New PixInsight Source Code Repositories on GitHub

[Juan Conejero]

Hi all,

Today we are glad to announce a new service available to the PixInsight community: The PixInsight repositories on GitHub.

This service provides public source code repositories intended to dynamize the development of the open source components of PixInsight, including the PixInsight Class Library (PCL) and all open-source modules currently released as part of the standard PCL distribution. PCL source code has been released under the PCL license with the exception of some modules released under GPL.

On the main PixInsight page on GitHub, you'll find a PCL repository with the current version 2.0.13 of PCL, which we have released along with PixInsight Core 1.8.3 a few days ago. We plan to create at least a new repository for some official PixInsight scripts during the next days.

If you are a software developer interested in PixInsight and want to participate, let me know your GitHub user name and we'll see how to add you to our team. Please bear with us while we get up to speed with this new project.

Happy PixInsight development!

[georg.viehoever]

This is so cool!  8)

[Juan Conejero]

Absolutely! I am really happy with GitHub's features, to the point that I'm considering moving all of our source code there (to private repos, of course)...

[Nocturnal]

Hmm, I was just thinking I should finally release my profile tool as open source. My userid is SanderP.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Sander, glad to see you here! You're invited to GitHub/PixInsight.

[Nocturnal]

Thanks Juan! I'm trying to rekindle my passion for astro photography.

[bitli]

Juan,

I am surprised you did not write a new source code management system in PixInsight

This is a very good idea, I think it will greatly help contributing and refering to scripts (besides, GitHub is already well documented). My user is 'bitli' also in GitHub.  I'll need to review my scripts for inclusion, but this will not be before a couple of months, due to other work in progress.

Thanks
-- bitli

[Nocturnal]

Haha Bitli, I am surprised too

[Juan Conejero]

Bitli,

I am glad to see you here. You are already invited to join our contributors team. Please let me know when you are ready to push your scripts (or let me know if I can include them right now as they are being distributed with PixInsight Core).

[kkretzsch]

Hi Juan,
yes this is a very good idea! Github also provides nice Webhooks. For example I use the Travis CI webhook in order to compile my commits on linux and macos with gcc and clang compilers automatically on every commit. The compilation is done on one of the Travis CI build servers.  With that  I cover at least two platforms which are required for PixInsight.

Is the idea also to publish C++ module developments via this repository? Will these modules be part of the official PCL library shipment? Maybe we also should think about gerrithub for code review. Sometimes it is easier to discuss design questions directly with the code ...

Just some thoughts,
Klaus

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Klaus,

Is the idea also to publish C++ module developments via this repository? Will these modules be part of the official PCL library shipment?

Yes and yes, absolutely. Our intention is to move most of our module and script development work to the official PixInsight repositories on GitHub. The only exceptions are a number of closed-source modules that are key to preserve our current competitive position (ImageRegistration and NoiseReduction are two good examples).

Maybe we also should think about gerrithub for code review.

Maybe. I'll explore this possibility.

By the way, your INDI client and Canon driver projects are extremely interesting and very well structured. Feel free to merge them with the official PCL repository if you want.

[kkretzsch]

Our intention is to move most of our module and script development work to the official PixInsight repositories on GitHub.

OK, great.

By the way, your INDI client and Canon driver projects are extremely interesting and very well structured. Feel free to merge them with the official PCL repository if you want.

Yes, definitely. The modules are now quite stable but I have still to do some work ...

I checked out,  compiled and tested the PCL and my INDI module sources  with PixInsight 1.8.3 ... everything worked without problems.  I olny had to change the makefiles: I replaced g++-4.8.2 by g++. Maybe it is better here to have  g++ commands without explicit versions  numbers.
 

[georg.viehoever]

If anyone wants to learn about git: This http://git-scm.com/ seems to be an excellent resource. Also GitHub itself has a lot of tutorials.
Georg

[Juan Conejero]

I replaced g++-4.8.2 by g++. Maybe it is better here to have  g++ commands without explicit versions  numbers.

Always use the latest version of the Makefile Generator script to create new makefiles adapted to your development environment. The script allows you to specify an optional suffix for the g++ compiler. The -4.8.2 suffix comes from our development machines. For compatibility reasons, we use a Fedora 17 virtual machine (VMware) with GCC 4.8.2 to build the Linux version of the PixInsight platform.

[kkretzsch]

Always use the latest version of the Makefile Generator script to create new makefiles adapted to your development environment.

OK, PCL makefiles should be always generated and not be touched anymore. I have added some targets for unit testing, I will move these targets to a different makefile.

Concerning new feature requests for PCL. Should we post new feature requests to this forum or should we create  a github issue ?