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Installation
This is the installation guide. If you are reading it from the build in documentation inside the VCStudio. You probably don't need it already. This is a guide that will allow users to understand how to put VCStudio on their machine. This is hopefully needed to be done ones. Tho some problems could occur that will make you need this document more then ones. Nobody is perfect. Software always will have bugs.
Content:
Video Tutorial
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Simple Guide
This part will be basic. It's going to break up the step by step installation for simple user that doesn't want to know much. I will advice you to read the rest of the document anyway. Don't be afraid of knowledge.
Step 1: Operating system. As mentioned in the Windows? section in the readme file, VCStudio is not designed to run smoothly on Windows. I don't know maybe it will. I just have no Windows near me to test. More then that, if you run Windows, I will recommend you to upgrade from Windows since it's proprietary nature abuses your human rights.
I'm developing and testing the software on GNU / Linux operating system. GNU / Linux is Free Software. Meaning you are in control over what the computer is doing. And not some company. I would not advice people to give away their control or their freedom. So I will not tolerate use of proprietary programs. Unless if it's to put an end to them. (Using Facebook to tell people to get off of Facebook is okay.)
For 100% Freedom respecting Operating Systems you may want to look at this page. Tho keep in mind that some hardware could stop working because it's not going to be supported by 100% free software system. You can see if your hardware is supported here. If your hardware is not supported don't be sad. You can still get an almost free system. Which is a huge step towards freedom. And should not be disregarded. Systems like Ubuntu and Mint are a viable first step. They are not 100% free, but they do support most hardware. So for migration period they will be fine. See this page on why they are not recommended to use forever.
To install the chosen operating system on the hardware you will need to follow a few steps.
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Get the ISO of the system. It a downloadable file that you can get on a web site of the Operating System. Usually it's in an ISO format.
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Install the ISO on a USB drive. This step will require you to research a bit if you are not already on GNU / Linux variant. On GNU / Linux you can use the Startup Disk Creator tool. I'm not a Windows user. But I remember there was a program to make such USBs on Windows.
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Configure BIOS or Coreboot to load from USB. In the BIOS you could probably find a setting from what drive the computer will try loading the Operating System.
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Install the Free OS. The USB you created will be a little Operating System by it self. It's usually an Installer OS. Which will let you configure things like Language, file-system, user-name and password. It's usually not to difficult to understand them if you read everything carefully.
Step 2: Get a copy of VCStudio. This is very simple. Just download this file. And extract it in a preferred folder. I usually have a Software directory in my home folder. I would extract it there.
Step 3: Run configuration. For this we need to open the terminal and navigate to the correct directory. The simple way is to right-click on the folder and choose "Open In Terminal" in order to get a terminal open in the directory of the folder. If you have no option like this in your file-browser, open the terminal and use the cd <folder_name> command to navigate to the folder where you extracted the downloaded package. ls could be handy to list all items in the current folder you are in. Use cd .. if you need to navigate back. When successfully navigated to the folder run python3 run.py.
I know that the previous paragraph could be a little bit intimidating. Especially if you are new to GNU / Linux. But please be patient. Terminal is your friend. It's not there to hurt you. It's just a bit different. You have to actually type words to use it. If you didn't get it. Read the previous paragraph again and pause after each sentence.
It should present you with something like this. Maybe in different colors. This is the Language menu of the program. Type English and continue. Of course you can type any other language as well. But make sure you understand it before typing it.
As soon as you type it. There will be a first check of the program. It's gonna run a quick test to see that all the files are indeed in the folder. And will tell you if something is missing or broken. Please report if something is broken.
It should launch a window like this if everything worked fine. Now you probably can find VCStudio in your application menu.
Done!
Troubleshooting
You may encounter various problems in the previous few steps. If you do you have to broaden your understanding of what exactly you are doing. This is not hard, but is not necessary for installation most of the time. So I didn't include it up there.
To understand the installation of VCStudio you need to understand a concept of scripts vs compiled software. Most software. Either the Linux kernel or Blender are compiled. The source code is read by a special program called a compiler and this program returns a binary file with contains direct instructions to the CPU. Which are extremely hard to read if you are a human. More often then not when installing software from the source code, from websites like NotABug or GitHub, you will need to run a special script that will do all the compilation and configuration for you.
In other words. Most programs are compiled.
On the other hand you have scripts. Which run directly from the source code in a program called the interpriter. Python is one such program. And the source code of VCStudio writen so to run in a Python 3 interpreter.
Most GNU / Linux Destributions will have it pre-installed with Python 3. You can see the version of the python installed by launching the terminal and typing python3 into it. If it's not there. Please install it.
A lot of programs contain everything you need in them. But usually it's a huge waste of storage. Sometimes one library can be shared between 2 programs just fine. For example the GTK library to draw Graphical User Interfaces. It can be used by more then one program. And it's probably good to have one installed for all of them. Instead of having multiple copies of the same library for each program.
Py-GTK is a python module to draw GUI using a GTK library. To test that it is installed you can type from gi.repository import Gtk to the python console.
A warning such as <stdin>:1: PyGIWarning: is okay. As long it does not say something like ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'Gtk'
Now you can start the installation guide again. This time with a lot more knowledge. But this is not the end still. Because the following chapter going to be even more insightful into your problem. Or if you have non, as I said. Don't be afraid of knowledge.
Source Code
The best documentation is to read the code of the software directly. Here are the parts of VCStudio that are responsible for the disaster that is installation.
- run.py Main file that operates the rest of the guts.
- troubleshooter/troubleshooter.py The file responsible for most of the checking and configuration process.
- settings/settings.py File handling settings.
- settings/talk.py File handling languages.
- settings/update.data File with update information. But in this case a file that holds a list of all files in the VCStudio program.
So what is happening when you run the run.py?
Well at first. VCStudio is unsure of what language to use for the rest of the checking procedure. I would use English for the whole process. But I made myself use multi-language support as early as possible. And as weird as it might sound, some people just don't speak English.
How does it know that the user didn't set up a Language yet?
In the settings file there is a variable for Language. If it's not there. Or set to False. It will fail the initial test. And run the troubleshooter .
What the troubleshooter does?
Troubleshooter is a script to check / fix problems. Tho at the moment fix.py is empty of any functionality since there was no mistakes horrible enough found that troubleshooter should fix. This is why please report your problems.
We can break the troubleshooter activity into these parts:
- Language. Checking if there is any language in a settings and if not give user a little interface to choose a language.
- Check Python. Basically checking the installed modules like Gtk, Cairo, PIL and so on.
- Check VCStudio. Checking all the files listed in update.data that they exists and working. At this stage some files might fail without actually making too much problems. But these are fixes to make.
How does it add it self into the Application Menu?
VCStudio adds it self into a system application menu. It does it using what's called a Desktop Entry that most GNU / Linux application launchers understand. This step is also done by the troubleshooter. But only if a folder /home/username/.local/share/applications exists. This is where most GNU/Linux systems store the .desktop files.
Help The Documentation
The documentation files are not perfect. And need maintenance.
If you are reading it from the VCStudio build in Documentation:
- Press
to edit locally. - Press
to commit in our NotABug repository.
(C) J.Y.Amihud 2021. Under GPL v3 or later.