.7, 3.8 with python 3, and a variety of versions 
with patches applied, different UHD versions, RFnoc etc).

So far, I have multiple source trees and when I switch I completely delete 
/usr/local and do "sudo make install && sudo ldconfig" in the respective build 
directory. Clearly a bad solution. As far as I understand, pybombs should be a 
solution to that. But its usage is pretty confusing to me (difference between 
user wide config and a single prefix). Despite reading the the docs and playing 
around for many hours, I have not been able to successfully use 3.7 and 3.8 in 
parallel.

My main issue is: https://github.com/gnuradio/pybombs just explains how to get 
a single prefix running at once (pybombs prefix init ~/{base_folder} -R 
{your_recipe}). However, I need to do this step by step (since each prefix has 
different modules, source code patches etc).

For the beginning, suppose I'd just want to have the "maint" branch of each 
version (in following steps, I'd like to just copy prefix and make individual 
changes)

$ sudo mv /usr/local /usr/local_OLD # just to make sure nothing interferes with 
systemwide stuff
$ sudo pip3 install --upgrade git+https://github.com/gnuradio/pybombs.git
$ pybombs prefix init ~/gr37 -R gnuradio-stable
$ pybombs prefix init ~/gr38 -R gnuradio-default

$ cd ~/gr37
$ pybombs -p . config --env python_ver 2.7

1.) Why do I explicitely need to add "-p" above? According to the manual, the 
prefix in the current directory should be taken when not supplied with "-p". 
But without "-p", it gets written into ~/.pybombs/config.yml

2.) Why is "Prefix python version" still set to 3.6.9? Why is PYTHONPATH wrong 
(*/python3.6/*)?

    $ cd ~/gr37
    $ pybombs prefix env | grep -i python
    [INFO] Prefix Python version is: 3.6.9
    [INFO] PyBOMBS Version 2.3.4a0
    
PYTHONPATH=/home/l/gr37/lib/python3.6/site-packages:/home/l/gr37/lib/python3.6/dist-packages:/home/l/gr37/lib64/python3.6/site-packages:/home/l/gr37/lib64/python3.6/dist-packages:$PYTHONPATH
    PYTHON_VER=2.7

3.) Now running gr 3.7 in that prefix does not work:

    $ cd ~/gr37
    $ pybombs run gnuradio-companion
    [INFO] Prefix Python version is: 3.6.9
    [INFO] PyBOMBS Version 2.3.4a0

    and the error message

    "Cannot import gnuradio.

    Is the model path environment variable set correctly?
        All OS: PYTHONPATH

    Is the library path environment variable set correctly?
        Linux: LD_LIBRARY_PATH
        Windows: PATH
        MacOSX: DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH

    (No module named gnuradio)"

4.) Also gr 3.8 does not work:

    $ cd ~/gr38
    pybombs run -- gnuradio-companion
    [INFO] Prefix Python version is: 3.6.9
    [INFO] PyBOMBS Version 2.3.4a0

    and then I get the same error message as above ("Cannot import gnuradio")

5.) I think setup-env.sh is wrong. Which command generates this and how can 
this file be regenetated with correct settings for each prefix (like python 
version and library paths)?

6.) How do I modify each prefix?
    For example, how to I switch the source to a specific branch or tag in uhd 
or gnuradio?
    How do I add my custom OOT module?

7.) How do I update a prefix?
    For example, if I want to modify gnuradio or uhd source, where do I edit 
the files (I assume $prefix/src ?) and how do I recompile/reinstall?

8.) When playing around I found that the following two commands sometimes have 
different behavior (according to the manual, they should be identical but the 
first one does not work):
    $ cd ~/gr37
    $ pybombs run gnuradio-compantion
       vs
    $ cd ~/gr37
    $ source setup-end.sh
    $ gnuradio-companion

    Are they supposed to be identical? If yes, why could they give different 
results? If not, what is the difference?

9.) How do I list installed packages in a prefix? (I think I can remove them 
with "pybombs remove package", rebuild with "pybombs rebuild package" ?)




Sorry this is really confusing to me so I hope you could shed some light how 
this is supposed to be used.

Thanks!
Lukas