Adding support for string time series - Follow up on #43

[Yida-Lin]

Follow up on #43.

As discussed:

• Removing certain outdated data structures like eventMap and use time_series to handle all types of data.
• As all the data points within a single stream is monotonous, use std::variant<std::vector<...>> instead of std::vector<std::variant<...>> to be more efficient (avoiding redundant std::visit)
• Other clean ups

[Yida-Lin]

Hi @cbrnr , I have a pending PR to fix SigViewer as well, but I just realized: SigViewer and libbiosig does not compile on Windows. I only have a Windows laptop. How could we do this?

[cbrnr]

Hi @Yida-Lin! SigViewer does compile on Windows just fine, it's only libbiosig that doesn't work. You could either cross-compile it on Linux, or maybe even easier, use a precompiled libbiosig.a for Windows available here.

[Yida-Lin]

Hi @cbrnr , thanks for the info. I gave this a try, but ran into compiling problems. With Qt 6.8 I got:

With Qt 5.14 I got:

In fact, SigViewer documentation says:

Building SigViewer on Windows is currently not supported.

This is the commit where it says "Windows is not supported". I remember back then we ran into this same problem and the conclusion was that we simply removed support for compiling on Windows because there was no straight forward solution.

[cbrnr]

SigViewer unfortunately still requires Qt5, so errors with Qt6 are expected. @schloegl can you help us here?

[cbrnr]

@Yida-Lin have you tried using the binary provided in https://sourceforge.net/projects/biosig/files/BioSig%20for%20C_C%2B%2B/windows/biosig-2.6.2-Windows-64bit.zip/download?

[Yida-Lin]

@cbrnr I downloaded the binaries earlier, but it didn't work. Besides binary, we also had to include headers for biosig, right? I remember several years ago there was only 1 header, libbiosig.h. But apparently right now there are multiple of them, and libbiosig.h references a few other headers. I tried including all of them but don't think they work.

[cbrnr]

Yes, I think you need multiple headers as well as multiple static libraries, all of which should be contained in the download. However, I cannot tell you which files you need to copy to external/lib and external/include (but the output should give you hints).

[Yida-Lin]

OK, let me take another look this weekend.

[schloegl]

SigViewer unfortunately still requires Qt5, so errors with Qt6 are expected. @schloegl can you help us here?

Once you have published libxdf, I can try cross-compiling libxdf and sigviewer for windows.

[cbrnr]

Thanks, that would be great! However, I think it would also be important to be able to directly compile SigViewer on Windows. The only problematic part is libbiosig, which headers and static libraries do we need?

[schloegl]

Thanks, that would be great! However, I think it would also be important to be able to directly compile SigViewer on Windows. The only problematic part is libbiosig, which headers and static libraries do we need?

I guess that is up to you, you can take any that works for you. 32bit and 64bit static and dynamic libs are provided.

[Yida-Lin]

Hi @cbrnr and @schloegl, I gave it another try, but still ran into issues.

I used SigViewer main branch + a stable libxdf commit prior to the recent std::variant changes, but have the following biosig related errors:

I downloaded the binary using @cbrnr 's link above and copied all header files as well as all statically linked binaries into Sigviewer external/ folder.

Would appreciate thoughts, thank you.

[cbrnr]

I think the reason why it previously worked is because when I was still able to compile libbiosig on Windows (using some previous version), I disabled a couple of features in the Makefile. The pre-built binaries have everything enabled, so you might need to link to additional dependencies. For example, the first error (__imp_GetACP) might be related to a missing iconv library.

[Yida-Lin]

Thanks @cbrnr .

So I tried downloading the release of iconv and putting the header and lib into SigViewer, and added the following to the .pro file:

LIBS += \
    -L$$PWD/external/lib \
    -lbiosig -lxdf -liconv

but think I still see the same issue:

[cbrnr]

Well, the GetACP error seems to be gone or no? There are a couple more libs missing, like suitesparse, but I'm not sure biosig will compile on Windows. @schloegl do you have a suggestion on how we can proceed? I'm not liking the fact that because of biosig SigViewer cannot be built on Windows.

[schloegl]

Well, the GetACP error seems to be gone or no? There are a couple more libs missing, like suitesparse, but I'm not sure biosig will compile on Windows. @schloegl do you have a suggestion on how we can proceed? I'm not liking the fact that because of biosig SigViewer cannot be built on Windows.

I suggest to switch to gnu compiler, e.g mingw. In fact, mxe can be used to build sigviewer for windows. So, there is solution - I do not see the need to for an msvc-based build on windows.

[cbrnr]

This is a good idea. Can you try gcc @Yida-Lin?