Thread for basic questions

[Saka]

I feel really...'dim' for asking this, but what can I currently do to make myself more useful to the Life community? I've been pondering this but seeing as I'm still very not-up-to-date on current affairs I'd just like to walk myself through some technology and stuff like that.

What technology specifically? Python? Lua? LTL?
Maybe Tutorials will help. No? What about the wiki pages for Larger than Life and MAP?

[Ethanagor]

Alright, thanks. Currently installing. It is asking me to select what packages to install; which should I select for these purposes?

Here

I couldn't find either of the packages listed. I tried to install it anyway, hoping it would work out. However, when I try to open the terminal it just tells me that windows is searching for "mintty" and then crashes. Hmm...

[Saka]

I couldn't find either of the packages listed. I tried to install it anyway, hoping it would work out. However, when I try to open the terminal it just tells me that windows is searching for "mintty" and then crashes. Hmm...

Try using the search bar.

[dvgrn]

I couldn't find either of the packages listed. I tried to install it anyway, hoping it would work out. However, when I try to open the terminal it just tells me that windows is searching for "mintty" and then crashes. Hmm...

I can't look right now, but I believe the gcc-g++ package that you want is in the "Developer Tools" group -- something like that. The installer does have a slightly weird search function, that should let you find gcc-g++ 5.4.0.1 if you type in "gcc-g++".

I don't know for sure if slmake even needs the "make" package, by the way. It's a requirement for compiling apgmera, though, along with 'git', so there's no harm in installing those two on general principles. They can also be found in the same dev-tools group in the Cygwin installer.

Just FYI: you're in the middle of the painful part of compiling C/C++ code now. After (usually) far too many cycles of completely unfamiliar error messages and attempted fixes that turn out to be dead ends, it will start feeling like you'll never understand anything, the compilation process will never end, and you'll never get a working executable. But then suddenly you find and fix the last problem, and it works after all! Don't lose hope too soon. This stuff isn't really rocket surgery.

[Ethanagor]

Well, I should probably stop spamming this thread with questions, but I am still having difficulty.

I believe the gcc-g++ package that you want is in the "Developer Tools" group -- something like that. The installer does have a slightly weird search function, that should let you find gcc-g++ 5.4.0.1 if you type in "gcc-g++".

I honestly can't even find that group. Should I be concerned that the only group present at all is titled "no packages found"? Also, searching does nothing.

[dvgrn]

... what can I currently do to make myself more useful to the Life community?

Not sure if I should try to answer this, because "useful" is such an odd word to use for anything Life-related. Small catalysts are useful in building new Herschel conduits, and Herschel conduits are useful in building better constructor/reflectors, and constructors are useful for making new huge Self-Constructing Somethings. But a huge Self-Constructing Something is ultimately pretty darn useless.

-- Except maybe as a teaching tool, I suppose, or an aid to intuition about the way the Universe works. Even then, what you learn is along the lines of, "well, the Universe definitely doesn't work quite like this B3/S23 stuff, because it's all way too fragile at a low level -- if electrons mutated into protons as freely as blocks can change into beehives, self-replicating cycles would never have gotten started."

Now, I definitely do have a very long To-Do list of projects that it would be really nice if someone else would work on, so that I don't have to do them all myself. A number of them involve research, but often fairly straightforward cataloguing work, in some odd corner of Life-space.

It can be kind of fun to suddenly become pretty much the world expert on a particular CA subtopic. Trying to learn everything about everything Life-related would be a guaranteed way to make anyone's head explode, these days, but luckily you can kind of start in one area and branch out.

So would it be, um, "useful" at all for me to write up and post my current To-Do list?

[dvgrn]

Should I be concerned that the only group present at all is titled "no packages found"?

Yes! That's a very large concern. If the Cygwin installer is getting data from the Internet correctly, it will give you the option to download any or all of these packages. So you should probably tackle this problem with a Google search on Cygwin "no packages found".

[Andrew]

... what can I currently do to make myself more useful to the Life community?

Learn Lua and start writing scripts for Golly users. One very useful task would be to start converting all the Python scripts in the Golly Scripts Database to Lua. Start with the simple scripts and work your way up.

[drc]

Thanks for all the answers, guys! I have a followup question in response to Andrew's, though. Should I learn Lua using Golly or learn it independently, then incorporate Golly's specifics into it? Thanks again.

[Ethanagor]

Alright, sorry for posting so many questions. This should be the last one, and I can delete all of them when I am done if necessary. I used a different mirror to download Cygwin, and it worked perfectly. I compiled the program. However, when I try to run the executable I get an error message stating that cygwin1.dll is missing, and when I try to run it through the command line as described in your forum post I get an error stating "Segmentation fault (core dumped)". What am I doing wrong?

Thank you for your patience. I need to learn more computery-type stuff.

[Saka]

Thanks for all the answers, guys! I have a followup question in response to Andrew's, though. Should I learn Lua using Golly or learn it independently, then incorporate Golly's specifics into it? Thanks again.

For me I learned python BEFORE encountering CGoL and then started trying scripting. I suggest you learn most of the basics independently from Golly

[BlinkerSpawn]

Should I learn Lua using Golly or learn it independently, then incorporate Golly's specifics into it?

I learned the hard way that the official Lua documentation isn't terribly helpful in this regard and most of the important syntax/grammar-related things can be picked up simply be looking at code.
Most of what I did is just read through the .lua files provided with Golly to get a grip on the basics and then working from there (some thread somewhere has my failed attempt at a Lua apgcode-generating script).
UNRELATED NOTE: For what little code-related work I do I use Atom with the language-lua package installed. It's pretty nice but you don't really need it (i.e. it's basically a customizable Notepad++)
I say do whatever ends up working best for you.

[dvgrn]

Alright, sorry for posting so many questions. This should be the last one, and I can delete all of them when I am done if necessary.

No need, and I think these have all been good "basic questions". If you're having trouble getting through all these compilation steps, other people will probably run into the same problems.

I used a different mirror to download Cygwin, and it worked perfectly. I compiled the program. However, when I try to run the executable I get an error message stating that cygwin1.dll is missing...

Yup, so far so good -- the cygwin1.dll error is normal behavior if you're not running the program through the Cygwin terminal window. You can think of cygwin1.dll as kind of a reference encyclopedia for your compiled program, to allow your Windows system to behave more like Linux.

A little more detail: Windows has a PATH variable, which is just a chunk of text that lists all the folders that Windows should look through when it can't find something. When you open the Cygwin terminal, the PATH variable is temporarily modified to include the folder that your cygwin1.dll is in -- which theoretically will prevent that error.

Other "command prompt" links will do the same kind of thing. For example, if you download the free Visual Studio Community or Express from Microsoft, you'll get a "Visual Studio Command Prompt" link installed. If you then tried to do a Visual Studio compilation from a Cygwin command prompt, or a standard Windows command prompt, you'd get errors because Windows wouldn't know where the Visual Studio compiler and all its required library files were.

(I'd say don't try Visual Studio yet -- I might see if I can compile slmake with it, and write up a quick walkthrough. But I don't see the segmentation fault you're running into, so that might not solve your problem in any case.)

... and when I try to run it through the command line as described in your forum post I get an error stating "Segmentation fault (core dumped)". What am I doing wrong?

Now you've gotten beyond my (rather limited) experience with Cygwin, I'm afraid. It's not supposed to do that, of course, and I don't know why it's happening on your system.

One experiment that might be worth trying: put a copy of cygwin1.dll in the same folder with the executable you compiled, and see if you can then run the program starting from a regular command prompt. You can get to a standard Windows command prompt by searching using your Start bar for cmd.

Has anyone else run into this kind of segmentation-fault error, trying to run a Cygwin-compiled slmake? I'm not sure what troubleshooting steps to suggest next.

[Saka]

when I try to run it through the command line as described in your forum post I get an error stating "Segmentation fault (core dumped)". What am I doing wrong?

Which one, exactly?

[Ethanagor]

when I try to run it through the command line as described in your forum post I get an error stating "Segmentation fault (core dumped)". What am I doing wrong?

Which one, exactly?

Which what? If you mean which command line, I mean the Cygwin terminal. If you mean anything about the error itself, this is all of the information given to me.

[Saka]

Which what? If you mean which command line, I mean the Cygwin terminal. If you mean anything about the error itself, this is all of the information given to me.

What did you run through the command line

[Ethanagor]

Which what? If you mean which command line, I mean the Cygwin terminal. If you mean anything about the error itself, this is all of the information given to me.

What did you run through the command line

I copied and pasted exactly what is on the page. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Saka]

Which what? If you mean which command line, I mean the Cygwin terminal. If you mean anything about the error itself, this is all of the information given to me.

What did you run through the command line

I copied and pasted exactly what is on the page. Nothing more, nothing less.

Did you mean the cd /C/ thing?

[Ethanagor]

Did you mean the cd /C/ thing?

yes, and I tried both the command on the tutorial page as well as the command dvgrn suggested in the linked post, both followed by ./slmake .

[Saka]

Did you mean the cd /C/ thing?

yes, and I tried both the command on the tutorial page as well as the command dvgrn suggested in the linked post, both followed by ./slmake .

Did you make the folder that it said to make and is it in the right place?

[Ethanagor]

Did you mean the cd /C/ thing?

yes, and I tried both the command on the tutorial page as well as the command dvgrn suggested in the linked post, both followed by ./slmake .

Did you make the folder that it said to make and is it in the right place?

Yes and yes. I double-checked just now.

[gmc_nxtman]

Is there any reason why "rumbling river" is not named "rambling river" to fit with "babbling brook" and "muttering moat"?

[Saka]

What are some examples of pattern types that have never ever been discovered before?

[dvgrn]

yes, and I tried both the command on the tutorial page as well as the command dvgrn suggested in the linked post, both followed by ./slmake .

Did you make the folder that it said to make and is it in the right place?

Yeah, it doesn't seem likely that any of the early steps could have been done wrong, or the executable wouldn't have compiled successfully. And it must have compiled successfully, or it would be giving a "not found" error instead of a segmentation fault.

I don't have any good theories immediately as to why one system would give a segmentation fault on the same code that has worked fine for (at least a few) other people. Something to do with specific hardware? The slmake codebase isn't doing anything too esoteric, I don't think.

@Ethanagor, if you want to jump in at the deep end, you could try firing up a debugger and see where the segmentation fault is happening. Anyone else have ideas for what could cause an immediate core dump?

[Rhombic]

I have already looked for info about this problem but no luck.

I have installed the Python Imaging Library (PIL) thing, and there is an ImportError with _imaging.pyd.
I have checked sys.path and it should be fine (the file itself is there). The PIL I have is the one meant for my version of Python (2.7) so, again, it should be fine.
What could the issue be?