Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] gr-audio OSX fixes test branch

[Michael Dickens]

Hi Kevin - Thanks for the feedback and related info; it's nice to hear from 
another GR on OSX user!  I'll push changes to the sink either today or tomorrow 
for testing. - MLD

On Feb 26, 2014, at 12:33 AM, Kevin Reid <address@hidden> wrote:
> For the audio source, flowgraph start/stop/reconfiguring and specifying the 
> device name both work fine as far as I've tested them.

Good!  I'm glad you were able to test these out.  Just because they work for me 
does not mean they work for everyone :)

> 1) ... or (fewer harmless errors, same effect)
>    sudo port -f deactivate installed and 'gnuradio*'

Haha!  Even as a MacPorts developer I cannot keep up with "port" CLI usage.  I 
love "sudo port -f deactivate installed and 'gnuradio*'" -- that's so concise 
yet robust.  Thanks for the info; now, I have to play with these to see what it 
can do!

> 5) Mucking with MacPorts prefix files manually is a bad practice; why not 
> just install the gnuradio built in step 4? (Worked for me -- 'sudo port 
> install -s gnuradio') Doing this also means you only need to build/install 
> gnuradio-devel once (rather than installing it before patching it).

I intentionally had the user install gnuradio-devel then create a patched 
version in case things got messed up, for 2 reasons [I should have written 
these into the original email.]:

a) If things get messed up either building or after copying libgnuradio-audio, 
you can clean it up by doing
{{{
sudo port -f deactivate gnuradio-devel
sudo port activate gnuradio-devel
}}}
and start from go.  

b) Sometimes 'port' thinks it is being smart by looking at the available 
(deactivated) versions of a port, comparing to what is being requested, and 
then activating a port instead of finishing the install of what you already 
have being compiled.  Adding in the "-s" (from source) does not always help.  
Hence, having the user copy the library by hand -- it's not difficult, and it's 
easy to clean up if things don't work right.

> I hope that the final version will not send text to stdout, because this 
> interferes with a program delivering data to stdout; preferably all log-ish 
> output should be optional (other components of gnuradio fail at this), and if 
> present it should go to stderr rather than stdout.

I can move these printouts to stderr, even though they are not errors; some are 
warnings and some just informational.  What do others think: stdout or stderr?

> The behavior on not finding the specified device should not be using the 
> default device; instead, it should fail in a way the caller can observe. 
> Doing otherwise creates or hides bugs. (For example, suppose I'm building a 
> publicly accessible receiver (like WebSDR) using a soundcard interface; if it 
> used the default input device if that device wasn't found, there's a good 
> chance I'd then be streaming audio from the room the computer is in, which is 
> a privacy problem!)

Right now, if the specified device (from, e.g., -I or -O) is not found, then it 
reverts back to the default device.  What you're asking for is for it to 
instead fail and print out some stuff to stderr, yes?  That's certainly an 
option.  I'd value other's opinions on this matter.

> Furthermore any information important enough to warn on ought to be exposed 
> to the caller, not just stderr/stdout, if nothing else so that 
> non-console-based applications can communicate the information to their 
> actual user interface, as well as performing appropriate error handling.

I don't think GNU Radio supports this sort of caller exposure.  I think it can 
provide "log to file" and "print to terminal", but not communication with 
non-console-based applications -- as a general rule.  If/when we move 
completely over to using Qt instead of Wx, then maybe this can be an option; 
until then, we need to stick with those 2 options.  That said, I'm open to 
listening to what others have to say on this matter.