kstars buitl without indi interface?

[jtomshine@…]

kstars -- one of the kdeedu4 components -- is particularly useful as a graphical "front-end" to control telescopes that are attached to automated mounts. It does this through a protocol called "indi". As far as I can tell, however, (and I could be wrong -- I haven't used kstars too much before) the version installed through macports seems to be lacking this functionality.

The kstars manual describes a "Devices" menu that doesn't appear to be present in the macports version:

​http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdeedu/kstars/indi.html#indi-kstars-setup

I'm not too familiar with how portfiles are constructed, but was this feature disabled when the ./configure script was/is run for kstars?

If it's possible to turn this feature back on (if it is disabled at all), can this be added as a port-variant or put into the main port?

Thanks, -Jon

[nerdling (Jeremy Lavergne)]

It doesn't appear to be disabled in the Portfile.

Sharky, any ideas?

[jtomshine@…]

If this feature wasn't deliberately disabled in the Portfile, then could this be a bug of some kind? The documentation is describing a menu that just doesn't show up in the installed version:

​http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdeedu/kstars/commands.html

...so if that's not intentional, then there must be some sort of subtle error during configuration or compilation.

[jtomshine@…]

FYI, here's a screenshot of kstars as I see it:

[jtomshine@…]

Kdeedu4 maintainers & users,

I've figured out how to re-enable the "Devices" menu in kstars -- a part of kdeedu4, and my modified version can now connect with an INDI server and appears to work okay. It only requires commenting out two lines of code in the original kstars CMakeLists.txt file as documented here:

​http://www.jshine.net/bleue/

This makes kstars expect INDI though, and it expects an INDI library in the "normal" linux directory, so I had to also create a symlink or two for things to function properly. I could make a patch for the kdeedu4 portfile that re-enables the Devices menu, but that might also create a new dependency on INDI. It would also add (re-enable) kstars' telescope hardware-control functionality though, and IMHO, it would be worth it.

What are other people's thoughts on this? I'd rather not spend time making & testing a patch if the consensus is that it's not worth adding a new dependency...

Thanks, -Jon

/P.S. -- At the moment, I can't get qt4-mac to compile for some reason after a recent selfupdate, and that's breaking all sorts of KDE stuff, so tragically I can't take a screenshot at the moment -- not until I get qt4-mac working again. Not sure why it broke...

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

Replying to jtomshine@…:

/P.S. -- At the moment, I can't get qt4-mac to compile for some reason after a recent selfupdate, and that's breaking all sorts of KDE stuff, so tragically I can't take a screenshot at the moment -- not until I get qt4-mac working again. Not sure why it broke...

Does the workaround in comment:ticket:20199:32 work for you?

[jtomshine@…]

Replying to macsforever2000@…:

Replying to jtomshine@…:

/P.S. -- At the moment, I can't get qt4-mac to compile for some reason after a recent selfupdate, and that's breaking all sorts of KDE stuff, so tragically I can't take a screenshot at the moment -- not until I get qt4-mac working again. Not sure why it broke...

Does the workaround in comment:ticket:20199:32 work for you?

Yes, deactivating kdelibs4 worked perfectly and qt4-mac built just fine.

Also, that got kstars (among other things) working again, so here's a screenshot of kstars connected to an INDI server (installed through the "INDI" port) running locally on my mac. Also, note that the "Devices" menu is now present, just like on a Linux installation.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

Is this still the case with 4.5.5?

[NicosPavlov]

Cc Me!

[NicosPavlov]

The support for indi has been added (in a variant) to the kstars port in r86224.

It consisted exactly in what Jon described: Indi was automatically disabled if the system was not "Linux" and some patching to use ${prefix} was necessary.