• Re: Request to Update Gpredict Repository

    From Pino Zollo@21:1/5 to Christoph Berg on Tue Jul 5 16:00:01 2022
    Please introduce multi-thread... Gpredict becomes frozen when connected
    to other programs if something goes wrong in the protocol. (e.g. when
    enabled to control antennas)

    73

    Pino ZP4KFX

    On 7/5/22 09:39, Christoph Berg wrote:
    Re: Sean Svihla
    I'm a student worker/command controller with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). I've added some features to Gpredict which are useful to our automation, namely allowing the user to have a mission-specific configuration track and
    engage on startup. I'm now working to get these changes pushed upstream and included in the Debian package.

    The challenge I'm facing is that the repository I've made these changes in was cloned from upstream, currently in version 2.3.118, whereas the ham radio team's fork is currently on version 2.3.72. Is there any interest in updating the ham radio team's
    repository?
    Hi,

    can you try to get upstream to release a new version? We aren't
    actually on "2.3.72", we are 72 git commits ahead of the 2.3 release.
    We should get back to proper tarball builds, but the last tagged
    release on github.com is from January 2018.

    Christoph


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  • From Christoph Berg@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 5 15:40:01 2022
    Re: Sean Svihla
    I'm a student worker/command controller with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). I've added some features to Gpredict which are useful to our automation, namely allowing the user to have a mission-specific configuration track and
    engage on startup. I'm now working to get these changes pushed upstream and included in the Debian package.

    The challenge I'm facing is that the repository I've made these changes in was cloned from upstream, currently in version 2.3.118, whereas the ham radio team's fork is currently on version 2.3.72. Is there any interest in updating the ham radio team's
    repository?

    Hi,

    can you try to get upstream to release a new version? We aren't
    actually on "2.3.72", we are 72 git commits ahead of the 2.3 release.
    We should get back to proper tarball builds, but the last tagged
    release on github.com is from January 2018.

    Christoph

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  • From Christoph Berg@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 5 16:00:02 2022
    Re: Pino Zollo
    Please introduce multi-thread... Gpredict becomes frozen when connected to other programs if something goes wrong in the protocol. (e.g. when enabled
    to control antennas)

    Hi Pino,

    please raise that issue on https://github.com/csete/gpredict/issues.
    We can only package things that are actually implemented on the Debian
    side.

    Christoph DF7CB

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  • From Nicholas DeCicco@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jul 22 00:20:01 2022
    Hi Christoph,

    Thanks for you reply. I am an engineer at LASP mentoring Sean on his
    work on gpredict.

    can you try to get upstream to release a new version? We aren't
    actually on "2.3.72", we are 72 git commits ahead of the 2.3 release.
    We should get back to proper tarball builds, but the last tagged
    release on github.com is from January 2018.

    I would really like if the upstream developers would make a new
    release. However, the project seems to have been fairly inactive over
    the past year or so. Another user already opened an issue (#282)
    on Jan. 22 of this year requesting a new release:

    https://github.com/csete/gpredict/issues/282

    Unfortunately, this has received no comments from the developers. (Or
    anyone else for that matter--i.e., fellow community developers.)

    I myself opened two minor issue reports, #273 and #275, with
    corresponding pull requests #272 and #274 (respectively):

    Add internationalization to gtk-freq-knob decimal separator https://github.com/csete/gpredict/pull/272 https://github.com/csete/gpredict/issues/273

    Allow configuring default frequencies per radio https://github.com/csete/gpredict/pull/274 https://github.com/csete/gpredict/issues/275

    Unfortunately, #274/#275 hasn't received any comments, though #272/#273
    has, perhaps because #274/275 is a larger set of changes, and perhaps
    the developers just aren't interested. These were submitted around
    November of last year.

    Since then, the main changes that we're working on implementing
    include:

    1. Adding user preferences to allow selecting a satellite in the
       radio and rig editor windows, such that the radio and rig
       controllers will initialize with a radio/rig already selected.
    2. Adding user preferences to allow starting the radio/rig control
       windows automatically at program start, and moreover causing these
       to connect to the radios/rigs automatically at program start, to
       make gpredict amenable to automated use.

    This is an attempt to replace the effort of #272/#273 with a more
    flexible set of preferences (i.e., instead of hard-coding desired
    frequencies, the frequencies would be set according to a chosen
    satellite).

    These are mostly implemented already (save for changes that might be
    requested by the upstream developers), and for curious users, you can
    find our changes on our fork of the upstream repository on the 'expanded-config-options' branch:

    https://github.com/lasp/gpredict/tree/expanded-config-options

    I had sent Alexandru Csete (the lead developer and repository owner) a
    message by way of the Libre Space forums a few months back expressing
    our interest in working with him (and any other gpredict developers) to
    make improvements to the project, but I haven't heard back. I assume he
    is just very busy. I did see that he much more recently merged a few
    pull requests (5 days ago).

    I say all of this just to say that I am not sure if perhaps our
    contributions are considered undesirable changes to the program, or if
    the developers are just too busy to respond. So, I am wondering if we
    may need to make a PPA to release our fork until such time that some or
    all of our changes might get merged.

    Since it's been a little while, we could try to re-initiate contact
    with the gpredict developers and perhaps we'd have better luck this
    time around.

    Pino--regarding your request:

    Please introduce multi-thread... Gpredict becomes frozen when
    connected to other programs if something goes wrong in the protocol.
    (e.g. when enabled to control antennas)

    Multi-threading was introduced for rotator control in commit 089922EF,
    authored by Alexandru Csete (the gpredict maintainer, username csete),
    and committed on Dec. 8, 2017:

    https://github.com/csete/gpredict/commit/089922efa7de9f14676240e122f1a5989fcb0599

    This fixes issue #46: https://github.com/csete/gpredict/issues/46

    Multi-threading for radio control was introduced in commit 677EBD88,
    authored
    by Patrick Dohmen, DL4PD, and committed on Dec. 9, 2017:

    https://github.com/csete/gpredict/commit/677ebd8826bce75cb5be94679f3c447d4ad2ce00

    This fixes issue #45: https://github.com/csete/gpredict/issues/45

    If you take a look in the history, both of these commits come before
    tag 2.0.  If you are still on Debian Stretch (released 2017-06-17 and
    EOL'd as of 2022-06-30),

    If you are on "oldstable" (Debian Buster, released 2019-07-06), you
    should have gpredict version 2.3-33-gca42d22-1. If you are on (the
    current) "stable" (Debian Bullseye, released 2021-08-14), you should
    have gpredict version 2.3-72-gc596101-3.

    Both of these versions are newer than these commits, so unless you are
    on Stretch, both radio and rotator control should be running in a
    separate thread. What version of Debian and gpredict do you have?

    Thanks,

    Nick

    --
    Nicholas DeCicco

    Professional Research Assistant
    Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics
    1234 Innovation Drive
    Boulder, CO 80303
    Phone: 1-303-735-8214

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  • From Christoph Berg@21:1/5 to All on Mon Aug 8 17:30:01 2022
    Re: Nicholas DeCicco
    I say all of this just to say that I am not sure if perhaps our
    contributions are considered undesirable changes to the program, or if
    the developers are just too busy to respond. So, I am wondering if we
    may need to make a PPA to release our fork until such time that some or
    all of our changes might get merged.

    Hi Nicholas,

    I understand your frustration if some upstream project is moving slow.
    However, we can't fix that on the Debian side. If we start
    cherry-picking changes from across several sources, things will get
    very time-consuming to maintain, and frankly, Gpredict isn't one of
    the programs I'm using primarily where that might make sense.

    Since it's been a little while, we could try to re-initiate contact
    with the gpredict developers and perhaps we'd have better luck this
    time around.

    I'd suggest trying that, yes. If you instead decide to fork the
    project, Debian might follow that fork, but someone needs to put in
    the hard work of creating curated releases ("git tag" in today's
    technology).

    Christoph

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