[Robotics] Feedback on MORSE installation instructions...

[Herman Bruyninckx]

Dear all,

as a preparation of the "hack-a-ton" of next week,
  <http://www.openrobots.org/wiki/morse/events/hackaton_jan_2011>,
I tried to install Morse on a "completely fresh" system, and not a fancy
modern one: a MacBook of four years old, with an Intel i915 graphics card,
and Ubuntu 10.10.

So, maybe you can use this feedback to update the current installation tutorial on
  <http://homepages.laas.fr/slemaign/openrobots/doku.php?id=morse:user:installation>
At the end of this message, I attach my "installation log", including
some remarks and feedback.

In summary:

- I succeeded in getting a working morse, in the simplest configuration,
   that is without the middleware or pocolibs, in about an hour or so.
   Which means the current installation guide is not bad at all :-)

- the current examples are rather "high end" already, both with respect to
   GPU requirements and complexity of the scene

Overall, I liked what I saw, but the experience also made me aware of the
fact that we will have to come up with a simple "hello robot world!"
example, in order to make the entry threshold a bit lower. This might be a
task that I like to set myself, if nobody else volunteers :-) Maybe we can
have a short discussion on the "hack-a-ton" about what would be an
appropriate as-simple-but-still-relevant-as-possible .blend to give new
users a good feeling about what morse is capable of...

Best regards,

Herman Bruyninckx
=================================

I followed the instructions on
<http://homepages.laas.fr/slemaign/openrobots/doku.php?id=morse:user:installation>

The git stuff went without errors or problems. I updated ("git pull") an
older version of morse that I checked out a month or two ago.

My Ubuntu 10.10 does not have Python 3.1 installed by default. All I had to
do was to install the "python3.1" and "python3.1-dev" packages from the
standard repository.

The Blender executable I use is blender-2.56-beta-linux-glibc27-i686, that
is, the last one available from blender.org. I installed it quick and
simply from the provided tar-ball.

I spent some time in finding the right set of environment variables for my
system, which resulted in the following bash script:
"
export MORSE_ROOT=/usr/local
export MORSE_BLENDER=$HOME//blender-2.56-beta-linux-glibc27-i686/blender
export PYTHONPATH=$MORSE_ROOT/lib/python3/dist-packages
"

Note that the website says
   "export PYTHONPATH=$MORSE_ROOT/lib/python3.1/dist-packages"
but the cmake code installs in
   "/lib/python3/dist-packages".
(That is, "3" instead of "3.1"!)

The "$ make install" command had to be replaced by "$sudo make install".

Now, "morse check" returns without errors.
And I continued with the Testing:
" To test the external control clients:
     * On a text terminal, run the morse command
"
The result is that Blender starts, with the following text on the console:
"morse 0.2b1
Copyright LAAS-CNRS 2010
found bundled python:
/home/herman/blender-2.56-beta-linux-glibc27-i686/2.56/python
read blend: /home/herman/code/morse/./scene.01.blend
WARNING: No module named yarp
YARP middleware will not work
"

That's fine, since I did not compile in the middleware.

The tutorial goes on as follows:
   "Open the Blender file:
   $MORSE_ROOT/share/examples/morse/scenarii/tutorial-1-solved.blend
   "
but that file "tutorial-1-solved.blend" does not exist. I do see the
following files:
   action-4-2.54.blend         grande_salle-1.blend
   stereo_test.blend
   action-4.blend              grande_salle-2.5-kuka-poster.blend
   camera_calibration-1.blend  stereo_test-2.54-1.blend
All these files are rather huge Blender scenes (and they rely on a modern
graphics card, I guess). A simpler "hello robot world" example would be
nice to have, that is, without having to use middleware or cameras.

"Start the simulation P" -> not a nice result for my old laptop with Intel
i915 graphics card :-) But hey, morse works!