Re: Stop making unneeded improvements

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 12/22/2020 08:21 PM, Glen Langston wrote:
> Hello GNuradio Superheros,
>
> I have to say, after 5 years with gnu radio, I’m either tool old or
> something has to change.
>
> I’ve been trying to produce some tools for High School teacher to do radio 
> astronomy.
> and for that gnuradio 3.7 was perfectly fine.  However some people are 
> continuing
> to make “improvements” that break everything.   I used to really like gnuradio.
>
> I like the SDRPlay device, but it can not be used in gnuradio 3.8.  According 
> to the web.
> But the web indicates it might be usable in 3.9
> So I installed 3.9 only to find that swig has been replace by pybind.  This 
> breaks all my
> existing C++ modules.   The modules worked fine, but if using ubuntu 20.40 the 
> students can not
> easily install gnuradio 3.7.  The pybind instructions are puzzling.  gr-modtool 
> all the
> modules copy something or other.   This is for no good reason that I’m aware of.
> Either make the equivalent of pythons “2to3” or do not make the gnuradio 
> fundamental changes.
>
> Stop making useless changes that break all code!
>
> We do NOT need these changes.  The advice on the web, after I’ve spent 2 days 
> building 3.9
> on a Raspberry pi is use 3.8.  This is frustrating.
>
> The documentation is falling apart because of all these variants.
>
> It is good to make changes that ADD tool capabilities.  It is NOT good to make 
> changes that
> make small improvements and break such large fractions of the code.
>
> Sorry for the Rant.
>
> Best regards Glen
Glen, I sympathize.  But compared to the 3.6-->3.7 debacle, the changes 
have been easier, in my experience.

The switch to pybind11 was because SWIG is no longer a supported 
subsystem, from what I understand.

The change from XML to YAML for .grc files and .grc block descriptions 
is a bit more gratuitous, IMHO, but there may be subtle
  improvements in YAML compared to XML (apart from the easier syntax) 
that I'm not aware of.

MOST of my own library of radio astronomy code is still stuck at GR 3.7 
-- because of the pain you note.  I did manage to get
  stupid_simple_pulsar working on GR3.9, but it required some patches 
to be applied to the underlying code-base because certain
  *crucial* setters for frequently-used blocks like multiply_const and 
add_const and subtract_const hadn't actually had
  pybind11 bindings produced for them.  Which lead to silent and 
very-perplexing failure.  It may be the case that there is no
  automated tooling to go from SWIG to PyBind11, which means that it's 
easy to miss stuff.  Dunno.

The GR developers, per se, cannot be blamed for things like 
hardware-specific drivers not being available--those are the clear 
responsibility
  of the purveyors of those drivers.  Now, granted, the lack of 
availability may be BECAUSE of the "pain" factor.  Similarly, the particular
  configurations of GR in *specific* Linux distributions is NOT the 
mandate of the GR project, per se.  If your fave Linux distro happens
  to package GR in a way that is unpleasant in your particular 
circumstance, that isn't, generally, the fault of the GR team here.

I've been a C/C++/Python developer now for just over 4 decades, and the 
modern "let a thousand flowers bloom" nature of Linux is
  **daunting** not just for *users*, but for *developers* as well.    I 
get grief for my own code because someone wants to build/install
  it on some version of Linux with which I am utterly unfamiliar. If I 
had to become intimately familiar with the machinations of every
  single Linux variant out there (in the multiple dimensions of 
version, hardware platform, package-management-framework, etc), I'd
  only be able to produce perhaps 1 piece of software every 5 years or so.