Documentation errors and failure in building from the source

[kouichi-c-nakamura]

I've tried to build Open Ephys Plugin-GUI and failed. Also I found lots of small errors in the documentation.

The "our repository" link

This page says that it's better to use GitHub and build the GUI in order to keep updated. The "our repository" link on the page brought me to https://github.com/open-ephys/GUI/, which in turn says that this is not active any more and use

https://github.com/open-ephys/plugin-GUI instead. With that, I think that the "our repository" link should point to https://github.com/open-ephys/plugin-GUI from the beginning to avoid confusion.

File/folder paths for plugin-GUI

The readme file of https://github.com/open-ephys/plugin-GUI then brings you to this page if you are to opt for building from the source.

The "Building from source" documentation also contains a lot of confusions.

In list item 2, it refers to the repo https://github.com/yourusername/plugin-GUI, but later when it mentions file/folder paths, all of them are wrong in some way, though it is not difficult to guess what it meant.

1. In list item 7, it refers to GUI/Resources/DLLs/FrontPanelUSB-DriverOnly-4.4.0.exe. But I think it should beplugin-GUI\Resources\FrontPanelUSB-DriverOnly-4.5.5.exe
2. In list item 8, it refers to GUI/Builds/VisualStudio2013, where it should be plugin-GUI/Builds/VisualStudio2013
3. In list item 10, it refers to GUI/Resources/Bitfiles/rhd2000.bit , where it should be plugin-GUI/Resources/Bitfiles/rhd2000.bit
4. In list item 10, it refers to Debug/bin folder, where it should be plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Debug\bin

Moreover, in the Building the plugins section, Builds\Visualstudio2013\Plugins\Plugins.sln should be plugin-GUI\Builds\Visualstudio2013\Plugins\Plugins.sln for clarity.

Errors in building plugins

So I managed to build the plugin GUI, but I encountered 15 errors and 48265 warnings while building the plugins subsequently. I'm using Windows 10 and Visual Studio Community 2013 (12.0.31101.00 update 4). As shown below, 13 out of 15 errors were about "cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'", which I can find at plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Debug\bin

I've also tried the following in the Command Prompt, only to get an error:

The module C:\Program Files (x86)\EcubeAPI\ecubeapi32.dll " failed to load. Make sure the binary is stored at the specified path or debug it to check for problems with the binary or dependent .DLL files. The specified module could not be found..

cd \Windows\SysWOW64
regSvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\EcubeAPI\ecubeapi32.dll"
regSvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\EcubeAPI\ecubeapi64.dll"

I can confirm that there is no C:\Program Files (x86)\EcubeAPI folder.

134 might be related, but not sure.

Error	id	Description	File	Project
Error	48280	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'DspLib.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\FilterNode\LINK	FilterNode
Error	6073	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\CommonAvgRef\LINK	CommonAvgRef
Error	7203	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\ChannelMapper\LINK	ChannelMapper
Error	12750	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\NetworkEvents\LINK	NetworkEvents
Error	13164	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\Phase Detector\LINK	Phase Detector
Error	13460	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\SerialInput\LINK	SerialInput
Error	14782	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\BasicSpikeDisplay\LINK	BasicSpikeDisplay
Error	20168	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\PulsePalOutput\LINK	PulsePalOutput
Error	22363	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\SpikeSorter\LINK	SpikeSorter
Error	23601	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\RecordControl\LINK	RecordControl
Error	25986	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\Rectifier\LINK	Rectifier
Error	27601	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\ArduinoOutput\LINK	ArduinoOutput
Error	30429	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\EventBroadcaster\LINK	EventBroadcaster
Error	32039	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'open-ephys.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\BinaryWriter\LINK	BinaryWriter
Error	25177	error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'OpenEphysHDF5Lib.lib'	C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\plugin-GUI\Builds\VisualStudio2013\Plugins\KWIKFormat\LINK	KWIKFormat

Can somebody fix those errors in documentation? And also can you give me an advice on how to build it from the source? Have I missed something?

[MMathisLab]

Possibly related, possibly not, but are you using Anaconda to install? Evidently there was a pathe error recently so lots of users had been experiencing the “DLL ... module not found error” seems installing “conda install msvc_runtime” is fixing it for most.

https://forum.image.sc/t/tensorflow-dlc-2-0-importerror-dll-load-failed-the-specified-module-could-not-be-found/22991

[kouichi-c-nakamura]

Thanks. I've tried this on two PCs; one certainly has Anaconda installed, while I'm not sure about the other one. I'll check that soon.

[aacuevas]

Hi, I'll fix the contradictions in the wiki. I'm probably going to remove the GUI/ parts of the paths, since almost everywhere else we just use folder paths relative to the root (be it GUI. plugin-GUI or however the user wants it renamed)

Regarding your building errors. First, forget about the ecube stuff. That is a very specific plugin that is not even being built by default. I'll probably delete the references to it in the wiki too.

Have you checked that the build options for the GUI and the plugins match? You seem to be building the GUI with Debug|x86 so be sure that the plugins are set to the same (that said, we recommend building both the GUI and plugins for x64)

[jsiegle]

All developer documentation now lives here: https://open-ephys.github.io/gui-docs/Developer-Guide/index.html

Please open an issue in the gui-docs repository if you find any mistakes.