AppImages of v0.18 release builds

[chrisb]

Is there something I can do to nail it down?

[triplus]

The crashes persist, and the only repeatable use case with the language change crashes even on a plain vanilla install.

OK therefore i will assume there are other crashes too, not just language change related ones.

Is there something I can do to nail it down?

If you have any experience with using Conda directly (hopefully @looo will provide instructions for macOS), likely it would make sense to try that option out now. To determine if we are after resolving packaging related issues or if some library (like older version of Qt) is contributing to crashes on your side.

[Kunda1]

Sorry for the interruption but where is the thread discussing FC AppImage and lack of bundled FC documentation. Someone opened a ticket without checking the forum first: issue #3960. But I can't blame them since the phpbb search function leaves a lot to be desired, hence I'm posting in this thread because I can't find it myself.

[Syres]

In the Help forum there's a bug report on the 0.19 Daily AppImage https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 76#p306202
that also applies to the stable FreeCAD_0.18-16110-Linux-Conda_Py3Qt5_glibc2.12-x86_64.AppImage

User can select the known good SVG as geometry file to import and on clicking the Open button FreeCAD crashes. As this is the recommended AppImage for Linux users on the FreeCAD website I thought it best to raise it here as well.

OS: Linux Mint 19.1
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.18.16110 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: (HEAD detached at 0.18.1)
Hash: f7dccfaa909e5b9da26bf50c4a22ccca9bb10c40
Python version: 3.6.7
Qt version: 5.6.2
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.3.0
Locale: English/UnitedKingdom (en_GB)

[triplus]

Thanks @Syres.

P.S. Yes, this is currently the recommended thread, for all such issues to get reported. I did investigate some issue a bit already, but it will likely take a few more days of free time, before i will have anything useful to report back.

[yorik]

Indeed @looo just confirmed that the conda build still has the libexpat bug. The coin lib uses another version of libexpat than the system. So everything that depends on libexpat (xml parsing, basically, which is the case of svg import), crashes.

This is how the coin lib is built, it ships its own, builtin version of libexpat... So there has been some work needed, which has been done in several distros already, to remove that builtin version of libexpat from coin, and make it use the system-installed expat instead. But I don't know what is needed to have that fix in the conda builds too.

[kkremitzki]

The tricky part too is that besides fixing it in Coin one then needs to provide a fixed SoQt and Pivy as well. (SoQt only because Pivy build-depends on it.)

[triplus]

Yep, i suspected libexpat related issue. As this can only be resolved when compiling Coin3D i feel that @looo will need to take care of that. When compiling the Conda Coin3D package.

@kkremitzki

As you did this for Debian/Ubuntu, could you share links to patches? Basically @looo needs to do the same for Conda packages and i guess no special need to research the same thing twice.

[triplus]

The libnsl issue should be resolved now. Another issue was reported. This one is likely similar to the one regarding enabling help (F1). I need to do some more tests before trying to address this. The issue(s) might not necessarily be related only to how Conda manages runtime paths.

P.S. Does the help (F1) work on macOS (FreeCAD 0.18)? I assume it does? @chrisb can you test the latest FreeCAD 0.18/0.19 .dmg from GitHub releases? I removed the .pyc files and there is a slim chance stability will improve on your side. In addition i don't feel anymore Qt 5.6.2 package from Conda is contributing, by itself, to crashes.

[catman]

About the help issues

Just downloaded the current AppImage (before I was using PPA's only) from the website to test it on an offline laptop with Ubuntu18.04. I noted that help did not work with the error about QT quoted before in this tread. I could not figure out how to get it running.

Today with forum access I found this thread that creates the impression that this AppImage thing is having a few issues still. On the website it is 'the' Linux download. Neither website nor linked wiki page mention anything about limitations or know issues. Is that by purpose?

I don't know how many AppImage downloads there are per day, but sometimes a user info might be more valuable than providing a fix a day earlier. Generally the website would benefit IMHO from a link to a list of known issues in the download section.