We would like to create a new BOINC client for a CLI-only system (for the hack value as much as anything). The only source packages I find all appear to be for one or another GUI these days, so clearly I'm looking in the wrong places.

What packages are necessary to build a command-line BOINC so that we can run SETI@home?

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Rich Alderson
Server Engineer, PDPplanet.org Project
Vulcan, Inc.
Seattle, WA
PDP-10 programmer, EMACS maintainer, historical linguist

Depending on the OS you use, all versions have a command line option. The one for Windows is just to run boinc.exe (with these commands) and if necessary from a separate command line window, using the boinccmd tool.

Else you can always download and compile the client source code and use the anonymous platform option to run your own Seti@Home application.

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We would like to create a new BOINC client for a CLI-only system (for the hack value as much as anything). The only source packages I find all appear to be for one or another GUI these days, so clearly I'm looking in the wrong places.

What packages are necessary to build a command-line BOINC so that we can run SETI@home?

Have you read Compiling the core client?

Yes, I have. That document assumes that one is running Windows, Mac OS X, some Linux distro, or a BSD derivative other than Mac OS X, and that therefore most of the things needed to compile BOINC are readily available in precompiled form.

We are interested in running SETI on a non-Unix, non-Microsoft, non-Intel platform. Thus my question, what packages are necessary to compile BOINC?

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Rich Alderson
Server Engineer, PDPplanet.org Project
Vulcan, Inc.
Seattle, WA
PDP-10 programmer, EMACS maintainer, historical linguist

Depending on the OS you use, all versions have a command line option. The one for Windows is just to run boinc.exe (with these commands) and if necessary from a separate command line window, using the boinccmd tool.

Else you can always download and compile the client source code and use the anonymous platform option to run your own Seti@Home application.

Yes, thank you. Even the "anonymous platform" assumes that it's just a version of Unix that hasn't been done already.

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Rich Alderson
Server Engineer, PDPplanet.org Project
Vulcan, Inc.
Seattle, WA
PDP-10 programmer, EMACS maintainer, historical linguist

We are interested in running SETI on a non-Unix, non-Microsoft, non-Intel platform. Thus my question, what packages are necessary to compile BOINC?

So what OS are you compiling for?

At the minimum (if you aren't going to use the gnu make tools) you'll need OpenSSL and libcurl.

Yes, it's for *nix, but this is one place where the prereqs are spelled out. You'll be interested in the Core Client column.

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Kathryn :o)

We are interested in running SETI on a non-Unix, non-Microsoft, non-Intel platform. Thus my question, what packages are necessary to compile BOINC?

Patience and willingness to *change the code*.

Many parts of BOINC (like networking, calculating disk space, shared memory) have different code for Unix and Windows. Other parts of BOINC (like backtrace when a science app crashes) don't even share code between Linux and Mac.

So if you're porting to a platform that is not a Unix variant, get ready to *rewrite* some platform-specific code...

As for the packages:

You need SVN (Subversion) to download BOINC source code.

Libraries: OpenSSL 0.9.8 or later, libcurl 7.17.1 or later.

On Windows, Visual Studio 2005. On Mac, Xcode 3.0. On Unix, the GNU build system (make 3.79+, m4 1.4+, libtool 1.4+, autoconf 2.58+, automake 1.8+, GCC 3.0.4+, pkg-config 0.15+). If the machine you'll compile on can't run a POSIX-compatible shell, make, and a supported compiler, you're pretty much doomed. You'll have to write a build system yourself figuring out which files need to be compiled.

Cross-compilation may or may not work. For example, building the core client for Windows using mingw32 doesn't work, and to build the basic libraries I had to edit a file or two...

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We are interested in running SETI on a non-Unix, non-Microsoft, non-Intel platform. Thus my question, what packages are necessary to compile BOINC?

So what OS are you compiling for?

The proposal is to create a TOPS-20 program for an XKL Toad-1 system currently in an on-line museum and mostly running idle.

At the minimum (if you aren't going to use the gnu make tools) you'll need OpenSSL and libcurl.

Yes, it's for *nix, but this is one place where the prereqs are spelled out. You'll be interested in the Core Client column.

Thanks! That's very helpful. So, Core Client or non-graphical Applications?

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Rich Alderson
Server Engineer, PDPplanet.org Project
Vulcan, Inc.
Seattle, WA
PDP-10 programmer, EMACS maintainer, historical linguist

Thanks! That's very helpful. So, Core Client or non-graphical Applications?

Core client. But note that you'll also need to compile a science app too. There are only a few projects that have open sourced their apps, with Seti being one of them. To run it, you'll need to understand the Anonymous Platform mechanism as well.

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Kathryn :o)