Tips for newbies like me. My experiences with crystal space.

[Winter Knight]

I have compiled different versions of crystal space about a dozen times in the past few days. Here are a few things I've noticed.

1) compiling with gcc-3.3 does not appear to be supported, or tested at all. The instructions recommend 3.4 or higher, but no mention is made of any unsupported gcc versions. I recommend against this version, and using a newer one if possible.

2) Actually installing crystal space breaks it every time. This is only what I personally have noticed, mind you. Other people may have gotten it to install to directories, but I haven't. I've heard from a/the site administrator that installing often breaks crystal space. Unfortunately, I could not find any information about this in the docs.

By installing, I am referring to the "make install" step. Don't do that. cd into the directory you compiled crystal space, and export CRYSTAL=`pwd`. Contine using this as crystal space's root. Do not make clean.

3) Use a Makefile, don't use gcc on the command line. I had issues with this, which turned out to not be the fault of crysal space, but the fault of my own ignorance. Still, due to the complexities of any project involving crystal space, I would recommend using a Makefile, or resorting to it if you have any difficulties, especially linking related.

The default crystal space programs, like walktest, simple1, and simple2, often segfault. They often have unexplainable errors. I've compiled several times, using pseudo-stable and latest svns over a few days, using gcc-3.3 and 3.4, and sometimes they run, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they run with errors, sometimes they run clean. That's just how it is.

Remember, no matter what version of crystal space you use, it is beta. There is no stable version, even the stable version. From what I've seen, it is a very nice program. But if you can't stand hiccups, it might not be right for you.

[jorrit]

I have compiled different versions of crystal space about a dozen times in the past few days. Here are a few things I've noticed.

1) compiling with gcc-3.3 does not appear to be supported, or tested at all. The instructions recommend 3.4 or higher, but no mention is made of any unsupported gcc versions. I recommend against this version, and using a newer one if possible.

We are not aware of problems with gcc-3.3. Can you tell me what goes wrong?

2) Actually installing crystal space breaks it every time. This is only what I personally have noticed, mind you. Other people may have gotten it to install to directories, but I haven't. I've heard from a/the site administrator that installing often breaks crystal space. Unfortunately, I could not find any information about this in the docs.

By installing, I am referring to the "make install" step. Don't do that. cd into the directory you compiled crystal space, and export CRYSTAL=`pwd`. Contine using this as crystal space's root. Do not make clean.

Yes this is a well known problem.

Greetings,

[Winter Knight]

We are not aware of problems with gcc-3.3. Can you tell me what goes wrong?

Remember all those problems I was having getting walktest to run with the latest svn crystalspace? Where I would jam it, then couldn't get walktest to run. Well, I compiled again this morning with gcc-3.4. It works much, much better. I can run walktest. It's a castle! I get errors about objects not being closed, an occasional X error, but it runs. I have to admit that I also updated svn this morning, and several files had been updated, but I do that everytime. The only thing I did differently, when it started working, was using gcc-3.4 instead of 3.3.

Could be a coincidence, since I did update svn, but I'm leaning towards not.