Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] PyBOMBS: First impressions and optional dependencies

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 07/29/2013 11:10 AM, Tom Rondeau wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Alexandru Csete<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Tom Rondeau<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 7:28 AM, Alexandru Csete<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > > > Greetings,
> > > >
> > > > Yesterday, I started playing with pybombs and fixed a few recipes
> > > > related to gr-osmosdr. During this process I made gr-osmosdr depend on
> > > > uhd, rtl-sdr, osmo-sdr, hackrf and gr-iqbal. I did this to ensure that
> > > > all supported input devices are made available to users. It should be
> > > > noted that all these packages are optional and gr-osmosdr would work
> > > > just fine with gnuradio as the only dependency still supporting
> > > > funcube dongles and I/Q file sources.
> > > Alex,
> > >
> > > Thanks for the report and all of the patches you submitted to PyBOMBS.
> > > It's a new project and will definitely need wide-spread testing and
> > > help to get working well on various systems and for various needs.
> > >
> > > > Later I will be adding a recipe for the gr-fcdproplus OOT source block
> > > > and add that as a gr-osmosdr dependency as well. This works well for
> > > > now since all these driver libraries are recent and well maintained.
> > > > However, as time goes this driver list will grow and the risk of
> > > > something breaking will increase. This made me think whether there may
> > > > be a need for a weaker dependency specification, something like the
> > > > "recommends" section in deb packages or the "variant" in macports?
> > > The 'recommends' is a very interesting idea. I'm not sure I like
> > > forcing the installation of all of the base drivers for gr-osmosdr,
> > > but if we have a menu-driven section if the dependencies are
> > > recommended and allow the user to select which, if any, to also
> > > install, that'd be great.
> > >
> > > Would you open a feature issue on the PyBOMBS Redmine page suggesting this?
> > Done.
> Thanks!
>
> > > > As an alternate solution here&  now, we could just remove all optional
> > > > dependencies from the gr-osmosdr recipe and instruct users to install
> > > > their preferred driver libraries prior to installing gr-osmosdr. Or
> > > > create meta-recipes that would provide the most common combinations. I
> > > > don't know what would be the best solution.
> > > I'm not sure, either. Until we figure out a concept like the
> > > recommendations, my preference is to not include them as dependencies,
> > > but I could be persuaded out of that thought. I'm guessing Philip
> > > would argue for a meta-layer :)
> > Maybe as compromise we can remove all optional dependencies except
> > rtl-sdr and uhd. That would provide a good default for 95% of the
> > users today and only require rtl-sdr as extra package since the
> > gnuradio recipe already depends on uhd.
> >
> > Alex
> I can see that, especially since we have uhd as a dep for gnuradio,
> too. Also, rtl-sdr is lightweight and only depends on libusb, so it's
> a pretty safe one to install. And yeah, I agree, that takes care of
> most people's needs right now.
>
> Tom
>
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rtl-sdr is just the device-driver library for RTL dongles.   You need 
gr-osmosdr as well.



--
Marcus Leech
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org