[xcrysden] The rapid screen flickering issue on Mac OS X

[Dan Michael O. Heggø]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

I tried replacing mesa-7.11.2 with mesa-7.0.2, and with everything
else being equal, the flickering issue then disappeared (I even tried
swapping mesa-7.11.2 back again, and there the flickering was back
again. So it's related to some changes in mesa between version 7.0.2
and 7.11.2. Just for testing, I tried building some intermediate
versions (7.0.4, 7.1 and 7.2), but neither built easily, and I didn't
want to spend a lot of time on that. I'm not really sure how to follow
this up.

In case anyone's interested in having mesa-7.0.2 installed through
macports, my modified portfile for mesa-7.0.2 is here:
https://gist.github.com/1658983
It can be put in a local repo, that will take precedence over the
remote repo, which can be quite useful:
http://guide.macports.org/#development.local-repositories

Dan Michael


On 23 January 2012 11:34, Tone Kokalj <tone.kokalj at ijs.si> wrote:
>
> Concerning the rapid screen flickering issue on Mac OS X, I forward the
> email of the Hanspeter Niederstrasser, who have managed the xcrysden @
> fink.
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>> From: Hanspeter Niederstrasser <hanspeter at snaggledworks.com>
>> To: tone.kokalj at ijs.si
>> Cc: "Dan Michael O. Heggø" <d.m.o.heggo at ub.uio.no>
>> Subject: Re: [Fwd: [xcrysden] The rapid screen flickering issue on Mac
>> OS X]
>> Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:39:06 -0500
>>
>> That user is using MacPorts (a different OS X package manager from Fink)
>> and it's probable that their libraries are built with different
>> settings.  A quick glance shows that MacPorts uses mesa-7.11.2 and Fink
>> has the older 7.0.2, so it might be due to version issues.  Fink is
>> still on an older version for historical reasons.
>>
>> I definitely don't see any flickering in xcrysden here with the Fink
>> install on 10.7.  The only quick issue I noticed when loading one of the
>> sample files was that turning on aliasing made the dragging and rotating
>> very slow, but I think that's primarily a lack of hardware acceleration.
>>   No flickering though.
>>
>> I would advise the user (CC'd) to ask the MacPorts mesa maintainer as he
>> might know more about a cause or workaround.  If he wants to invest the
>> time, he could also try installing xcrysden through Fink to see if the
>> flicker disappears so a hardware issue can be eliminated as a
>> possibility .  But building all of xcrysden's dependencies from scratch
>> (esp gcc46) for just a test is quite an undertaking.
>>
>> Hanspeter
>
> --
> Anton Kokalj
> J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
> (tel: +386-1-477-3523 // fax:+386-1-477-3822)
>
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