[Slackbuilds-users] tangogps slackbuild doesn't work

[Donald Allen]

The tangogps slackbuild does not work with gpsd (on a 64-bit 13.37 Slackware
system running on a Toshiba NB305 netbook), also installed from
slackbuilds.org. I am using a GlobalSat BU-353 gps receiver. After starting
gpsd, I run xgps to test, and I get a 3D fix and everything looks normal.
But when I start tangogps, while the chatter it produces indicates that it
has successfully hooked up with gpsd, there is no indication of that in the
map display. Current position is not displayed correctly, and various bits
of data that would normally come from the gps are blank or displayed as
zero, nor does it display your track and heading.

So I decided to download the source from the tangogps website and built and
installed it (configure complained that libsoup was not installed, which I
fixed; it is not mentioned as a dependency on
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.37/misc/tangogps/; this may have to do
with the version issues I will discuss below). This version works properly
(though it does occasionally seg-fault).

I noticed that the slackbuilds.org package uses tangogps version 0.99.2
(which was released on 12/3/2009) and the version I built from source, the
current version, is 0.99.4 (released 6/25/2010).  I note that the release
notes for 0.99.4 include "support for the new gpsd protocol". So perhaps the
failure of the slackbuild is due to tangogps trying to talk old protocol to
gspd, which no longer supports it? (I am running gpsd v2.96, as supplied by
the slackbuild) It appears that gpsd switched to the new protocol with
version 2.90 and from what I can tell from their website, the old protocol
is no longer supported. So I'm guessing that any version of tangogps before
0.99.4 is not going to work with any gpsd version >= 2.90. (As I've
indicated, I'm speculating about the cause of the breakage -- I've written
to the tangogps author about this, and if I learn anything further I will
share with this list.)

As for the libsoup issue, perhaps that dependency was introduced after
0.99.2?

In any case, I would recommend updating this slackbuild and the associated
web-page to use the current version, 0.99.4, which I think will solve the
problem. libsoup needs to be added to list of dependencies.

/Don Allen
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