Setting up Player/Stage

These notes have not yet been updated since the last time I taught this class in 2009.

I have subsequently installed exactly the same software, in the same way, on the more recent LTS Ubuntu (10.04), but the installation we will be using in class is a little different (for reasons I will explain when I update the installation notes).


Here are some installation notes to guide you in setting up Player/Stage on your computer.

Like all installation notes:

  1. They come with no guarantee. This is what worked for me on the machines we are using in class. The closer you follow what I say, the bigger the chance you have of this all working.

    The more you deviate from what I say, the bigger the chance of it not working.

  2. What I'm telling you, what I did, is heavily based on the notes provided by Chad Jenkins. All repeat after me "Thanks Chad!".
This will take time. Discounting the Ubuntu install, I think it was taking me about an hour per installation, and that is when I knew exactly what I was doing. YMMV.

Install Unbuntu

First install Ubuntu 8.04.

I'm not qualified to say anything about installing it other than that I found that it worked right out of the box on a range of platforms from old Dell Hardware through new Dell hardware to MacBook Pro and even a quad-processor Mac Pro, though the latter had a few issues with screen drivers.

If you get stuck, try googling:

Ubuntu model-of-your-computer
and with any luck someone will have put up a web page with installation notes for your model. Open source is like that.

Install additional packages from the repository

Next you need to install the packages that Player/Stage will use.

You probably won't need all of these, since I don't think we'll get to playing with cameras, but this is what I did and I don't have anything to say about what works if you don't install all of these.

Using either:

sudo apt-get install package-name
or the Synaptic package manager install: You'll also need to install g++ ifyou don't already have it.

Finally, I also installed xemacs since I like to edit using it. You can install whatever your favorite editor is.

Other libraries

You'll also need libtool and gsl.

These don't come as precompiled packages, so you need to grab the source and build them.

If you have built libraries before, just do the same as before.

If you haven't, do the following.

  1. Go to the directory which holds libtool.2.2.6a.tar.gz
  2. tar xvfz libtool.2.2.6a.tar.gz
  3. cd libtool.2.2.6a
  4. ./configure
  5. make
  6. sudo make install
After you type the commands in steps 2, 4, 5 and 6 there will be lots of activity (many minutes possibly), but when this dies down there shouldn't be any obvious error messages.

If there are, well something is missing, and you need to backtrack through the messages to find out what to do, which is typically to install some additional software.

Once this works for libtool, repeat for gsl

On to Player/Stage

Now download Player 2.1.2 and Stage 2.1.1 from the Player/Stage site.

You just have to build Player/Stage in the same way you built libtool and gsl:

  1. Build Player.
  2. sudo ldconfig
  3. Build Stage

Test Player/Stage

You can test them using the code and the instrucstion I distributed for Project 1.

Just remember to unpack the code using tar xvfz project1.tgz first.