Stuff for the RPi distro disc image

Sorry if there’s already a topic on this (I couldn’t find one). Here are my thoughts on stuff which could be included in the RPi disc image. Also, apologies if these are already in there – I’ve not checked:

• SwiftJPEG
• 7backup (requires !Routines)
• Charm
• PDF
• StrongHelp and its associated Manuals

Two down three to go. PDF (noted that UbixLib is 1.10 vice 1.11) and StrongHelp already in (with link for user to download manuals).

Four down, one to go. Not sure how to put !Charm on with all its other dirs. !PDF says it requires UnixLib >=1.11 but seems to work on 1.10. !StrongHelp manuals via a download link at present.

SciCalc v0.61 is in the HardDisc4 image. Can v 0.75 be put in the disc image? I can do that if I can find the app.

The latest SharedUnixLib is 1.12
I strongly recommend getting that because things may break in non-obvious ways.

If you want to use PackMan to pull that in and make it easily upgradeable, tell PackMan about the riscos.info repository (Menu over the PackMan icon, click ‘add software sources’ or whatever the only menu item is, and then add the URL given in these instructions (without the ‘pkg’ bit)

Not sure how to put !Charm on with all its other dirs

Peter “Charm” Nowosad posts to the ROOL forums so I’m sure he could suggest something. Even if it’s putting it in its own subdirectory somewhere, that’d be a start.

We should probably also have Lua, Perl, Python, etc, included but I’ve a feeling most (if not all) of those are very crusty and probably not ARMv7 safe either. I hope I’m wrong, of course.

Lua is alive and well thanks to Gavin Wraith – http://www.wra1th.plus.com/lua/

Python 2.7.2 has been ported by Chris Gransden and will hopefully be available soon – http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/1098?page=2#posts-13548

The latest version of Perl available is here – http://www.cp15.org/programming/ (I’m not sure if it’s ARMv7 safe though)

@Steve: SwiftJPEG has trouble handling JPEGs from some devices, my phone for one example. Perhaps you can nudge your chum Andrew. I reported the problem months ago; he acknowledged it, but hasn’t contacted me again.

Given JPEGs that it can handle, it is superb. It just needs a bit of work.

I’m trying to keep up!

Have updated SharedUnixLib to 1.12, done a bug-fix/work around on !Cat so that draw files saved from it that include 256 colour sprites now (mostly) use old format rather than new format sprites [Impression Publisher and Draw show these correctly but they are not handled correctly in ArtWorks] and updated the ‘welcome’ to note that updates will from now on be incremental. Each successive update file was getting bigger and all had to include a rom image even if there was no new rom image.

Had to tweak !Calc because it gave an error "File ‘<Wimp$IconThemePath>.Apps.!Calc.!Sprites’ not found"

I’ll not try to include Python until it is available(!)

Will look at Lua and Perl. Will wait advice on how/where to put Charm

Had to tweak !Calc because it gave an error “File ‘<Wimp$IconThemePath>.Apps.Sprites’ not found”

Has the behaviour of the *iconsprites command changed in the last few weeks? It never used to give an error message for a non existant file.

Yes, I think so.

Actually the !Run and !Boot files both have:

IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.Sprites
If "<Wimp$IconThemePath>"<>"[NoTheme]" Then IconSprites <Wimp$IconThemePath>.Apps.!Calc.!Sprites

I added a ‘|’ before the second line.

Unless the 17 July HardDisc image has changed. I have used the 8 July HardDisc4 disc image and built my disc image as additions to that so can easily catch up if something has changed.

I’d put Charm in a programming directory along with Perl, php, Lua and Python.

At the ssme time Dr Wimp for the programming directory.

I’d put Charm in a programming directory along with Perl, php, Lua and Python.

I’ll add them to the list…

At present (not counting Charm, Perl, php, Lua and Python) the RISC OS disc image totals 60Mbytes plus 9 Mbytes in the FAT partition (mostly the ROM). The resulting 2Gbyte SD card image compresses down to a distro size of 27.9 Mbytes at present.

Is there any limit on how much we include? Free space on RISC OS is 1690Mbytes at present but I don’t know how large we want the distro size?

Ooo. And how could I forget Snapper ?

Is there any limit on how much we include?

If there is a limit, I think you’re a long way from it yet… :)

If there is a limit, I think you’re a long way from it yet… :)

Update no 6 just finished. This includes DrWimp, Charm, Perl, PHP, Lua and Snapper. The disc image is now 105Mbytes plus 9Mbytes leaving 1640Mbytes free. Distro would be 46.3Mbytes now.

Has the behaviour of the *iconsprites command changed in the last few weeks? It never used to give an error message for a non existant file.

There was a long standing bug which caused a valid error message to NOT be displayed.
As a result many people have produced software with a small error without knowing.

A useful task for anyone with the time is to check all software they have to see if it works without generating this error. Coordinating the reports to avoid duplication is likely to be a challenge though.

Sorry if there’s already a topic on this (I couldn’t find one). Here are my thoughts on stuff which could be included in the RPi disc image.

I think we were putting our suggestions on a wiki page, which was meant to document the process of testing for compatibility and whether authors had given permission for distribution. See http://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Raspberry%20Pi%20disc%20image%20proposals

I think we were putting our suggestions on a wiki page

That’s where I started – I imported that page onto the ‘welcome’ (see here – this appears on the Pi screen as it starts up) and marked items as ‘download only’ and ‘available’ as appropriate, slowly working through the ‘available’. Then I was asked to put some of the ‘download only’ stuff on.

It was interesting to see how unclear people are about the form in which they would like their application distributed. Fortunately most were careful not to be restrictive. The awkward stuff is that which is under the GPL but I have included the source for these wherever it was provided. That may become a problem if this became something for sale at a later point…

Thanks for including !Charm on the RPi distro list which should help promote interest in the language!

Has anyone tested Charm on the Pi so I can add it to the list of supported targets? I’ve recently taken possession of a Pi but so far have only loaded up the Debian squeeze release – I’ll probably wait for now until a RISC OS distro with (wireless) USB keyboard/mouse support is available. Total drag and drop build time (as logged by the shell) would be interesting to know – at the moment it’s around 10 seconds under RPCEmu on a decent PC.

At present the charm installation directory can live anywhere on the file system (including the RAM disc), and I’m distributing the releases as downloadable zip files from the web site. After unpacking (e.g. using !SparkFS) all that’s necessary is to double click the !Charm application to bring up the desktop shell.

Does anyone know if the RISC OS port will support the Pi’s ARM VFP co-processor? If so I might do some work on floating point instruction generation for it…should speed up those Mandelbrots :)

BTW – Charm v2.5.9 is due for release this weekend following a major compiler refactoring to utilise the newly introduced OO dynamic constructs which have already made their way into the relevant Charm libraries for String and I/O support.

I’ll probably wait for now until a RISC OS distro with (wireless) USB keyboard/mouse support is available.

I have used a wireless keyboard (with a USB dongle) on the Pi since day one and it just seemed to work perfectly.

Does anyone know if the RISC OS port will support the Pi’s ARM VFP co-processor?

See this page – it’s on the ToDo list.

OK so tonight I’ve run up the Alpha SD image up to and including AlphaUp8 and quickly checked out !Charm on the Pi!

A complete Charm re-build took around 19 seconds on the SD card (no Display Log – it gets slower with the log visible during the build):

There was 1 build error which occurred when compiling an in line assembler section in the !Decapedes demo. This was in module dp and I’m guessing is down to missing sound support:

BTW this particular demo will need more work to get going on the Pi as at the moment it writes directly into screen memory for speed.

A couple of very minor issues I noticed were:

• the colours seem a little different, for instance the editor text looks green rather than yellow.
• scrolling in text modes is slow (only noticed when creating a buffer list in the Charm editor using [esc] b).

The Charm shell (!Charm) and tools (compiler, assembler, linker, editor) all look good (including module versions), especially the editor which now shows around 130 lines per page! The !NewProject, !Scicalc, !Checkers and !TboxDemo applications work as expected. Mandelbrots generate correctly and quickly and all the graphical and text based application and module demos are working as they should. In summary everything of importance is good to go!

Sounds promising. Are you planning on trying to attend the next Cardiff Raspberry Jam? – dunno when it is. (The forthcoming Bristol one on Mon 20 Aug is full but there’s a waiting list and hopefully some tickets will be released.)

Well I guess it’s on my doorstep figuratively speaking … I’ll keep an eye out / keep me posted …