Compiling View

This document assumes that you have successfully compiled the Psys libraries. This document also assumes that you have uncompressed and untarred the View file, and installed it in the chipmunk directory. Note that view has not been ported to OS/2.

Begin by descending to the view directory. Edit the file Makefile, and make any necessary changes. Comments in the Makefile will guide you through these changes; the changes are labeled with the markers (1), (2), (3), etc. Once these changes are made, execute the command

make install

If things are working correctly, a long series of compilations, linkings, and file movements should occur without error. This will create the program chipmunk/bin/vc. The name is changed from view during the copy to chipmunk/bin/ because an existing Unix tool uses that name.

To do a quick test, start view by executing chipmunk/bin/vc and typing the following test program into the program.

basis i = 1:10:1

y = i*i

fplot i y

quit

After the "fplot" command, a window should pop up with the curves, one a straight line and one a curve. To learn more about using view, see the user documentation.

Problems and Solutions

Its quite possible that compilation did not proceed smoothly, or that execution problems happen while using the tool. Here are some possible ways that things could have went wrong, along with suggestions.

Plotting doesn't work

If you have a monochrome machine, you will notice a bug in the plotting routines that results in blank on-screen plots. I've spent some time trying to find this without success. Note that the problem is purely in display; Postscript produced by the plot portion of view will be correct, but you'll be flying blind while creating the plot.

The view source distribution includes routines for using view as a test instrument control environment using GPIB. These routines are no longer used by the maintainer, but are included in the package as a starting point for someone to continue development on the GPIB portion of view. The directories mt/ and tek2430/ are there for GPIB users, and can be safely ignored by everyone else. If you have an HPIB card in your workstation and want to try resurrecting these tools, type make clean myinstall in the view directory, and be prepared to start detective work!

If you have problems compiling view, or need guidance in a GPIB development, I'd be happy to offer suggestions; press here for more information about asking for help.

• Return to compilation instructions.
• Return to home page.
• User documentation for Chipmunk tools.
• To pick up the distribution.