Porting Stellarium

[daggerstab]

Is anyone willing to help with porting Stellarium for Pandora?


Stellarium is in the port request list at the Pandora Wiki and there have been some threads about it in the GP32X forum:


http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50080-stellarium-astronomy-software/


http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/55192-stellarium/


Stellarium is written in C/C++, using the Qt framework. It supports OpenGL ES and some ports for mobile devices already exist. To quote myself:

There are actually two ports for Nokia N900: an unofficial, third-party port and the aforementioned Stellarium Mobile.

The unofficial port uses Stellarium's main code base, only built with the appropriate CMake flags for OpenGL ES. There has been some small changes to the interface to make it more suitable for a small screen (scrollbars for the larger configuration windows). It's page is here:


http://maemo.org/packages/view/stellarium/


Stellarium Mobile has a few additional modules, including a GUI specifically tailored for a small screen and support for the N900's GPS and accelerometer. The problem is that the developer was hoping to get some money from it in Nokia's Ovi application store. He thought that leaving it licensed under the GPL wouldn't work for a commercial application, so he asked for an exception from the rest of the developers. Not all agreed, so at the moment the project hasn't been released. I don't know what Fabien is going to do eventually. (Oh, and he is the lead developer, which is a bit awkward.)


http://stellarium-mobile.org/ (there's a nice demonstration video)

For a Pandora port, the main problem most probably will be the GUI: two of the configuration windows are a bit too high and the bottom button bar leaves the screen if all plug-ins are enabled. The window problem can be solved relatively easy by re-designing the windows to use landscape orientation or removing the large tab icons and modifying the style sheet to use smaller margins. The toolbar problem is a bit more complex, but may be solved by using smaller icons. I can help with the GUI if necessary.

 

[sebt3]

Stellarium is written in C/C++, using the Qt framework. It supports OpenGL ES and some ports for mobile devices already exist. To quote myself:

QT+gles isn't working at the moment, see :

 

[Vitel]

What about Celestia?

 

[zapman]

Stellarium is written in C/C++, using the Qt framework. It supports OpenGL ES and some ports for mobile devices already exist. To quote myself:

QT+gles isn't working at the moment, see :

Some months have passed, how is Qt+OpenGL ES?

 

[sebt3]

this qt4 build (http://sebt3.openpandora.org/buildtools/?f=qt-4.7.tar.gz) is used succesfully in panorama and gles is working there

 

[zapman]

Thx for the info sebt3. Instead of asking you or some other building veteran to do the job, I would like to try it instead. Could you be of assistence if I run into problems, pls?


I would start by reading this interestion noob manual and see how far I get.

 

[sebt3]

Could you be of assistence if I run into problems, pls?

Sure.


IRC and PM are probably the best way to join me, but I'm reading all the dev corner on gp32x too

 

[zapman]

Great!


I'm copying my NANDS OS to SD card first, I want to stay safe and do all experiments from there. My SD card is ext3 formatted, hopfully the boot.txt


setenv bootargs debug root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootdelay=2 console=ttyS0,115200n8 vram=6272K omapfb.vram=0:3000K


ext3load mmc 0:2 0x80300000 /boot/uImage


bootm 0x80300000


will work? I'll find out soon It didn't work. Changing it back to "ext2load" worked.

 

[zapman]

Alright, I have an ext3 SD card and got some basic resources from as well as http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=11865 Also, I extracted the source code of Stellarium to my card.


The next step is to add your qt files. But where do I put them (and with what tar parameters)? What about cmake? That wasn't included and I haven't found anything via google.


thx sebt3

 

[Farox]

If you want to compile directly on Pandora i cannot help you...


But if you have a Host computer with Linux/Win OS you should consider Sebt3 Yactfeau set ..it's incredibly easy to build with it


I'm using the VirtualBox image to compile under WinXP.


Don't know if the recent Qt (4.7) libs are included in the toolchain ...

 

[mcobit]

Qt4.7 is not included in the toolchain, but if they are necessary, you can get the precompiled files from sebt3's buildtoolshosting:


http://sebt3.openpandora.org/buildtools/

 

[zapman]

thx, sebt3 build these files that I may compile directly from the Pandora. I wasn't successful yet and I'm a bit disencouraged. There is just a bunch of things happening that I don't fully understand. ;( I'll try again, after a break...

 

[bzar]

You can override the used Qt by setting a bunch of variables when doing the qmake. Check my panorama PND makefile for the specifics (pndqmake is just plain qmake with the spec set). Note that you have to package the library files (.so.4) into the PND.


Feel free to use the panorama-pnd as a basis for your compiling. Basically you should only need to replace the PND contents and customize the makefile. Then do the setprj to initialize the environment and use "make pnd" to create one.

 

[zapman]

Oh snap! I just can't get this done.


I therefor pledge 50€ to someone who builds a working pnd version of Stellarium and loads it up to the repo. I know it is not that much but I see it as a token of appreciation for the job.


I'm going on my honeymoon soon, we'll stay on a raft, no electricity, perfectly clear night sky and 2 Pandoras Stellarium would be so nice!

 

[cosurgi]

I add another 25€ to the pot.

 

[zapman]

almost a year has passed, I take my offer back now.