Re: [bug-GIFT] gift 0.1.8/cvs24.may compilation bugs.

[Wolfgang Müller]

On Sunday 26 May 2002 01:40, I. Wronsky wrote:
> Hi. I tried to compile gnu GIFT 0.1.8 on RH7.2 + rawhide gcc 3.1-1.
>
> Unfortunately, it didn't work. I meddled for some hours. I got it
> to compile, but gift-add-collection.pl always failed in the end.

With which error message?

> I took your 24.may cvs version and tried again. This time the
> result was better. ;) Here's the log of my findings and
> what I did in order to make it *pass the compilation*. I
> don't submit actual diffs as these are probably not
> correct solutions, but just (educated) guesses. They might
> break the compilation on some other version of the compiler.

Hi Igor, 
Thanks a lot for your detailed feedback. I agree with most of what you write. 
However, I would like you to keep in mind that 3.1 is *very* fresh stuff. The 
automake && autoconf && ./configure stuff works nicely (except for the cross 
compiling warnings that I only get on some systems) for 3.0.3 and for the 
Server. Yes, the client side is a real problem.

I did not really expect things to change wildly between 3.0.3 and 3.1, so I 
did not immediately jump on it.

The KDE client exsists, because there was someone who wanted to do this. 
Please contact Carsten Pfeiffer (address@hidden) if you would like to help 
Concerning gtk, the trouble is that nobody I know currently is working on it. 
Deepika Sikri had a shot at it in Perl for use as a GIMP plugin, but I do not 
know if she is still maintaining it. 

>       I'm certainly *NOT* cross compiling. I don't have a faintest
>       idea what causes this. Never seen this before from autoconf.
>       Whining skipped.

I had it for some while. Which autoconf/automake versions are you using?

> *.h :
>       <iostream.h> => <iostream>
>       <fstream.h> => <fstream>

There are some more of the kind. <stdio.h> becomes <cstdio>. Perl is my 
friend, but fixing all these warnings will take some while.

> include/gift-config.h
>       "const" was defined as ""! wft?! that define didn't affect all of
>       the header files! the result was that .cc and .h didn't in someplaces
>       match at all. I thought the compiler was broken. Workaround:
>       remove that #define line.

What? This is done by autoheader, and my autoheader does not do this under 
2.95. Maybe these lines from my gift-config.h help.
/* Define to empty if `const' does not conform to ANSI C. */
/* #undef const */

> Encountered several files causing the same trouble: if you define a
> default value for a function argument in ".h", it seems g++ 3.1 does
> not allow to define it in the ".cc" file as well. Solution: remove
> the offending initializations from ".cc" files.

Huh? I gotta try this at my place under 3.1

> CQHierarchy.cc, CSessionManager.cc :
>       add #include <iterator>
>
> CPersistentVector.h/void CPersistentVector<T>::init(..)
>       constant_void_fun<T> f(inDefaultValue);
>               =>
>       constant_void_fun(f(inDefaultValue));
>
>       Disclaimer: I don't know what the thing above does or should do, and
>       I couldn't find an explanation from the net with reasonable amount
>       of trouble. Seems like nonstandard piece of .. to me.

Gotta see this more closely later.

> At this point gift can be compiled. Here's some additional stuff.
>
> scripts/perl/gift-add-collection.pl
>       $lIndexPrefix.="/" unless($lIndexPefix=~m[/$]);
>               =>
>       $lIndexPrefix.="/" unless($lIndexPrefix=~m[/$]);

> CAcIFFileSystem.cc
>       tries to open "gift-auxiliary-1" for writing in *current*
>       directory. If user doesn't have write access, no go.

Oops, of course.

> libGIFTAcURL2FTS.cc
>       crashes on line 199 if image file has odd letters in
>       filename

Crashes? Thanks. Probable bug source is missing recoding step in 
gift-add-collection.pl

> Thats it. Finally, I wondered a bit about Charmer and appletviewer,
> installed apache and at last got the thumbnails visible.

If you (or anyone else) would like to help by making Charmer a JAVA 
application, this would be much appreciated. There is a 100% guarantee that I 
apply any patch that works under java 1.1 and later. There would be also help 
appreciated that makes it work with kaffe.

> After all this tweaking, my opinion is as follows: if you
> wish GIFT/mrml to catch on and perhaps get support/patches from
> the open source community, you should make the evaluation of
> the system easier. Plain "./configure; make; make install"
> should make it ready to rock, without additional meddling
> with java, installing apaches or kludging source code.

As i said, kludging is a 3.1 problem. Concerning apache, about all people I 
know have an apache running anyway (as their distro does it for them). GIFT 
rather comes from the web-demo side, and there you feel it.

> For one thing, I'd suggest replacing
> the charmer client with some actual java application
> (to get rid of apache and the thumbnail problem - the
> less dependencies and oddities, the better!), do

You can see above that I agree completely.

> a quick text shell client or port the KDE client to
> the more universal GTK environment. Of course in the
> end things like this are "trivial", but they should be
> handled gracefully in order to get into the more
> serious development of actual cbir related stuff,
> like feature extraction, matching, perhaps learning, etc.

(snip, I agree)

> In this light I most sincerely hope your system will catch on. ;)

Thanks for your wishes, and thanks again for your feedback. 

> ps. "downloads" link at "www.mrml.net" was broken. First "client" link
> (in the text) in "http://www.gnu.org/software/gift/"; was broken as well.
> Result: Charmer 0.2b couldn't be downloaded. Luckily I got it from a
> third party.

Oh, thanks a lot. Gotta bring Charmer to savannah.
Cheers,
Wolfgang