Sean (Aug 05 2020 at 06:11): Sean (Aug 05 2020 at 06:11):This took far longer than I care to admit, but here's a new amalgamation visual overview of BRL-CAD. Feedback appreciated: https://brlcad.org/BRL-CAD_Overview.pdf
Sumagna Das (Aug 05 2020 at 06:34):looking good but couldnt see much of the pdf. its taking time on my computer. will see the whole of it later
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 20:31):FYI, I updated https://brlcad.org/wiki/Compiling and merged it with the other wiki compilation pages. Tried to keep it as terse but informative as possible, avoiding being wordy or explanatory. Review and feedback appreciated.
I also updated https://brlcad.org/docs/api and our Jenkins integration so that's back up and automatically publishing again when the build is clean.
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 20:31):Will be working on publishing the new docs effort next, so we can avoid diverging and take advantage of the new structure dashamir worked on last fall. Hopefully have that done in time for GSoC!
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 20:37):Do we still need lex and yacc?
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:22):What's the context? Need lex and yacc for docs?? I don't think so. We have a couple files that I've kept around because they're good reference, but nothing in active use any more that I'm aware of.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:24):I noticed it as being called out in the Debian packages for installation (byacc and flex)
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:24):o.O
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:24):aptitude install sed byacc flex xsltproc libncursesw5-dev
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:24):sure enough.. I didn't see that
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:29):All the Linux suggestions could be out of date -- I don't use them, didn't write them. Can you check ubuntu/debian for relevance? I just removed a few but don't know if things like libncurses are still used if found.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:29):Sure.
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:32):I just updated the section in case you need to refresh
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:33):Yeah, I think the ncurses package can go now.
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:33):It wasn't needed before, but it was better to link against it than have it use termcap or termio or some other fallback.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:34):<nod> Our usage of those APIs generally is way down now - I think it's mostly a couple of the fb tools, and their usage is very simple.
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:34):I don't see a terminal interface in the dependency listing, so if not ncurses, it'll need something listed still
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:35):if memory serves, ncurses pulls in termcap
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:35):I think libtermio is fairly self contained... I'll have to check what its external requirements are. They should be minimal.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:37):Do we still use libxi-dev? I can never remember if the Xi bits are still there or not.
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:38):I think it's "technically" optional, but it's really needed to get input devices to behave properly. I'd keep it.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:39):I'll have to pay closer attention the next time I set up a vanilla VM - I know for the Qt stuff, particularly if you want to build qt6 yourself, there's a bunch of stuff you need.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:40):I think for the remaining terminal bits its looking as long as you have one of termios.h, termio.h (SYSV) or sys/ioctl.h (BSD) you're OK...
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:40):Yeah, mged uses it optionally. It's what makes shift-grips works smoothly across input devices, and I think enables other input devices.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:41):libtermio doesn't link any external libs - just libbu.
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:47):sure, it's just a low-level terminal I/O -- it uses, however, some lower-level platform-specific method for talking to a terminal
(hence termio.h termios.h, sys/ioctl_compat.h, etc.)
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:48):If I have my dependencies correct, ncurses was its (libtermio's) modern system replacement. we bundled a bare minimum.
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:49):libc6-dev gives us termio.h on Ubuntu
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:51):Is aptitude even installed by default? Or should we list the instructions for apt-get or dnf or whatever else is default instead?
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:52):I usually use apt, but I'm kinda old-school... not sure what the cool kids use these days.
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:53):I've seen a report from someone saying they didn't have aptitude in their ubuntu, but they followed the instructions using something else, so apt would be better if it's the base and simple enough
Sean (Feb 15 2022 at 22:53):my understanding is aptitude is really for the GUI
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:57):That's looking fairly close now for Debian/Ubuntu - we've still got libxext-dev called out in the README (?)
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:57):Oh, of course - opengl
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 22:57):libglu1-mesa-dev
starseeker (Feb 15 2022 at 23:07):The BSD comment made me chuckle
Sean (Jun 07 2022 at 21:54):Now that's a long-overdue fix... just finished doing a barebones cleanup of the html command page that displays in mged/archer. Was an incoherent mess. Can be improved and should become auto-generated (any takers?), but now has a proper auto-adjusting menu and all the commands are at least mostly using the same styling now: image.png
Benjamin Fennell (Dec 21 2024 at 22:34):I started work on my own version of documentation. It is only in its infancy right now, but I would like to make it pretty extensive. All of the figures and imagery are generated with scripts and the document is written in LaTeX. Here are the first five pages of the manual (Still a work in progress)
fbrlg.pdf
And a few figures which are not present in the PDF snippet above:
booleanfig.png
QR-Sphere.png
If any of you have any feedback on the formatting of the document, please let me know! The writing is definitely going to be revised for clarity later.
Daniel Rossberg (Dec 22 2024 at 20:09):It looks very promising. I'm keen to see it developing.
Do you know https://brlcad.org/HACKING_BRL-CAD.pdf ? The docbook source of it can be found in doc/docbook/books. It could serve as inspiration for you.
Benjamin Fennell (Dec 23 2024 at 13:03):Cool. I will have to check those docs out. I have mainly been using:
https://brl-cad.github.io/docs/man/n.html
for both reference and learning.
Last updated: Jan 09 2025 at 00:46 UTC