Statistics - PSPP 0.6.0

[Dirty D]

Brilliant, thanks. I'm off to code code code away on my ridiculously large .SAV files. THANKS!


Dirty D

[jdackle]

Thanks for starting this thread, gunksta!
Somehow, that first post of yours does not seem to offer a "Thank you" icon right now...
I'll just thank you in some other of your posts in the thread.

In the meantime, I NEED THAT BLOODY FILE! Sorry for the shouting...
(I'll be sending you my e-mail address through PM in a minute. Thanks for the offer. )
I've practically lost tthe last two days trying to compile the darned thing (first time I ever used checkinstall) and to no success!

Worse still, I installs BEAUTIFULLY! But it the resulting .deb package includes nothing but documentation. The checkinstall FAQ, regarding this issue, on Q#2, says:

I ran CheckInstall and everything seems to run fine, but when I check my new package I only find the documentation files!

CheckInstall can't trace (yet) the actions of three kind of binaries:

* SUID programs
* SGID programs
* Statically linked binaries


You may now go to check the binaries you're using in the installation process .

Now, I wouldn't know how to do that check and if I did, chances are I wouldn't know what to do about it.
This is an almost completely-fresh install of Hardy (except for the some 300 updates!), meaning I haven't messed with any system files (yet!) and very little with my personal ones, so...

I'm actually trying to build PSPP-0.6.1, if that matters...

I can't install Intrepid due to my current machine being apparently incopatible with it and that's why I installed Hardy instead and will keep it for a good while.

I also do hate to keep source-directories, for package/program maintenance, so the .deb file would be great!

Also, as I probably will keep using Hardy for a long time, I need to have a way to keep updating my PSPP install as it is updated upstream...

Can anyone help me out with this?

TIA

[ahmatti]

Have you tried the debs in this site: http://www.getdeb.net/app/PSPP ?

[jdackle]

Have you tried the debs in this site: http://www.getdeb.net/app/PSPP ?

Darn! There were none for Hardy just a couple days ago!

Thanks a lot!

[gunksta]

I guess I should update the name of this thread. Oh well.

Compiling PSPP isn't hard (compared to monsters like OpenOffice.org) but there are still several "gotchas".

The text below can also be found in the INSTALL file from the source download.

The following packages are required to install PSPP:

* An ANSI C compiler and tool chain. On Unix-like systems, we
recommend GCC, but any modern compilation environment should
work. On Microsoft Windows, Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) and
MinGW (http://www.mingw.org/) are known to work.

* The GNU Scientific Library (http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/),
version 1.6 or later, including libgslcblas included with GSL.

* Perl (http://www.perl.org/), version 5.005_03 or later. Perl is
required during build but not after installation.

* iconv, which should be installed as part of a Unix-like system.
If you don't have a version already, you can install GNU
libiconv (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/).

The following package is required to enable PSPP's graphing features.
If you cannot arrange to install it, you must run `configure' with
--without-libplot.

* libplot, from GNU plotutils
(http://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils/).

The following packages are required to enable PSPPIRE, the graphical
user interface for PSPP. If you cannot install them or do not wish to
use the GUI, you must run `configure' with --without-gui.

* pkg-config (http://pkg-config.freedesktop.org/wiki/). Versions
0.18 and 0.19 have a bug that will prevent library detection,
but other versions should be fine.

* GTK+ (http://www.gtk.org/), version 2.12.0 or later.

* libglade (http://www.jamesh.id.au/software/libglade/), version
2.6 or later.

Installing the following packages will allow your PSPP binary to read
Gnumeric files.

* pkg-config (http://pkg-config.freedesktop.org/wiki/). Versions
0.18 and 0.19 have a bug that will prevent library detection,
but other versions should be fine.

To cross-compile PSPP, you will likely need to set the
PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR environment variable to point to an
appropriate pkg-config for the cross-compilation environment.

* zlib (http://www.zlib.net/).

* libxml2 (http://xmlsoft.org/).

The following packages are optional.

* libncurses (http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/). Without it,
PSPP will assume it is running in an 80x25 terminal.

* libreadline and libhistory
(http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html). Without
them, interactive command editing and history features in the
text-based user interface will be disabled.

* Texinfo (http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/), version 4.7 or
later. Installing Texinfo will allow you to build PSPP
documentation in PostScript or PDF format.

* libpq, from Postgresql (http://postgresql.org). This enables PSPP
to read Postgresql databases.


You MUST install BOTH the libraries referenced here AND the -dev libraries. If you don't, it won't work. As I recall, I also installed all of the perl packages related to the above packages. Perl isn't a run-time requirement, but it is used in the config process, and it seemed to get rid of an error during the 0.6.0 era. It may or may not be absolutely necessary now. I know I have the stuff installed and I don't get errors on my compiles.

Before using this tool, PLEASE read the PSPP manual found at:
http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/documentation.html

PSPP is not a finished product and it does have a few bugs. If you are turning things in for a grade, or the results matter, you need to be aware of the tool's limitations. All stats tools have limitations. It is our job, as users to be aware of these limitations.

Enjoy.

If you try to compile, and it doesn't work please post what you were doing AND the error you received. I also find it easier to do a ./config, then a make, and then a sudo make install. AFTER this all finishes without any errors, then I run checkinstall and I install the resulting .deb file. By removing the .deb file I get all of the advantages of using checkinstall and it makes it easier to know if the error I am getting is because of checkinstall or if it is because of my compilation.

[jashk]

Brilliant!
Thank you so much mates!
Following all your posts I'm finally able to use pspp!!!
Spss was one of the last software that made me a "slave" of windows, but not anymore!!!
It was very useful for me finding the .deb package and finding that "psppire" was the command to run with gui...
Again: Thank you so much!
Muchas gracias!!

[gunksta]

jashk -- What version of Ubuntu are you using? Your profile claims Hardy, which may or may not be true today (I forget to update that too).

The last few versions, including Lucid, include PSPP in the repos and the psppire icon is cleanly integrated in the menu. If you are still on Hardy, I would consider updating.

You can install pspp/psppire via Synaptic/Add & Remove OR with the command:

 sudo apt-get install pspp

Glad you are enjoying PSPP.

[shuttleworthwannabe]

Thanks I just downloaded from repo's (added the ppa first), and it looks great. I tested it on one of my very large datasets (10,000+ columns and 30,000 rows (records), and it computed basic descriptives without a glitch!

Any idea when more features like logistic regression will be added to the GUI menus? Can these be done using syntax in the mean time?

[gunksta]

I don't know what the developer's plans are, but you can ask them on the PSPP mailing list. Glancing at the current PSPP Manual, it doesn't look like logit models are possible yet. But, according to the developer's site, Factor Analysis is now in trunk. I realize this is not very useful if you want to do logistic regression, but it is progress.

[shuttleworthwannabe]

Cool thanks--at least the development on this app has started getting momentum.