Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Cygwin build problem: python version

[Don Ward]

Hi Andrew,

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Andrew Rose" <address@hidden>
> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 11:41 AM

> By way of introduction, I'm a new GnuRadio user, looking to have a play
> with it.  I don't have access to a Linux system, so I'm going with
> Cygwin.
>
> The cygwin build instructions
> (http://gnuradio.org/trac/wiki/CygwinInstallMain) say that python 2.4 is
> required.  However, the cygwin mirrors don't carry python 2.4 any more.
> (The current and previous versions are two 2.5 flavours.)

That's definitely a problem!

> The only way I could manage to install all the other packages I needed,
> without getting in a horrible mess (with both version 2.4 and version
> 2.5 installed, with different packages using different versions) was to
> download an old python 2.4, hack a cygwin release.ini to force it into
> believing that I'd installed python, and keep putting the python action
> back to "keep" whenever it wanted to upgrade to a 2.5 version.
>
> A few questions came out of this.
>
> 1. Does anybody know if python 2.4 still required, or does it work with
> 2.5 now?  The reason given in http://gnuradio.org/trac/wiki/WindowsTips
> is "the Numeric package assumes that Python 2.4 is used, and wxPython
> has unresolved build problems with Python 2.5; until fixed, use python
> 2.4.3-1 instead".  I don't understand this well enough to know if the
> restriction should still be in place.

I tried using python 2.5 back in March (2007) and had the problems listed 
above.  As far as I know, GNU Radio 3.0.4 still needs Numeric but there is 
still no Numeric for Python 2.5.  In the future, GNU Radio will need numpy 
instead of Numeric, so this will cease to be a problem.  I don't recall what 
the problem was with wxWidgets and Python 2.5, but I will look into it.

Can someone who knows say which versions of GNU Radio currently or will in 
the future require Numeric (as opposed to numpy)?

Are there any knows issues with GNU Radio and Python 2.5 on non-Windows 
platforms?

> 2. Assuming python 2.4 is still required, is there an easier method than
> what I describe above to install version 2.4 and prevent cygwin
> installing 2.5 as well?

I think you are doing very well to have made it work.  Obviously we need to 
make it work with Python 2.5, though.

I have been waiting for GNU Radio 3.1 to update the build instructions, but 
it looks like that might not be soon enough.  I will look into 
Python/wxPython/Numeric/numpy issues and see what can be done.

-- Don W.