Version info and source code updates?

I’m just getting started with Wixels. I have everything installed and running properly on my XP box, and am getting ready to play around with the IO repeater app. I noticed from section 9.d of your wonderful user manual that I should download I/O Repeater App v1.1 (20k wxl), but I also notice that I have the source code from that same app in the ‘apps’ folder of my wixel-sdk directory tree. Ideally I would like to start out working with the source code for the latest version (I see from the version history that there were some bugfixes from the original to V1.1).

How do I determine the version of the source code that I have, and how do I get the latest source for a particular app? I looked around your site a bit, but didn’t find anything promising

TIA,

Frank

If you installed the Wixel SDK using the Wixel Development Bundle, then you will have the version that is tagged as “release/installer_110415” in our git repository. This version is from April 15th, 2011.

Please see the “Downloading the Wixel SDK itself” section in the Wixel SDK documentation for more info about how to get the latest version:
pololu.github.com/wixel-sdk/

–David

David,

I’m a pretty experienced windows programmer and long-time TortoiseSVN user, but I’m getting completely lost in all the GIT wilderness. I dl’d and installed TortoiseGit, but now almost everything I do (including attempting to launch
TortoiseGit’s Help function) is met with a dialog that gives me three options - Set MsysGitpath, Goto Website, and Abort. I have found myself spending hours and hours trying to understand Git, MsysGit, TortoiseGit when all I wanted to do originally was to make sure I was dealing with an up-to-date version of the wixel application source code! And yes, I have been to the Git website and read through much of the basic documentation, and no, I cannot for the life of me figure out why there has to be yet another VCS to be learned. I now have SourceSafe and Tortoise SVN on my system, and I am apparently soon to be blessed with Git/TortoiseGit as well - whoopee! And this is AFTER having taken all the time to set up a compilation/edit/load environment in the first place! I suppose this could be less clear and more cumbersome, but I’m at a loss to figure out how!

I don’t suppose you could explain, in a very basic way, the steps to be taken to wind up with a functioning Git-based VCS on my system, one that doesn’t take a week of hard labor to set up? For instance, something like the following (I have no idea if this is correct, but…)

[ul]
Install Git?
Configure Git - does it require any configuration?
Install TortoiseGit (does TortoiseGit require a pre-installed Git or does it/will it install everything it needs?)
Configure TortoiseGit??
Clone Wixel-sdk??
[/ul]

And if you are reading this and thinking “well, crap - here I am wasting my time explaining Git once again when I really want to be working on the next Wixel version”, then you can understand how frustrating it is to me to want to get working on my Wixel-based project but instead being up to my rear in alligitors!

Frank

I’m sorry you are having trouble with Git.

I too have spent hours learning git and I think it’s worth it in the long run. Maybe I should have written it more explicitly on that page that I linked you to, but if you just want to get up-to-date Wixel SDK code, then you can simply download a a zip file from our github repository:
github.com/pololu/wixel-sdk

Just in case you have trouble finding the download link on that page (it’s kind of small), here it is:
github.com/pololu/wixel-sdk/zipball/master

Since it’s just a zip file, you don’t need to have git installed to use it.

This would be my list for getting git to work on Windows:

  1. Install MsysGit.
  2. Run “git clone -o pololu git://github.com/pololu/wixel-sdk.git
  3. Install TortoiseGit. It’s not strictly necessary, but it’s very nice to have.

Before you make any commits you’ll probably want to configure your git user name and email by running these commands in a Command Prompt:

git config --global user.name "Firstname Lastname"
git config --global user.email "your_email@youremail.com"

–David

OK, I have installed git, and now TortoiseGit seems to at least respond to the ‘help’ entry by bringing up the help files.

Unfortunately, the help files and the actual GUI don’t look the same, so once again I seem to be going backwards. For instance, the help files show dialogs that look suspiciously like the ones in my TortoiseSVN setup, and so does the text.

In particular, I’m stymied by the TortoiseGit Git–>Config dialog. The dialog I get has an entry field for ‘name’, email, and ‘Signing Key ID’. I thought I had entered my name and email (and a passphrase for the encryption process) when I installed Git, so I’m not real sure why TortoiseGit didn’t pick that up. And, what do I do with the ‘Signing Key ID’ field? I have googled around quite a bit, and can’t find anything that shows this version of the TortoiseGit Git–>Config dialog - what gives?

Frank

Hello,

All you need to enter is your name and email, and in my experience TortoiseGit will ask you to enter those if they are not set, so you should not have to worry about the Config menu. Can you try running the “git clone” command David suggested or using the clone option in the Tortoise menu to clone our repository?

-Paul

By the way, GitHub has a nice git tutorial. They do not cover Tortoise, and they emphasize interaction with GitHub, but if you follow their instructions you should be able to get off to a good start.

-Paul

Oh, and by the way, when I tried to UNinstall Git - I got a ‘Fatal Error’ - wonderful. Googling around shows that this is a known problem with the latest ‘preview’ version of Git.

Frank