What's with all the broken icons (OS4)?

[chris]

Thanks guys - I downloaded png_im and it works as you said - still having problens installing/running software though - in this case it's Fuse for OS4.

The emulator?  (your link doesn't work)

That probably needs rebuilding (new version) - without SObjs.

It says it needs libbz2 (only after you run it, after installing png_im so you *can* run it)

I wasn't aware it was a PNG icon.  That is sloppy, I don't normally do that, but then my icons usually come from elsewhere so if I don't realise it's PNG I won't convert it.  Although I can't actually remember how to convert them off-hand.

so I go download that, libbz2 says I need to enter the following:

Copy SDK/#? ALL SDK:
MakeLink SOFT SDK:local/newlib/lib/libbz2.so libbz2.so.1.0

Except I don't have an SDK assign (of course) - I dunno - I hate to be mean-spirited about free software but stuff like this is so sloppy.

Copy the libbz2.so to SObjs, then run:
MakeLink SOFT SObjs:libbz2.so SObjs:libbz2.so.1.0
(you may not even need the makelink)

[chris]

In the end you might ask the author/porter of Fuse why the hell he didn't include the *.so into his Fuse package.

You could do that, but all I'd tell you is that I can't even remember what I was doing last week, let alone four years ago!

[chris]

The same is (often) true for AmigaOS standard *.libraries - sometimes "3rd party" libs were included, sometimes not...I'm used to this, I'm an Amiga user... :-)

The problem with including 3rd party libraries, is you then need to include all the licensing guff (if it is allowed to be re-distributed in this manner at all), and the chances are the damn thing is out-of-date by the time you've even uploaded the archive containing it.

It is objectively "better" for the 3rd party libraries to be installed from their own distribution archives.  But that doesn't necessarily help when the distribution archives are aimed at developers, have no Installer, or are for some reason on the author's own site only and deleted when they rage-quit the platform eight years ago.  Or whatever.  And it makes things more difficult for users to install.

[chris]

As I mentioned, I hate to be critical of software that people like yourself have dedicated time and energy to and made available to the community for free - without contributors such as yourself the Amiga community would have disappeared a long time ago.

Your complaints in this instance are entirely justified, and if I'd encountered them I would probably have been complaining too.

The only reason I have the PNG iconmodule installed myself, is because I got fed up of downloading archives with broken icons!

FUSE is in need of an update anyway.

@eliyahu
Thanks, I'll try to remember that one.

[chris]

Well I got it working turns out I already had the SOBJs I needed, I just had to make soft links for the versions Fuse was looking for - in this case:

libbz2.so.1.0
libxml2.so.9

I guess after you've been using OS4 for a while this becomes second nature but it's a big gotcha to newbies like me (and somehow I got a ton of stuff working without having to do this at all) - the only other soft links I have in SOBJs are for libz and libpng and I'm pretty sure I didn't make those

SObjs are weird as they have the version numbers in the filenames, and different compatible versions have different filenames, so you need the softlinks.  It also entirely depends on the dev's setup as to what filenames it looks for - sometimes the version numbers on the end don't need to be there, but then you get problems when an incompatible version comes along.

I decided a long time ago (obviously not quite as long ago as that Fuse port) that they were more trouble than they were worth and now only use them when necessary.

I'd love it if you and other devs would stick notes for any dependencies in here

I normally stick them in there or in the .guide.  I probably thought it was only using ones which come with the OS.

One last general gripe - *what* is with all these OS4 apps that have console windows you have to >NIL: away to get rid of? Must be a developer thing but I hate seeing these - could we not have a tooltype to hide them (and God yes, *please* use and document tooltypes ).

In Fuse's case IIRC it writes something to or simply opens stdout/stderr.  That's the case for lots of ports, which is probably why you've seen it so frequently.  It's usually too much hassle to find out why.

 
Fuse is very slick though Chris and runs nicely under WinUAE/OS4 - thanks for taking the time to port it!

Cool.  It needs updating though.  I tend to use ASp unless I need some of the more advanced features (also ASp is a lot less hassle to use to create .TAP files - I'm not even sure Fuse can do this, and TZXs aren't concatable, if that is a word, which it probably isn't)