[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#788213: sitplus: Pd fails to start

[IOhannes m zmoelnig]

Package: sitplus
Version: 1.0.3-4.1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

it seems that puredata cannot be started by sitplus.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

after starting sitplus, navigate the menu:
 Configuration -> Pure Data...

this gives me the following:
- a pop-up dialog telling me that:
> Configuration of puredata_config failed.  See console for details

- the main application window prints:
> ERROR. pd wrapper. Pure Data process died unexpectedly
> ERROR. puredata_config. PdWrapper: Pure Data process died unexpectedly while waiting for incoming connection.

- at the terminal i get:
> Error in startup script: unknown option: -guiport
>     while executing
> "opt_parser::get_options $argv"
>     (procedure "parse_args" line 6)
>     invoked from within
> "parse_args $argc $argv"
>     (procedure "main" line 6)
>     invoked from within
> "main $::argc $::argv"
>     (file "/usr/lib/puredata/tcl/pd-gui.tcl" line 749)

with my puredata maintainer hat on, i can tell the following:
puredata consists of two applications:
- the core (/usr/bin/puredata), implemented in C
- and the GUI (/usr/bin/pd-gui), implemented in tcl/tk
usually each of these components starts the other automatically.
but they can be started separately, if need be.
for this to work, the core has a flag "-guiport" so it can be told
to connect to an already running pd-gui. e.g.
$ pd -guiport 7000

the GUI, does not have this flag; instead you specify directly how to contact
the core. e.g.:
$ pd-gui 7001

it seems that 'sitplus' implements a basic pd-gui replacement, and tries to
launch Pd (core) with the "-guiport" option.
However, the actual error messages hints, that it is really launching the
pd-gui, passing it the '-guiport' argument. and pd-gui chokes on that argument,
as it doesn't know about it.

a quick glance at the code did not reveal anything obvious.
(apart from trying to launch a number of different pd-flavours manually, which i
think should be disabled; Debian uses update-alternatives to provide the 'pd'
binary, and the system admin should choose which flavour should be the default -
rather than the application).

(though i think that upstream should not use a dummy implementation of pd-gui at
all; most likely they use it to dynamically allocate voices, but there are
cleaner ways to do that).

gfsadr
IOhannes

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.0.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages sitplus depends on:
ii  libbluetooth3                   5.23-2+b1
ii  libboost-filesystem1.55.0       1.55.0+dfsg-3
ii  libboost-program-options1.55.0  1.55.0+dfsg-3
ii  libboost-system1.55.0           1.55.0+dfsg-3
ii  libboost-thread1.55.0           1.55.0+dfsg-3
ii  libc6                           2.19-18
ii  libconfig9                      1.4.9-2
ii  libgcc1                         1:5.1.1-9
ii  libopencv-core2.4               2.4.9.1+dfsg-1.1
ii  libopencv-highgui2.4            2.4.9.1+dfsg-1.1
ii  libpocofoundation9              1.3.6p1-5
ii  libpocoxml9                     1.3.6p1-5
ii  libportmidi0                    1:184-2.2
ii  libsdl-gfx1.2-5                 2.0.25-4
ii  libsdl-image1.2                 1.2.12-5+b5
ii  libsdl1.2debian                 1.2.15-11
ii  libstdc++6                      5.1.1-9
ii  libv4l-0                        1.6.3-1
ii  libwxbase3.0-0                  3.0.2-1+b1
ii  libwxgtk3.0-0                   3.0.2-1+b1
ii  libx11-6                        2:1.6.3-1
ii  libxtst6                        2:1.2.2-1+b1
ii  pd-cyclone                      0.1~alpha55-7
ii  pd-freeverb                     1.2-3
ii  pd-iemnet                       0.1-3
ii  pd-libdir                       1.9-3
ii  pd-list-abs                     0.1-1
ii  puredata                        0.46.6-2
ii  sitplus-data                    1.0.3-4.1

sitplus recommends no packages.

sitplus suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information