[Digikam-devel] v2.0.0 installation report

[Gilles Caulier]

2011/9/5 John Mock KD6PAG <kd6pag at amsat.org>:
> 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.

Do you tried with a fresh added account to your computer, where KDE
have been just installed ?


>
> When the same MacBook Pro runs Mac OSX, my first attempt to install it via
> MacPorts also failed.  Installing was *extremely* slow.

All must be compiled. KDE +Qt + shared libs.

On my macbook, this take 3hours.

>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.

For icons, install Oxygen ports package.

I created a small tutorial, which need to be be updated, of course. Look here :

https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/graphics/digikam/repository/revisions/master/entry/README.MACOSX

>
> 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.
>

Ha, ha, this problem have been reported in Bugzilla :

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279581

I don't have backported libpgf code into digiKam core to prevent side
effect. 2.1.0 will be released soon. This will be fixed for 2.2.0.

> 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.
>

Problem already reported to bugzilla :

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281344

... and recently fixed... It's a problem with KDE windows installer.

> 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.
>

MSVC compiler version is better than MinGW, because some windows API,
are missing with GCC for Windows.

MSVC compiler binary is smaller than M$ version. Again it's GCC for
windows which is not yet optimized.

> 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')??
>

Anyway your problem with DB Qt plugin must be reported to KDE windows
team, through KDE bugzilla. It's not a digiKam bug. It's an
installation problem...

> [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.]

This is a kioslave problem. Install can be wrong, or KDE runtime
components can be missing.

I agree that installation is problematic under windows. In fact more
test, hack and report need to be done.

>
> 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.

Note : with 2.1.0 released soon, more than 50 bugs have been fixed. If
you plan to test digiKam again, please try this version :

https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/graphics/digikam/repository/revisions/master/entry/project/NEWS.2.1.0

Also, into kipi-plugins 2.1.0, a new important tool have been added :
a panorama stitcher :

https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/graphics/kipi-plugins/repository/revisions/master/entry/project/NEWS.2.1.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digikam/6094450872/in/photostream/

Gilles Caulier