Re: IUP and Ubuntu

[Steve Litt <slitt@...>]

On Wednesday 23 February 2011 04:51:27 Dirk Laurie wrote:
> Being curious to see Steve Litt's presentation, I installed IUP.
> Not too much joy so far.
> 
> My default lua is lua5.1 as supplied in Ubuntu Lucid.
> I downloaded iup-3.4_Linux26g4_lib.tar.gz into a new directory.
> No instructions, but three files with suggestive names which
> I ran in the following order (a typical line of output is shown):
> 
>     sudo ./install
> ...
> `libiuplua51.so' -> `/usr/lib/libiuplua51.so'
> ...
>     sudo ./install_dev
> ...
> `include/iup.h' -> `/usr/include/iup/iup.h'
> ...
>     sudo ./config_lua_module
> ...
> `iuplua.so' -> `/usr/lib/libiuplua51.so'
> ...
> 
> Then I tried it out, not getting past square one, thus:
> 
> $ lua
> Lua 5.1.4  Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> 
> > require"iuplua"
> 
> attempt to call a nil value
> stack traceback:
>     [C]: ?
>     [C]: in function 'require'
>     stdin:1: in main chunk
>     [C]: ?
> 
> 

Hi Dirk (and everyone else)

A couple things I learned about IUP and Ubuntu

1) If your processor is 64 bit, only the 64 bit IUP will work. Crazy, but 
that's what I found.

2) You have to go "version shopping" when installing IUP. If 3.4 won't work 
(and it probably won't -- as I remember it didn't work for me), then try 3.3, 
3.2, 3.1, 3.0. IIRC I had to go all the way back to 3.0 for Ubuntu 9.10. My 
Ubuntu 10.04, IIRC, worked with 3.3.

3) On some IUP versions for Ubuntu, there's  a second script to do some 
compilation. Sometimes you must do that before doing sudo ./install.

4) The ./install script really just copies .so files to /usr/lib, as far as I 
can tell. On at least some versions it copies only libiup*.so, so you might 
have to manually copy the other lib*.so in the directory.

5) Remember, unlike most tarballs, this tarball puts lots of files in the 
current directory, rather than putting one subdirectory in the current 
directory.

6) Boy, I wish I could remember it now, but after installation it can give 
this certain error message (not the one you got Dirk), and you have to google 
the error message and install some fairly well known package that you would 
have thought was for some completely different purpose.

COMMENT: It is ridiculousness like the preceding six points, and the 
reputation of uncompilability of IUP that keeps me from recommending it. Once 
installed, IUP is absolutely wonderful, mapping extremely well to the fields, 
picklists, forms and menus you need for a data driven app, without all the 
extraneous complication of many other graphic libraries. But installation 
insanity keeps it from being useful in software meant for others to use, and 
even in-house, I wouldn't want a mission critical piece of software to stop 
working when I upgraded my Linux.

If anyone knows IUP's developers/maintainers, please give them the message for 
me that their top priority, by at least a factor of ten, should be 
installability. They have plenty of excellent features as it is, but from 
listening to the list, less than 1 in 10 people who attempt installation 
succeed, making their software almost useless. It's a real shame and a real 
waste.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt