gr-rds: use Qt-Gui instead of WX

[vamsi765]

Hi, can we update gr-rds port so that it uses Qt-Gui instead of WX which is no longer supported by gnuradio? This port is basically not working currently.

[michaelld (Michael Dickens)]

I'll add this to my GR queue ... which includes making GR37 & related OOT ports; GR38 & related OOT ports; move GR-next to GR-devel, and get rid of next entirely since we don't need it any longer. I had hoped to get this done during GRCon19 last week ... just not enough time & too many other projects to work on! Thx for your patience! Help is always welcome here ... ;)

[vamsi765]

I can sure help out Micheal, but I'm not sure how and what to do.

[michaelld (Michael Dickens)]

Do you feel comfortable editing the gr-rds Portfile? If so, see if you can get the GUI to be Qt & not Wx. Maybe make Qt the default & Wx optional & they would need to conflict. NP if you don't / can't etc... just offering this ticket as an obvious place to start. All of the port tweaks I'll do "soon-ish" ... that's really a "me" thing LOL

[vamsi765]

Sure, would try that. How do we check my changes? Any sanity tests to run?

[michaelld (Michael Dickens)]

Easiest way is to create a PR in MP's GitHub space. We have CI / buildbots that will check your changes for sanity / building. And that gives up a venue to comment on them too, if/as necessary.

[vamsi765]

I have looked at the rds git, all Gnuradio 3.7 has is just wx GUI, and 3.8 seems to have whole lot different with respect to directory structure and I'm not sure if it work with 3.7

[michaelld (Michael Dickens)]

GR37 and GR38 are broadly binary (ABI) compatible, though there are a few very specific differences. That said, the GRC interface is entirely different. So, in general we say that GR37 and GR38 aren't compatible, so any GR out-of-tree (OOT) should be specific to one version or the other. Most OOTs are creating a branch called "maint-3.7" for GR37, and then moving master to GR38; for some we'll just have to use a specific commit for GR37 & that's the final one. There's no right or wrong; just the way it is.

[michaelld (Michael Dickens)]

And, yes, for GR37 we mostly used the wxGUI. It was removed in GR38 in favor of just the QtGUI. So if gr-rds (or any OOT) provides a GR38 version, it's using Qt / QtGUI by default.

[vamsi765]

Some cannot do anything regarding this until we move to 3.8? I have tried to use gnuradio-next but osmosdr is not compatible with it.

[michaelld (Michael Dickens)]

Hmm ... not sure. I have gr-osmosdr as a runtime dependency, which means it isn't being checked for during configuration and isn't required for configuring or building gr-rds. Maybe that's still the case for gr38-rds? Might be worth investigating, because if it is then you could use GR-next with gr38-rds & the resulting Portfile would be very close to that for some eventual GR38 port. No problems if you feel this isn't worth the effort until we have a GR38 port & gr38-osmosdr for it (among other GR38 OOT modules).

[vamsi765]

Cannot install gr-osmosdr-38 [not even gr-osmosdr], as it is giving the config error saying that it cannot find gnuradio. I have installed gnuradio-next, which seems to be working [checked grc].

:info:configure CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:181 (message):
:info:configure   GnuRadio Runtime required to build gr-osmosdr
:info:configure -- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

clean rebuild didn't help.