LinuxCNC

[jpcaram]

Several people have now told me that they would like to have FlatCAM running under LinuxCNC.

I believe this can be done, but it will require the help of the community. These are the main challenges:

• LinuxCNC is based on Ubuntu 10.04, which is not supported any more (OLD).
• Most of the libraries that FlatCAM needs are not readily available in Ubuntu 10.04

Basically, what this means is that we would need to manually compile from source each of the libraries. The good thing about this, is that we would only need to do this once because LinuxCNC is expected to use the same Linux distribution (Ubuntu 10.04 now) for an extended period of time.

Where to start:

• A fresh installation of LinuxCNC of Ubuntu 10.04. Ideally in a virtual machine line VirtualBox or VMWare. This way you can experiment over and over with a clean system.
• Find what libraries are available in their latest version. Here is a list of the libraries that FlatCAM needs:
• Python 2.7.6
• PyGObject 3.10
• Numpy 1.8.0
• Matplotlib 1.3.1
• Shapely 1.3.0
• Attempt to compile and install the libraries from source code.
• Test them. Start a Python session and try to import them. This is how it is done in FlatCAM:

from numpy import arctan2, Inf, array, sqrt, pi, ceil, sin, cos, arange

from matplotlib.figure import Figure

from shapely.geometry import Polygon, LineString, Point, LinearRing

from shapely.geometry import MultiPoint, MultiPolygon

from shapely.geometry import box as shply_box

from shapely.ops import cascaded_union

import shapely.affinity as affinity

from shapely.wkt import loads as sloads

from shapely.wkt import dumps as sdumps

from shapely.geometry.base import BaseGeometry

from gi.repository import Gtk

from gi.repository import Gdk

from gi.repository import GdkPixbuf

from gi.repository import GLib

from gi.repository import GObject
import matplotlib
from matplotlib.backends.backend_gtk3agg import FigureCanvasGTK3Agg as FigureCanvas

If all these work, then we've probably made in!

[Jamie Boyle]

I seem to remember seeing that LinuxCNC is due to have a significant update that will not only move it to modern Ubuntu with a more modern install system.  From what I saw, it was due maybe early 2014 (it's software, bound to be late!).  IMHO I'd sit tight on this issue, wait for LinuxCNC to update and focus on other areas.