[Digikam-devel] v2.0.0 installation report

[John Mock KD6PAG]

I really wanted the Versioning feature, but Debian still only has Digikam 1.9
even in its Experimental distribution.  I have got five platforms at home,
so i tried to see where i could make 2.0.0 work properly.  The short answer
is none, but i was able to get something to mostly work on several platforms,
not necessarily 2.0.0 .  I tried these in parallel intermittently over a 
period of weeks.  Mac OSX was the first platform to mostly work, followed
by Linux.

On a MacBook Pro running the Debian 'Testing' (amd64) distribution of Linux, 
just getting all of the prerequisites right was a bit of a challenge.  Then
v2.0.0 didn't work very well at all, as it had trouble finding things on
/usr/local/...  It's likely to be an oversight on my part that I couldn't
figure out a way to change KDE's paths to include /usr/local/...  I added 
the following symbolic links, which worked around the problem:

    ~/.kde/share/apps/digikam -> /usr/local/share/apps/digikam
    ~/.kde/share/kde4/services -> /usr/local/share/kde4/services
    ~/.kde/share/kde4/servicetypes -> /usr/local/share/kde4/servicetypes

I'm not sure all of these are necessary, but 2.0.0 worked except for failing
to do rotations from the thumbnail (or elsewhere).  Getting a more recent
version (2.1.0) via GIT solved that problem and all the things that i've 
tried seem to be working.

When the same MacBook Pro runs Mac OSX, my first attempt to install it via
MacPorts also failed.  Installing was *extremely* slow.  I did an update a 
day later, which was alot quicker, and then it built properly.  Most things 
seemed to work, but the icons (such as rotation directions, select albums, 
select tags, etc.) are lacking (or grey).  It was the easiest, and by far
the slowest, install.

On a Mac Mini G4 running Debian 'Stable' distribution, initially, i could
only get the 2.0.0-beta5(?) to build properly.  But it didn't work either.
There, i only needed

    ~/.kde/share/apps/digikam -> /usr/local/share/apps/digikam

so that it could find the right database descriptors.  The earlier GIT 
version that worked on the MacBook Pro did not compile properly.  I 
upgraded to the 'Testing' distribution and added the following patch:

--- ./core/libs/3rdparty/libpgf/Encoder.cpp.orig	2011-07-27 16:28:11.000000000 -0700
+++ ./core/libs/3rdparty/libpgf/Encoder.cpp	2011-08-21 06:29:24.000000000 -0700
@@ -310,7 +310,7 @@
 
 	// convert data
 	for (int i=0; i < wordLen; i++) {
-		m_codeBuffer[i] = __VAL(m_codeBuffer[i]);
+		block->m_codeBuffer[i] = __VAL(block->m_codeBuffer[i]);
 	}
 #else
 	// write wordLen

This made it compile and run properly on a PowerPC, albeit slowly.  That
machine has the big screen and i'd use if the performance were to improve.

I tried it using Windows XP running on a virtual machine under Linux.  Being
not directly connected to the Internet, i have not installed most security
patches and am basically at SP3.  I tried both the KDE windows installer and 
'digiKam-installer-2.0.0-win32.exe'.  The digiKam-installer completed, but
the results weren't very useful.  Programs>DigiKam>DigiKam appeared to be a
bad link, as Windows started searching for it.  Attempting to run it via
C:\Program Files\digiKam\KDE4-MSVC\bin\digikam.exe got:

    This application has failed to start because the application is
    incorrect.  Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Uninstalling from "Add or Remove Programs" failed to remove most of what the
digiKam-installer added, which was under C:\Program Files\digiKam\KDE4-MSVC .
I then tried KDE windows installer, using "Stable 4.7.0" and selecting MinGW4
but while this completed, starting digiKam failed:

    This application has failed to start because libgomp-1.dll was not
    found.  Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

A quick web search didn't find any good leads on how to work around this.
So i tried selecting MSVC instead.  (By the way, the KDE uninstaller did
not do much better than the digikam-installer and i had to get rid of a
similar directory 'by hand'.)  Re-installing got me:

    Run-time Qt4 QSLite or MySQL database plug-in is not available - please
    install it.  There is no database plugin installed on your computer.

So perhaps 'digiKam' doesn't request all the right libraries in the KDE
windows installer??  But there was no selection under the installer for
SQLite, either.  So i tried installing 'krecipes', which i guessed might
include SQLite (and selected that option during its configuration).  No 
help, even though 'krecipes' seem to start up and display a sample recipe.
Maybe it's a path issue, as 'C:\Program Files\KDE\bin\sqlite3.dll' exists
(as does 'C:\Program Files\KDE\plugins\sqldrivers\sqlite4.dll')??

[Earlier, i had also tried on a Sony PCG-R505EL running Windows XP with
lots of things already loaded, but didn't take notes on how i got as far
as i did with that one.  It almost worked, but none of the images would
display under Tags and i think it had some other forms of path confusion.
So running under Windows seems possible, but maybe not so repeatably.]

I also have Debian Linux (i386) running on the Sony and would try that 
platform if there's interest, as i plan to retire that machine soon.

So that's my 2.0.0 installation report.  I'll post more later if/when i 
get some more experience with it.

			      -- KD6PAG