— EDIT —

8.0.x series ebuild is now packaged in http://www.axante.net/download/gentoo/houdini-ebuild.tar.gz [axante.net] and available by Subversion at http://svn.axante.net:8088/svn/overlay/trunk [svn.axante.net]

Further details may be found here [sidefx.com]

— END EDIT —

I've been working on an ebuild for Houdini 7.0.x for a little while, and am looking for some Gentoo users to help with the testing process. Namely, I require some assistance pinning down Houdini's dependencies, as well as finding flaws in the ebuild itself. For the moment, I know that it seems to work fairly well with a machine running on the ~x86 tree.

The general purpose of this ebuild is to allow the Houdini suite to better integrate into the Gentoo way of doing things. Namely, this involves the addition of a sesinetd script that can be placed into /etc/init.d and added to the default runlevel instead of the traditional rc.* setup.

The actual installation is achieved in the same manner as the the installation scripts provided in the Houdini package, moving files to the same places and such.

This package also offers some shortcuts for running Houdini itself, adding several small scripts to /usr/bin that source the houdini environment and run the program in question.

Currently known bugs:

• The scripts don't handle the passing of arguments yet, which may cause problems if you're calling vcc from the command line.
  The license manager does not automatically acquire noncommercial licenses for some reason. This may be a problem with my system setup, or the ebuild itself.
  The uninstall process does not wipe out the hfs7.0 directory because mozilla leaves a few things behind
  Related to the above, there may be hidden problems with the default permissions
  As a reminder, this ebuild is currently unsupported, unrecommended, and unendorsed (and unknown) by Side Effects Software. Side Effects Software (or myself, for that matter) will not be held liable for any damages or losses that may occur from the usage of this ebuild.
  
  With that being said, for anyone interested in testing, a copy of the ebuild is up at http://www.axante.net/download/gentoo/houdini-7.0.142.ebuild [axante.net]
  
  If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this ebuild, please follow up to this thread, or contact me through any of the means listed on my profile.

Just for some of us that are curious. What is Gentoo and what does your ebuild do?

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Gentoo is a very cool Linux distro that is designed around *customize, customize, customize" - even moreso than most Linux distros, and that's saying something… I seriously doubt SESI would ever support it for that very reason, but it's great to see this stuff being offered(cheers NT!). The ebuild is what it sounds like - a Gentoo package that lets you install Houdini. Sort of like an rpm file.

Cheers,

J.C,

A few of the smaller bugs have been fixed:

• Shortcuts now accept arguments
  sesinetd and hserver all get shut down by the stop script. This is still being tested
  The new revision is available at http://www.axante.net/download/gentoo/houdini-7.0.142-r1.ebuild [axante.net]

Hmmm … Why does it need kdelibs-3.2 or dev-lang/tcl?

for nate and anyone who cares..

gentoo is a source based distro. so any packages you install are compiled by the system, to suit your system specs. so there is some performance advantage, at the cost of compile times.

the relationship between every package is listed in the portage tree. so you can type “emerge openoffice” and it will download, compile and install X windows, KDE, open office. (about 30 hours on a p3 ;-) it generally has the latest packages available.

to be used by portage there needs to be an ebuild - this tells gentoo how, where, what to compile and install.

houdini is a bad example because its binary packages, so wont compile of course, but with this ebuild it would be as easy as typing “emerge houdini” and it would be ready to go. “emerge php apache mysql” gets you a fully working server ready to go.

to update the system, it's “emerge -u world” and the system will upgrade any packages required.

one one hand it is very easy to use - but gentoo makes you get your hands dirty with linux when something doesnt work - which is good if you want to learn. sink or swim if you “simply want it to work” then gentoo isnt really for you (although maybe in the future).

it is getting easier to use, with an auto configuring kernel (similar to a livecd setup). the documentation is solid and forums.gentoo.org is very helpful.

Edward, the reason for the dependancy on dev-lang/tcl is that (by my understanding) Houdini has some support for tcl/tk plugins. If you open up a textport and type “help tcl” “help tk” and “help java” you'll see what I'm referring to. As for kdelibs-3.2, I'm honestly unsure if Houdini is dependant on having any particular WM available. For the meantime, I'll remove the dependancy on kdelibs and see what happens. I'm not sure if tcltk is actually required to run Houdini, so if you don't have it installed and are running Houdini, please do let me know.

-r2 is basically a one-line fix removing kdelibs and leaving some room for a tcltk use flag in case tcltk isn't absolutely necessary. It can be downloaded at http://www.axante.net/download/gentoo/houdini-7.0.142-r2.ebuild [axante.net]

Hey,

Ok that is really cool. Well I have been on linux for like going on 8 years so my hands have already been dirty for sometime but I don't like spending time configuring I would rather be animating. I hate writing scripts from scratch. Right now I am a mandrake man. So with this Gentoo linux can you set what op you would like things to compile with and what compiler to use. Like say gcc with an op level of 4? None the less that is really cool. I love the idea of custom compiling everything. If they could get mandrake style configuration ease of use apps then they would be gold.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hey,

Ok that is really cool. Well I have been on linux for like going on 8 years so my hands have already been dirty for sometime but I don't like spending time configuring I would rather be animating. I hate writing scripts from scratch. Right now I am a mandrake man. So with this Gentoo linux can you set what op you would like things to compile with and what compiler to use. Like say gcc with an op level of 4? None the less that is really cool. I love the idea of custom compiling everything. If they could get mandrake style configuration ease of use apps then they would be gold.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

No, Houdini doesn't depend on any particular WM at all. For older versions, it looked like it did because it had some odd dependency that was also the same as (I think) KDE or Gnome.

Houdini comes with an embedded tcl/tk instance so it doesn't require an external tcl/tk at all. The downside to this of course is that it's still using a very old version of tcl/tk. Recent language extensions (ie. java) use a much thinner interaction method and so it depends on using an external JRE.

While configuring takes time, you might not spend very much time configuring or writing scripts at all. Granted, you will initially spend a lot of time compiling if you don't choose to use the binary packages at first. As far as Gentoo's configuration goes, the setup process is a bit time-consuming as you have to partition your drives and set up the bootloader (Really, a 10-minute job) and choose which USE flags and compiler optimizations you need.

The USE flags that I refer to allow you to select which functionality you wish to have compiled in. For example, if you want IPv6 support, you just add ipv6 to your use flags and then any application that can support it will have it compiled in when it next gets built. So, it fundamentally comes with nothing and allows you to add in things as you need them.

In terms of having to tweak configuration files and write scripts post-installation, there's not really all that much to do on a workstation-style setup, unless you really need mySQL, Apache, and a mailserver running locally. Just do an update every night, and wake up to freshly compiled software. (Incidentally, there's some protection for your configuration files, so they don't get overwritten but allow you to merge the changes with help of a script)

Anyways, enough of a plug for Gentoo. r3 is identical to r2 and r1, except without the dependancy on kdelibs and tcl (thanks for that, edward). There's no real reason to upgrade if you've already got it installed. You can download r3 here: http://www.axante.net/download/gentoo/houdini-7.0.142-r3.ebuild [axante.net]

Hey,

Ok that is really cool. Well I have been on linux for like going on 8 years so my hands have already been dirty for sometime but I don't like spending time configuring I would rather be animating. I hate writing scripts from scratch. Right now I am a mandrake man. So with this Gentoo linux can you set what op you would like things to compile with and what compiler to use. Like say gcc with an op level of 4? None the less that is really cool. I love the idea of custom compiling everything. If they could get mandrake style configuration ease of use apps then they would be gold.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

An ebuild for houdini is just great Thanks.

I very much do like Gentoo and with ebuilds installting/compiling apps is just a breeze, works much more conviniently & elegant than any pkg menager or alike of any other distro I`ve seen so far.

Jens

Hey,

Sorry for the multiple posting my postings did not take earlier because of some bug in the forum so it appears that it has taken a day later after I posted or something very odd.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

7.0.171 was released yesterday. An updated ebuild is available at http://www.axante.net/download/gentoo/houdini-7.0.171.ebuild [axante.net]

Changes:
Version bump
/etc/init.d/sesinetd no longer calls killall hserver

Hi,

I tried your ebuild and after downloading the files I got:

> emerge houdini-7.0.171.ebuild
Calculating dependencies …done!
>>> emerge (1 of 1) media-gfx/houdini-7.0.171 to /
— No package manifest found: /usr/portage/media-gfx/houdini/Manifest
!!! No package digest file found: /usr/portage/media-gfx/houdini/files/digest-houdini-7.0.171
!!! Type “ebuild foo.ebuild digest” to generate it.

So where do I get the Manifest from?

Cheers,

Jan

You can type “ebuild houdini-7.0.171.ebuild digest” to generate it. It's also now available at http://www.axante.net/download/gentoo/Manifest [axante.net] Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi,

Thanks, I dropped the emerge for now. I just install it the usual way …

But another question: Which kernel are you using?

I use:

> uname -a
…2.6.8-gentoo-r3 …

I have no problems running Houdini 7.0.171 using The Mill's commercial license but I DO have problems to run the license server locally on the laptop and check out a non-commercial license. So, yes, no problems with the kernel or the gcc version (3.3.3) running the Houdini executables, but I can't use the local license server

Cheers,

Jan

Thank you for your feedback. Failure to acquire licenses looks like a problem with the ebuild. I've been running Houdini (not very intensively, though) on Vanilla 2.6.7, and am now on 2.6.8-gentoo-r3. I'll look into fixing that in the next few days, since my licenses just expired

Hello

i have gentoo2004.2 stage 1 and houdini from ebuild not working.
i have message: License Error: Unable to connect to hserver for license acquisition

sesinetd and hserver is working

can you help me?????????