SGI: Development

Yet another update; after what can only be immodestly described as a monumental effort, I have finally prodded Maxwell into compiling and running on my Linux box. On my Octane, it's not quite there yet. I think it's close but I could be fooling myself, everything compiles but the link fails. In my defense, this is a really really weird build system. They init automake but it's not used, which I didn't think the auto tools even allowed. They probably shouldn't. For those who may not recall here's the six page tale of woe from when our close knit little community last tried to crack this nut in 2013:

http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16727644&

Not recommended reading.

Here's a screenshot, it's screaming to the four winds about the fonts but from what I can see on the net that's a known problem with fixes that have been posted, just haven't had time to look into that yet:

diegel wrote: We have to face the reality: the current iphone is faster than any Tezro and there will never be any compiler that will change this.

The time has finally come. I think somehow we will enter 'full retro mode', where it isn't feasible anymore to port newer software to SGI. But hey - the guys at Vogons are already there.

vishnu wrote: Yet another update; after what can only be immodestly described as a monumental effort, I have finally prodded Maxwell into compiling and running ...

Woo Hoo ! Let's go get drunk ! Can't believe it. That's el-coolio, Mr Vish. Congrats !!

Geoman wrote: I think somehow we will enter 'full retro mode', where it isn't feasible anymore to port newer software to SGI.

Nah. We can build all the newer software we want. It just won't be gnu-er

Personally, I'm lovin' Motif and tickletock and other clean, speedy, functional programs.

vishnu wrote: I have finally prodded Maxwell into compiling and running on my Linux box.

3x Cheer.

jimmer wrote:

vishnu wrote: I have finally prodded Maxwell into compiling and running on my Linux box.

3x Cheer.

hamei wrote:

vishnu wrote: yet another update; after what can only be immodestly described as a monumental effort, I have finally prodded Maxwell into compiling and running ...

Woo Hoo ! Let's go get drunk ! Can't believe it. That's el-coolio, Mr Vish. Congrats !!

Thanks for the pos reinf guys but unfortunately it's only crashware at the mo, pretty sure it's because of the font issue so should be an easy fix, however the workday called so I"m away from Ice Station Zebra but will be back at it again come the wee hours. We need a vampire smiley...

Maxwell on IRIX update, still working the issue, still not getting past the final link failure for reasons that are utterly defying me. Not giving up though, come hell or high water I'll eventually crack this bitch...

Maxwell on IRIX redux: I solved the link problem and now it runs, it gets past the splashscreen and opens the main editor indow, but doing file->open crashes it with a bus error. So ironically hamei's "how do you diagnose a bus error" thread now becomes relevant.

Run it in the debugger and the debugger says "stopped at ["fgetc.c":21, 0x0fa68bf8]", grep of the source shows fgetc is called in 15 locations, sigh...

vishnu wrote: Maxwell on IRIX redux: I solved the link problem .. .

Take a page from dextrose and show us wooden-hammer kids how

I have a few link problems sitting on the back burner, I hate it when you finally get everything to build, then it refuses to link

hamei wrote: Take a page from dextrose and show us wooden-hammer kids how

I saw that, the man is a legend!

hamei wrote: I have a few link problems sitting on the back burner, I hate it when you finally get everything to build, then it refuses to link

Those link errors stopped me for days...

Got it running and can create files and save them but it crashes immediately after saving; highly non-optimal!

But I've spent a lot of time hacking through the codebase and I have to say it is way above the level of your usual attention deficit disorder hackerware:

Thank you very much for your effort! It looks very nice!

jirka wrote: Thank you very much for your effort! It looks very nice!

Thanks, but unfortunately this thing is horrible crashware even with the font problem fixed...

vishnu wrote: ... this thing is horrible crashware ...

What, does it roll over an internal ten-day clock ? "Source file is newer than the executable" ? This thing dates from 1937, right ?

You'll beat its ass, vish, I'm sure

hamei wrote:

vishnu wrote: ... this thing is horrible crashware ...

What, does it roll over an internal ten-day clock ? "Source file is newer than the executable" ? This thing dates from 1937, right ?

Ha, no 1999! But someone was hacking the source as recently as 2013, in the readme it says "This is a slightly corrected version of the above-mentioned source release. There were missing directories, code errors, and other assorted hiccups. There are still many errors but at least some of the most obvious ones are conditionally corrected. Hugo Chavez, A Better Place, May 2013"

I suspect Hugo Chavez is a nom de plume.

And the warning is just because I had done some hacking on the source code that I hadn't compiled yet when I ran that debug session. Nice feature that the debugger points that out.

hamei wrote: You'll beat its ass, vish, I'm sure

I dunno, the bitrot in this thing is deep, every time I squash a crash bug a new one pops up to take it's place, I'm finding it hard to believe anyone ever had this thing running right...

vishnu wrote: I'm finding it hard to believe anyone ever had this thing running right...

There is the true value of open source ... some day, maybe someone can fix the p.o.s.

It's still less work than writing a completely new word processor from scratch, yes ?

hamei wrote: There is the true value of open source ... some day, maybe someone can fix the p.o.s.

I'm honestly a bit shocked it's this crashprone, has that much changed since 1999?

hamei wrote: It's still less work than writing a completely new word processor from scratch, yes ?

Oh no doubt, this was written by pros with the intent of creating a commercial product, it's 313 C++ files and 436 header files with 83 makefiles, anything but a quick hack. I suspect the authors gave up when Sun open sourced Star Office into Open Office. That had to have sucked for them...

Vishnu, can you specify where you got the source from? I have found two archives on the internet: a maxwellwp.tar.gz and a maxwell-0.5.3-src.tar.gz
Both archives require substantial reworking for dependency entries in directories, amongst other things. I'm curious if we can get this running without too much hacking. You've already spent a lot of work on it and i think you are close to a working program. I have read through the old Maxwell thread, a true enjoyment for a software hacker

dexter1 wrote: Vishnu, can you specify where you got the source from? I have found two archives on the internet: a maxwellwp.tar.gz and a maxwell-0.5.3-src.tar.gz
Both archives require substantial reworking for dependency entries in directories, amongst other things. I'm curious if we can get this running without too much hacking. You've already spent a lot of work on it and i think you are close to a working program. I have read through the old Maxwell thread, a true enjoyment for a software hacker

Actually I'm working from the source that hamei got us started on two years ago, I'm not sure where he got his starting copy. But thanks for showing an interest I will upload a copy but I can't until Monday because I am in Colorado skiing with my brother (he lives in the mountains above Silverthorne). I have made a crapton of changes, not just to the source but to configure.ac and the makefiles-dot-ins in the build directory. One thing you have to do if you're working from the tarball you can get currently at sourceforge, you have to run autoheader before running configure, that takes care of moving the include files where they need to be for their very weird build system. It does not compile the include files from where they live in the source tree, it makes copies of them in the include directory at the top of the source tree and compiles them from there.

Time for an update; something's regressed, now it's crashing before it can open its window, I have no idea what's going on I had it working at the end of November. Well, working in the sense that you could type into it, change the fonts, do bold and italic, you couldn't open a file or save one without a crash but at least you could try out the features on the default blank document that it opens to. I really don't want to upload the working copy I've got if it can't even open a window. Continuing with the debug, will update with status when there's more status to update...

Ok, let us know if we can help. Holiday season is upon us and we all have some free time available.