Aircraft Center

[Sebulba]

Well, I never said that I want a step by step tutorial. I just asked if anyone faces the same problem as I do, and if anyone has an idea of what may be the problem. I actually investigated the issue, and found that choosing different aircraft download destinations changes the functionality of the aircraft center from "not working at all" to "downloading aircrafts but failing to install". I will investigate further and let you know of the solution.
By the way, you sound like Hooray with a different username. As I said, I don't want to be mean to the guy, or any guy who wants to help here, I just have a case with people who act like they are gurus and have written no code at all. I think that wondering around these forums and looking to Hooray's posts, a newcomer may get the wrong idea that this guy is a core developer which he isn't and this is obviously a very bad thing. I can give you my name, I am an editor for a popular Linux website, I don't act as if I am someone else, nor do I feel the need to hide behind the name "Sebulba". I am not a FG developer, and I do not act like one.

[sim]

@Sebulba, Is this the Aircraft Centre referred too?

[Hooray]

@sim:
This is the aircraft center:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Aircraft_Center


Dear Sebulba,

I don't know anything about you or your involvement in FG matters or other OSS projects, and frankly I could not care less.

I also don't care about your real name, your professional qualifications or your track record in other OSS projects.
And here's the news: that would apply even if you were a FlightGear core developer!

The only thing that mattered to me when I responded to your thread, is the fact that you posed questions about technologies that I am very familiar with, namely Nasal and Canvas - but also the Aircraft Center in particular.

You seem to be concerned about who you are dealing with, while I frankly don't care at all - you posed a few questions,
I provided the relevant background information, including suggestions on troubleshooting this issue further, as well as my offer to help you with that.

Given that you said that you are a seasoned Linux user, and even writing for a Linux magazine, I am a little surprised seeing your attitude now.

Quite frankly, I don't even remotely understand why you think that only core developers should be eligible to deal with you and your questions, especially given the poor quality of your bug report and the pathetic nature of your subsequent responses.

Honestly, by most standards you would be considered a troll, not even entitled to an answer like the one I am giving you now.

Your attitude and entitlement would get you ignored within seconds on the devel list, i.e. by the exact same audience you want to speak to ...

I don't even want to imagine what would happen to your reputation as a "Linux writer" should you behave like that on the Linux kernel mailing list, fortunately these are just the FlightGear forums, where we are seeing tons of trolls each month - and you are not even the worst...

Now, I don't know anything about your background, or why my own background, or track record of contributing to the FlightGear project, should be relevant for you to determine if I am qualified to deal with your support requests.

For some reason, I seem to have shown up on your radar more than once - for some other reason that is eluding me, you don't know much about my involvement, and are taking offense by the fact that you cannot attribute by involvement to my real name - and you question my ability to write code - whereas it would take you 30 seconds to literally find dozens (50+) patches in C, C++, Nasal, Ada and Java proving you wrong, just referring to FlightGear related code that you can find in various topic branches, wiki articles/tutorials and forum postings.


Finally, to make this very clear: I never pretended anywhere to be a "core developer". In fact, I don't aspire to be one.

And I really fail to see how being one is relevant to dealing with you in particular, however I am someone who has contributed to this project in a variety of ways, including patches to C++ code (many of which you can find in topic branches and on the wiki).

I am just mentioning this because you are so concerned about getting feedback from people who can write code

But I don't see how that is relevant dealing with random end-users on the forum, certainly not given the quality of your bug report, and especially not given your attitude and notion of entitlement.

And let me very clear about this: Most FlightGear core developers are not to be found on the forum participating here - however, they would request exactly the same kind of information that I requested from you.
And if they can spare a little time, they may even provide the background info I provided.

If you want to deal only with FlightGear core developers, your best bet is indeed the devel mailing list, your 2nd best is the issue tracker and/or merge request discussions.

And if you are wondering why not more technical-minded contributors (such as core developers) are participating in the forum, it is exactly because of people like you giving other contributors this attitude and a very mistaken notion of entitlement.

Look, if I have a Linux problem, I don't expect that Linus Torvalds will take my bug report, if I have a Windows problem, I don't expect Bill Gates to deal with my bug report. And if I have a problem using facebook, I don't expect Marc Zuckerberg to troubleshoot this with me.

Obviously, Hooray being completely retarded, could decide to act like a complete moron and require attention from Linus, Bill or Marc - but it won't get me very far, and that's damn sure.

Otherwise, I could have done a little soul-searching upfront to arrive at the possible conclusion that maybe, just maybe, Linus, Bill or Marc don't normally deal with end-users anymore these days, and that they may have a support mechanism in place - with people who may not have their reputation/track record, but who may still be darn good at dealing with end-users effectively - in fact, maybe even eliciting the very kind of information that would make bug reports likely to be successfully processed by the more technical folks.

Now, I don't know how many hours per week you are developing/working with/using FlightGear, but some of us have been doing that for years - and we can troubleshoot these issues often at least as quickly as the folks on the devel list, or at least turn bug reports into actionable information.

Admittedly, some of us also have a certain reputation, and strong personalities. For that you only need to look at some of the more common debates between regulars like Bomber, vitos or myself - however, at the end of the day, you should really be asking the question if you want such people to "stop contributing" or not - i.e. in terms of what the "lesser evil" is, especially considering a potential fork where such contributors may team up ...

You may not always agree with others (or with me in particular), but just look at the nature and degree of the involvement of those that you disagree with, and then decide for yourself if it's worth all the hassle (pain/gain)- i.e. look at the track record of those you are criticizing and then ask yourself if you'd be willing to "replace" them.

Note that this exactly the kind of dilemma the scenery db/mapserver has been facing recently, because its maintainer has moved on to greener pastures, and there is not even a group of people available to replace that single person, despite him having a history of strong debates and disagreements with some of the most senior contributors (including core developers).

And the same thing could be said about the status of Nasal as a library in $FG_ROOT/Nasal - since the departure of mfranz, there is no longer a maintainer available, and it would have been better for the project to just accommodate such people, instead of ignoring/encouraging their departure.

At the end of the day, the FlightGear forum/community would certainly be a calmer place without the involvement of certain contributors, but I don't think that you can foresee the repercussions - and I also don't think that you are necessarily in a position to attempt doing that.

Quite frankly, while I sometimes tend to strongly disagree with folks like Curt, Torsten, ThorstenB or Martin - I am not willing to dedicate as much time to FlightGear as they are/have - let's also keep in mind that these people also bring different skills/expertise to the table, and that they may do things, and juggle tasks, that you would never want to do.

Thus, people need to make concessions before they alienate contributors, or they may really move on to other, more rewarding, things.

[sim]

Thank you for clarifying Hoorah. No wonder I found the discussion baffling!
Looks like a worthy project and I for one don't doubt either your sincerity or your dedication.
Even if I don't understand the lingo!

[Sebulba]

Hey Hooray, I would never sit down and spend time reading your lengthy answer, sorry mate. My point and objection to you is that your answers don't help me at all, and last time I posted something else you came and started a flame war with others about how FG gets developed etc. I do not want this kind of 10000 word answers that completely miss the essence of my question whatsoever. If you don't know the answer to a question, there's no need to start analyzing 1000 things of how FG works because forum discussions are always led elsewhere like that, and this is the worst thing mate. This is why I acted like that, and I am very sorry if that offended you. I do not want to maintain a hatred, so I'll leave it at this. If you want to keep me on your ban list, that's fine, I would actually prefer it this way. I really hope that I will figure out what the problem was, so I may share a solution here, because otherwise this topic will remain dull, with just the two of us arguing. I have made my points to you through the posts, and I hope that you will only get benefited from my remarks, and help users in a more meaningful way in the future.
Cheers

[Hooray]

that's perfectly fine with me, and matching the predicitions about you I mentioned above - however, I invite fellow users to look up your posting history to make up their own minds.

Had you spent the 5 minutes doing what I suggested, you could have identified the issue, like others mentioned already - I invite you to look up my own posting history in the support forum to see for yourself, that I am quite able to identify, understand, address and fix such issues - thus, my offer was sincere, and it was your attitude that prevented you from getting the very help you were asking for.

Anyway, thanks for trying to berate me - but like I said, it only takes 5 minutes to look at your posting history to substantiate the impression you are giving here (again).

[Harald]

@sim:
This is the aircraft center:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Aircraft_Center

...

I'm using a mid january binary and that window is empty, no aircraft listed.

HJ.

[Hooray]

the content would be fetched "live", i.e. while being online - there is a so called package manager which will download a few XML files and then use those to populate the listview shown above. In the past, the URL to that file, or the file itself were sometimes not updated correctly.
If that's the case, there should be messages in the log file/startup console (terminal) saying so.

[jaxsin]

Hey Hooray, I would never sit down and spend time reading your lengthy answer, sorry mate. My point and objection to you is that your answers don't help me at all, and last time I posted something else you came and started a flame war with others about how FG gets developed etc. I do not want this kind of 10000 word answers that completely miss the essence of my question whatsoever. If you don't know the answer to a question, there's no need to start analyzing 1000 things of how FG works because forum discussions are always led elsewhere like that, and this is the worst thing mate. This is why I acted like that, and I am very sorry if that offended you. I do not want to maintain a hatred, so I'll leave it at this. If you want to keep me on your ban list, that's fine, I would actually prefer it this way. I really hope that I will figure out what the problem was, so I may share a solution here, because otherwise this topic will remain dull, with just the two of us arguing. I have made my points to you through the posts, and I hope that you will only get benefited from my remarks, and help users in a more meaningful way in the future.
Cheers

You certainly seem to have the need to keep pushing back whether you like to admit it or not.

If someone tries to offer help and completely misses the mark, then ignorance is bliss!

All of that, well under 1000 words, now I will shut up, no room for me in this mess

[Hooray]

for the record, I did not just offer help, and I also did not "miss the mark" with my initial posting - I merely provided relevant background information and requested additional information - at which point the OP was concerned about my own capability to "write code" and obviously requested support from core developers only, without bothering to look up my involvement in Nasal/Canvas matters, and the technologies involved in the Aircraft Center (namely: Nasal & Canvas).
The OP then made references to the infamous "Development Push" thread, which he also started - ignoring that Curt and others stated quite clearly that they agreed with the challenges I outlined, despite strongly disagreeing with my attitude/persona, i.e. the way in which I made my point.

That said, I encourage people to look up the posting history of the OP on this forum...

[Sebulba]

Hooray do you even understand English? Please let me know whether I mentioned in my first post that I wanted answers only from developers. Did I? No I didn't! Also, I do not care about your ability to write code. You mentioned that you are a guru on the matter, and I doubted it on valid grounds. It's as simple as this. Not that it matters. My problem with you is different, and I have specifically and sufficiently analyzed it in my previous posts. You may keep on "misinterpreting" things as much as you like, but this won't change the fact that the main problem here remains unresolved.
Also, if you actually read the infamous post that you are referring to, you will see that once again you contributed nothing meaningful to it, constantly driving the discussion off track. This is why I wish you would never answer to any of my forum topics ever again. You seem to be unable to understand what others are saying to you, and you keep on writing ten thousand word answers that no one really actually reads.

[sim]

Sebulba said

Hooray do you even understand English?

Ouch!
Yet Sebulba posted topic and within a few words..
I have a question: Why do all aircrafts
slovenly grammer
Airplanes and Aircraft
Aircraft is already a plural word and requires no added "s"


Otherwise both of you seem rather well versed in English as weapon of choice!
Hooray tried to answer your question but delved too deep into detail of the Aircraft Centre project.
Someone out there may have the succinct, straight to the point answer you sought but if you
turn upon your first helper like a rabid dog, quite likely no one else will now wish to help.

[Hooray]

Someone out there may have the succinct, straight to the point answer you sought but if you
turn upon your first helper like a rabid dog, quite likely no one else will now wish to help.

that someone is $FG_HOME/fgfs.log and more specifically $FG_HOME/Aircraft/org.flightgear.* (see the errors messages from Catalog.cxx)

[PINTO]

I have a question: Why do all aircrafts on the aircraft center fail to install after getting successfully downloaded?
I use the latest development version of the software on Linux. Do I need to set a download location from somewhere? Do I need to open FG as root?

All that is to say that you need to check the logs/console to see if this is related to 1) Nasal, 2) Canvas 3) improved security or 4) the package manager as a whole.

In other words, not enough info to diagnose your problem, bro/ma'am.

EDIT: right before I posted this, Hooray posted some more info. So there you go! Let us know what the logs say and we can take it from there.

[Hooray]

I mentioned this elsewhere: the package manager is the back-end built into fgfs - but it's connecting to a website (see the xml file I mentioned above) hosted by zakalawe - and previously, that xml file (and related data) hasn't been updated in a while - so that this would happen.

Thus, you need to be online to see if that is the case here - and then open the log file I mentioned.
Once you have that, you will see messages from the catalog/package manager system.

This is the back-end code, triggered by fgcommands - it's what is used by the Aircraft Center.

If you cannot reproduce the problem using a different front-end (think Qt5/Phi, whatever) it'd be AC specific, i.e. Nasal/Canvas related.

Otherwise, it's almost certainly related to the package manager not being able to download the data it needs - which may be as simple as a version confllict, i.e. it getting outdated data.

It is for a reason that I suggested to file a bug report and provide additional data - and the background info I provided was also for a reason