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Flight Software & Embedded Systems Framework

Troubleshooting

This section will add some known hints to trouble-shooting with the installation of F´. This will hopefully help users install things more effectively.

General

Some of the F´ Python packages are built in a way that it is recommended to install them with modern versions of PIP. Systems not recommended or pip versions less than recommended will require Java and run slower versions of FPP tools. The recommended versions are described below:

System Recommended pip version
macOS (10.9+) >= 21.0.1
x86_64 >= 19.3
aarch64 >= 20.3

fprime-util: command not found

There are at least three common reasons for this error.

  1. If the user is using a virtual environment and receives the ‘command not found’, the problem is likely caused by the environment not being sourced in a new terminal. Make sure to source the environment before running:
     # In MyProject
     . fprime-venv/bin/activate
    
  2. If the project folder was moved after the virtual environment was provisioned (e.g. project was originally setup in /folderA/MyProject and moved to /someOtherFolder/MyProject), various files in the original fprime-venv folder will contain references to the original path. The easiest resolution is to remove and reprovision the virtual environment with the following:
     # In MyProject
     rm -rf fprime-venv
     python -m venv fprime-venv
     . fprime-venv/bin/activate
     pip install -r fprime/requirements.txt
    

    Some projects ship their own requirements.txt. Install using that file if it exists.

  3. If installing without a virtual environment, PIP occasionally uses $HOME/.local/bin as a place to install user tools. Users running without virtual environments should add this directory to the path.

Helper script ‘fpp-redirect-helper’ exited with reason: Permission denied

This error can occur when the helper-script, (fprime/cmake/autocoder/fpp-wrapper/fpp-redirect-helper) loses its execution permission.

To verify that this is the case, change to the directory containing fpp-redirect-helper and verify that it is executable.

cd fprime/cmake/autocoder/fpp-wrapper/
ls -l

If it is not executable, add the permission back.

chmod 700 fpp-redirect-helper

Ubuntu, Debian, Java and Python PIP

Ubuntu and possibly other Debian variants don’t include the pip packages in the default Python 3 installation. To get fully functional, use these commands on Ubuntu and Debian based systems:

sudo apt install git cmake default-jre python3 python3-pip python3-venv

Now you should be able to run the installation without trouble.

macOS and CMake Command Not Found

If the user chooses to install CMake directly from the CMake site (not using homebrew nor Mac Ports), then the CMake command-line tools must be added to the user’s PATH or default system libraries. The quickest command to do that is:

sudo "/Applications/CMake.app/Contents/bin/cmake-gui" --install

More information can be found here.

SSL Error with Python 3.8+ on macOS

This fix will not work for Python installed via Homebrew. Try installing Python published at python.org. The version of openSSL bundled with Python 3.8+ requires access to macOS’s root certificates. If the following error is encountered while installing fprime:

Failed find expected download: <urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get  local issuer certificate

Then run the following command in a macOS terminal to install necessary certificates:

cd /Applications/Python\ 3.X/
./Install\ Certificates.command

After running above command, re-try installing fprime-bootstrap.