Bug#537932: boinc-client should maybe recommend libglut as some WUs will fail without it

[salonh at t2.technion.ac.il]

Quoting Steffen Moeller <moeller at inb.uni-luebeck.de>:

> Hello,
> 
hi,

> have many thanks for chasing the issue up, Alon. Somehow I feel that the
> situation is not completely clear, yet. I googled against "BOINC glut"
> and came up with several sites that explain that the BOINC graphics are
> to be implemented with glut. Hm. Still, however, I have not seen some
> explicit notion that the machine executing the client is supposed to
> have glut installed or if that would be a volunteer contribution to the
> BOINC-executed scientific app.

yes, that's what i've come up with too. to me it appears it's only supposed to
be needed in order to build the server and actual apps, but i may be wrong.

i have yet to receive a response in the spinhenge forum, but (one of?) the admin
at leiden said it's not linked statically to get better performance of computers
with good graphics.

the 2 projects do have pages referring to graphic libs [1],[2], but it also
supposedly requires other things to actually get it work. libglut only got me
to the stage where the WU's run, but graphic doesn't. also, i havn't seen any
other projects with similar requirements.

that, and the fact it didn't happen in some 10 other projects i tested, that
some come with graphics and some don't, all working just fine without libglut,
is what made me think it really is something that should be fixed by the
projects...

> 
> And should the boinc-client, which executes the boinc-application, be
> the one that recommends libglut3? Or should it be the manager, without
> which one will most likely not see the graphics in the first place?
> 

since it's braking the WU's before they even start, and without the manager
running (but installed), i would guess client, but to test it you need to run a
client without the manager, without glut, having connected or reseted the
project without them both (to make sure it's not some configuration that's
being set as the project's files are installed), which atm i can't help with
since i just don't know how...

thing is, and i know next to nothing about dynamic linking, it [seems reasonable
to me that it] should test for it before it links. i tried looking at leiden
classical's code [3], but couldn't find my way there (way too big for me), but
maybe it just checks whether or not the manager is installed. i saw somewhere,
someone implying it might. so checking with client only might clear this issue
as well.

> Many greetings
> 
> Steffen
> 
> 

regards,
alon

[1] http://spin.fh-bielefeld.de/spin_graphics_libs.php
[2] http://boinc.gorlaeus.net/Graphical_libs.php
[3] http://boinc.gorlaeus.net/download/DownLoads/Classical/