FYI: CHIRP on Bullseye

[Steve Magnuson]

A warning about CHIRP on Bullseye:

CHIRP is a Python application that many of you use to program your radios. Like many Linux distributions, Debian (which is what RaspiOS is based on) has moved to Python3 with the release of Bullseye because Python2 development was stopped 2+ years ago. CHIRP is still based on Python2 and Python2 modules and GTK2 libraries which are not available on Bullseye. There was an effort to migrate CHIRP to Python3, but there has been no further development on a Python3 version of CHIRP for many months as far as I can tell. As time goes on, fewer and fewer operating systems will support CHIRP unless the CHIRP maintainers convert to Python3.

I can identify with the CHIRP developers. While there is considerable pressure from users to bring CHIRP up to modern Python3 standards, it is a huge undertaking to make this change. Lots of code has to be modified and tested.

For now, if you install CHIRP on Bullseye via the Updater, what you’ll get is a Python3 build of CHIRP that a developer made 2 years ago. This means that you’re using a version of CHIRP that is 2 years old, and limited in functionality compared to the latest version.

[Steve Magnuson]

I forgot to add that you can install the latest version of CHIRP on Windows and Mac. It’s also available for non-Raspberry-Pi Linux x86 systems via a flatpak.

It’s just Raspberry Pis running newer versions of Linux that are left out for now.

https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/chirp_daily/LATEST/

-Steve
AG7GN

[Art Miller]

I believe you can install python 2 and libraries and still run chirp, might take some doing but it is possible

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[Steve Magnuson]

Python2 yes, but some of the Python2 dependent libraries CHIRP requires, no (on some Linux distributions), even using pip. Several people have tried. The big hangup is that CHIRP requires GTK2 and the rest of the Linux world has moved on to GTK3. Here’s one of several threads describing attempts:

https://github.com/km4ack/pi-build/issues/337

Even the (now abandoned?) Py3 fork of CHIRP doesn’t work with Python3. I and others have tried it. There are bug reports filed on it, but there’s no Py3 CHIRP working package available yet.

I installed the CHIRP-daily “flatpak" on Ubuntu 21.10 (64-bit) yesterday, and it complained about having to install ancient unsupported libraries. But, it did install and does work. So, I think the CHIRP developers have to move to Python3 sooner rather than later or the app will no longer run on any modern OS.

But, as I mentioned, there are binary installers available for Mac and Windows and the flatpak does work on Ubuntu (and probably others), so you have other options.

https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/chirp_daily/LATEST/

Steve

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