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MultiWeather Frequently Asked Questions

Author: Peter J. vd Sluis

This is the FAQ for MultiWeather, an weather information retrieval program. The program chances often as you can encounter, maybe there are a lot more problems than I've managed to answer here, so if have any one have suggestions concerning this document, drop me an email.



MultiWeather Overview

This section covers questions that pertain to MultiWeather as a whole.

What is MultiWeather?

MultiWeather is an weather information retrieval system. The user tels the program what to download, after wich the program translates the information to graphical images or readeble text. One of the feuters is making and playback of animations from satelite pictures. It is meant to be a tool for those who want to make there own weather. It's written in C using the GNOME libraries and as such has a non-sucking graphical user interface.

What systems does it run under?

MultiWeather was written under Linux (or GNU/Linux if you're an RMS faithful) and should run under any UNIX type system that has the proper libraries and compilers installed. The following are a list of systems that I know multiweather has successfully been compiled under

  • Linux ix86 Redhat 6.1 glibc (using egcs-2.95)

The compiler versions given above are intended as a reference point for a particular platform and the accompanying compiler. Other compiler versions of both gcc and egcs may work just as well or even better, especially if the version is higher than what's listed above. The configure scripts checks wether your system has all required libraries installed and whether your compiler supports all required ANSI C features.

What dependencies does it have?

MultiWeather requires the following:

The configure scripts checks wether all necessary compiler features are supported on your system. Typically, you should try to have the most recent version of the required libraries installed on your system.

How is it distributed?

MultiWeather is released under the GNU GPL and as such comes with full source code. You basically get everything I have. MultiWeather is available from it's home page http://multiweather.sourceforge.net

The rationale for using the GPL is simple: I have profitted enourmously (as has the entire Linux community) from the availability of free software that comes with source code. I wish for this process to continue and see the GPL as the mother of open source software licences which will assure the continued availablilty/openness of the source code.

Why are you writing it?

Because I think coding is fun and I have no other life :-) ... the truth is that I was looking for a weather program wich could give me some information about europe, there's nothing I'd liked. So I started writing such an program by myself. And that program is Multi Weather.

What is your goal/mission with it?

While I don't have an exactly spelled out vision (ie: I didn't sit down and make an actual design document), I would like it to eventually become were you could learn about the local weather.

How can I contribute?

Making MultiWeather into a complete and polished application will take some major (or at least persistent) effort on my part (ie: don't hold your breath waiting for verion 1.0). As such, if you can contribute anything (code, fixes, suggestions, documentation or even suggestions) I would appreciate hearing from you. Part of the open source philosophy seems to be "Do it yourself" so here's your chance.

Lets prove to the world that the whole open source thing really works. If you are able and willing help out in any way with extending multiweather, please contact me.

Credits

MultiWeather in many respects build on publicly available code. See the AUTHORS for details on what was stolen from where.

Running and Using MultiWeather

This section covers general questions you may have about using particular aspects of using MultiWeather.

What file formats does MultiWeather support?

Supported file types:
File Type Read Write
ANIM Y Y
DEM N N
PNG N N

Does multiweather support themes?

Yes. As of version 0.0.1 multiweather properly supports Gtk themes. If you have a gtk theme on your system, you can enable it for your user by doing the following:

cp /usr/whereever/THEMENAME/gtk/gtkrc $HOME/.gtkrc

If you get errors about being unable to open theme files, you should edit your .gtkrc and add a line like this

pixmap_path "/usr/whereever/THEMENAME/gtk"

at the *beginning* of this file. MultiWeather should now load the theme upon startup.

Building MultiWeather and General Troubleshooting

This sections covers some of the things that may go wrong when you try to build or run multiweather.

How can I compile multiweather?

Assuming you've downloaded the source archive, you should be able to do the following:

tar -xvzf mweather-0.x.x.tar.gz ./configure make && make install

Something's wrong. Where should I look first?

Since MultiWeather builds on GNOME, verify that GNOME and its development packages are installed on your system.

How do I submit a bug report and why should I bother to do so?

How: Mail psluis@caiw.nl and describe what you did and what went wrong.

Why: In my experience, lots of subtle little bugs only turn up when compiling the code on another OS or hardware platform. As such, if you're not on an Intel Glibc Linux system, and something breaks, I would appreciate a mail; especially so, if it's in a rather obvious place as this usually indicates a bug that might just not appear on my system. Your bug reports help me make MultiWeather a better application.

Something doesn't work. How can I see what's going on?

Try running MultiWeather from gdb and do a backtrace "bt" to view the callstack.

MultiWeather crashes while loading a file.

Make sure that the extension of your filename matches the actual file type. Ie: don't try to rename a *.fli file to a *.anim file and then load it into MultiWeather. This is currently considered a feature.

MultiWeather crashes. What useful information can I provide to the author?

If you've downloaded the precompiled executable you can't do much at this point as the executable is stripped of all debug information. The best thing is probably to send me an email describing what you did.

If you compiled your own executable from the source code, please recompile MultiWeather with the -g flag (add the -g flag to the TF_CFLAGS and TF_CXXFLAGS variables in mweather/src/Makefile). Then use gdb (or any other debugger) to send me a stack trace:

gdb ./mweather
r [append any necessary options here]
.... this will run until it crashes ...
bt
q

The bt command should give you a stack trace which should help me figure out what went wrong. You can use ./configure --disable-debug to compile an executable without the built in stack trace facility.

If you downloaded the static executable, don't bother doing this as your executable has been stripped off all debug information; as such the information above only applies if you compiled your own executable. Thank you for your cooperation.

MultiWeather exits with a failed assertion

This is a situation which should not occur; it signifies a logic error somewhere in the application. Please mail me what you did so I can reproduce and fix the error.