God enabling, I’ll do my best to share this.
You’ve egged me on to do something I had never considered getting involved in - Thanks a million. Highly appreciated. Progress report below.
So true, so true.
Thanks - see how far I got with the build effort below.
This will be brief, cos I’m exhausted, its early morning and I lost all sleep, which I have to now catch up on.
- Full disclosure, I was once a deeply involved techie, for at least a decade, as an admin for UNIX and Oracle databases, but it was a quite a while back, and I have since moved on to other things. So that helped, it would have been more difficult if I did not have that under my belt. Simple things like how to edit and save a file in Linux, can be a bit of a hurdle if you have no starting off point as I have.
The stuff that Linux/UNix end users/admins take for granted like basic commands, pwd, ls, man, ps, vi, can be daunting, I can imagine to died in the wool Window folks, who have never seen a command line.
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I think some of the instructions on the Windows install guide do not work, for example there is a reference to downloading the git repository using a git internet protocol, that did not work at all for me. Not at all. I think someone who knows what they are doing needs to health check that Windows build guide. I had to abort one of the make steps, cos it just went on doing nothing for well over 30 minutes on the computer on which I attempted the build. And this was after the process had reached 100% completion - not sure if it actually completed that step, since I aborted it manually. Unusual.
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It eventually installed (with the aforementioned issue) on my 2nd attempt. I had to reference the instructions from the 3.4 release for building on Linux, and replace some of the Windows build instructions with those on the 3.4 release (or rather from the main dev release page on github.
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The app that was built ran in windows with a release number of d1f02a42e. And it was really thrilling to see that happen, my lack of sleep paid off. At least I did not lose sleep for nothing. Feel priviledged to be one of the few on WIndows who has a peek into the next version(s) of Darktable. There may come a time when Adobe may have to buy all the darktable developers and give them some shares. The pace of improvement in the suser interface of darktable within the most recent 18 months or thereabouts is frightening, its coming on in leaps and bounds. It seemed pretty quick on the computer on which I built it, albeit that’s an i5 quad core Intel 4th gen with 4 logical cores, and my workhorse is a less poweful i5 dual core intel 4th gen with 4 logical cores., which may xplain the difference in my perception of “speed”. Sadly it seems to have corrupted another instance of darktable 3.4 which was installed on the computer, but not an issue, I can easily reinstall that - and I had no images so the database can be completely zapped. Guess it is something to do with an update to the database table schemas - apologies for getting into a bit of the techie details, based on my prior work experience.
So the old 3.4 version can no longer “see” the config info/database schema which it was expecting to find , and it simply shuts down every time you run it.
So this was one huge step for my kind. So glad to have achieved this, in such as a short time frame.
What challenges remain.
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While I was able to install the most current dev version of darktable, the cutting and bleeding edge version still in development, my aim was to have been able to build a stable version like 3.4 (the dev version still ran reliably in the very short time I used it, but of course I could not test that every single feature and function worked as expected). SO I’d really like to learn how to achieve this. Git was invented long way after I left the IT job. So I will need some assistance to find my way around this.
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Next I will need to learn how to build the windows code from a fork of darktable, such as the one with sigmoid code in it. I’d definitely love to be able to do that, and also help others out by making available such goodies, to others who are on Windows. That would make me very happy to be able to contribute in that way. I’d definitely like to be able to make available one or two builds of the cutting edge code each month, so Windows folks can get in on the action…, and not feel left behind the Linux/Mac folks.
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I’d like to be able to link up with the developers, and share any build issues I’m having so I can understand the reasons why. There were a few reported missing things as the compile and build ran.
The process looks promising, and not as daunting, now I’ve got something that does run and does process images, and with the aforementioned gaps resolved, the future could be a lot of fun, not having to stand at the back of the queue, for these most exciting innovations.
If anyone who has a clue can point me in the right direction on the outstanding challenges above, that would help me and all those whom, I’d love to assist by making a Windows build of “interesting” developments, available, at least once a month.
Now time to catch up on that sleep --------snnoooooooozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee