[PlanetCCRMA] Getting SuperCollider to work [Re: [PlanetCCRMANews] Fedora 7: Planet CCRMA for i386!]

[Gregory D. Weber]

Synopsis
--------

I've gotten SuperCollider to work, for the most part, in Fedora 7.

History
-------

On Thu, 2007-06-07 at 18:05 -0700, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:

> [WARNING: fc7 is new. New releases have bugs. I don't like bugs. I would
> not install fc7 right away. Specially if I were to be already making
> music on fcx where x < 7 :-]
> 
> Having said that, there's a trial version available of Planet CCRMA
> built on top of Fedora 7 i386 (for now). As usual you start by pointing
> to the Planet CCRMA repositories (all in one line):
> 

...

> Things I know don't work: 

...

> Supercollider does not start
> properly, sclang seems happy and prints the right things but exits at
> the end instead of waiting for commands... 

...

Solution
--------

Actually, the problem has nothing to do with Fedora 7.  It's a bug that
crept into SuperCollider in revision 5674 [1] and was reported May 15,
2007, fixed the same day in revision 6000 or or May 16 in 6001 or
6002[2].  The version distributed from PlanetCCRMA seems to be (judging
from the rpm file name) 5866 dated 2007-02-19, so it contains the bug.

I downloaded revision 6146 (latest from subversion repository as of June
29-30, 2007) and compiled it.  It ESSENTIALLY works, but there are still
a few kinks.

My compile command was

scons ALTIVEC=no SSE=yes CUSTOMCCFLAGS=-O3 \
CUSTOMCXXFLAGS=-O3 DEVELOPMENT=yes LID=yes \
PREFIX=/usr X11=no

(Not sure if X11=no is necessary if I have the proper header files.
If I remember correctly, with X11=yes, scons looked for X11 libraries
in /usr/X11R6, a directory which does not exist in Fedora 7.)

(I used PREFIX=/usr because when trying with PREFIX=/opt, and this might
happen for /usr/local as well, there were weird problems with libsclang,
etc., not being found, and ldconfig apparently not working correctly
for /opt/lib)

Things that WORK
----------------

1.  sclang starts under emacs and does wait around for commands.

2.  scsynth (the server) can be booted from sclang under emacs.  

(I'm puzzled as to whether it is using the vector unit, since it gives
these (apparently contradictory) messages -- this is on a Pentium III:
      using vector unit: yes
but
      No supported SIMD instruction sets detected
)

3.  Evaluating these lines of code

"Hello world".postln;
{ SinOsc.ar(440, 0, 0.2) }.play;

does result in visual output in the Post buffer and audio output of the
sine tone.

Things I Noticed NOT WORKING
-----------------------------

1.  The help command C-c C-h does not work unless the packages w3m and
w3m-el are installed; for good measure, I also installed w3m-img.

After that, the help command still does not work in the SC Workspace
buffer -- these messages appear:
      Loading w3m...
      byte-code: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
(and possibly does not work in other buffers either)
but DOES work in the Sclang Post buffer.

2.  Multiple lines of code enclosed in parentheses cannot be executed
using C-M-x; however, they CAN be evaluated by selecting the lines as a
region and evaluating the region (C-c C-x)

3.  The server reports a number of missing ugens: 
        AnalyseEvents2, PV_EvenBin, MouseX, StkClarinet

4.  If your working directory contains a subdirectory named
SCClassLibrary, then sclang will compile the files in that INSTEAD OF
the standard class library, with the result that many necessary classes
are undefined.

Gratitude
---------

PROFOUND THANKS to Fernando for getting us rolling with Fedora 7, and
all of his fine work over the years in distributing
PlanetCCRMA!!!!!!!!!!!

References
----------

[1] "Re: [sc-users] LinuX sclang"

http://www.nabble.com/Re%
A--sc-users--LinuX-sclang-tf3760058.html#a10633792

[2] "fixed linux sclang problem"

http://www.nabble.com/fixed-linux-sclang-problem-t3762000.html


-- 
Gregory D. Weber             Home page: http://mypage.iu.edu/~gdweber/
                             Telephone (765) 973-8420; FAX (765)
973-8550
Schedule: http://mypage.iu.edu/~gdweber/contact/schedule.txt
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Chair, Curriculum Committee
Indiana University East
2325 Chester Boulevard, Richmond, Indiana 47374-1289, U.S.A.
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