Solution for Adafruit PITFT and Pygame on Raspbian Buster

[hifi]

The current version of the Pygame library leverages libsdl1.2. The version of the libsdl1.2 on Raspbian Buster OS has the issues with touchscreens. One of the solutions is to build that library with proper touchscreen support. This solution was suggested by Gerhard the author of BANNED https://forum-raspberrypi.de/forum/thre ... tron-radio On his behalf I'm creating this post hoping that it will be also helpful for other developers.

You can either download the patched libsdl1.2 package from the Gerhard's Dropbox account:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0tkdym8ojhcmb ... _armhf.deb
and then install the package by running the following command:

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sudo dpkg -i libsdl1.2debian_1.2.15+veloci1-1_armhf.deb

Or you can build that library yourself by following these steps:
1. Install libts-dev

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sudo apt install libts-dev

2. Get the required packages

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wget http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libs/libsdl1.2/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2.orig.tar.gz
wget http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libs/libsdl1.2/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2-4.debian.tar.xz

3. Extract the packages

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tar xvzf libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2.orig.tar.gz
cd SDL-1.2.15
tar xvfJ ../libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2-4.debian.tar.xz

4. Install libSDL dependencies (can be found in debian/control)

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sudo apt install libx11-dev libxext-dev libxt-dev libxv-dev x11proto-core-dev libpulse-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libasound2-dev libcaca-dev libglu1-mesa-dev

5. Install packages for building .deb-packages

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sudo apt install build-essential debhelper

6. Add libts-dev to the "Build-Depends:"-section and to the "Depends:"-section for "Package: libsdl1.2-dev" in /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/debian/control
7. Remove the "opts="-line in /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/debian/watch so that it looks like this:

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# run "uscan --report" to check or "gpb import-orig --uscan" to update
version=4
https://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-([\d.]+)\.tar\.(?:gz|bz2|xz|lzma)

8. Edit /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/debian/changelog (add to top)

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libsdl1.2 (1.2.15+veloci1-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * re-add support for libts
  
 -- veloci <veloci@gmx.de>  Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:12:13 +0200
 

9. Rename libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2.orig.tar.gz to libsdl1.2_1.2.15+veloci1.orig.tar.gz

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mv /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2.orig.tar.gz /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+veloci1.orig.tar.gz

10. Build the whole thing (in folder /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15)

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debian/rules clean
dpkg-source -b .
debian/rules build

11. Create the packages (in folder /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15)

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fakeroot debian/rules binary

12. Install new package

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cd ..
sudo dpkg -i libsdl1.2debian_1.2.15+veloci1-1_armhf.deb

Many thanks to Gerhard for the suggested solution!

[SuperNinjaFat64]

Thank you for posting this fix! I used it a month ago and it worked like a charm!

However, today I found that the link on Gerhard's Dropbox account (https://www.dropbox.com/s/0tkdym8ojhcmb ... _armhf.deb) doesn't work anymore.
I also followed your instructions on building the library myself and I ran into errors at step 10, specifically:

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dpkg-source -b .

returns as:

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dpkg-source: error: can't build with source format '3.0 (quilt)': no upstream tarball found at ../libsdl1.2_1.2.15+veloci1.orig.tar.{bz2,gz,lzma,xz}

**** EDIT *** Fixed. Initially, I accidentally rewrote the filename as "veloci1" with an "l" instead of a "1".

Thanks!
-Super

[bobthechemist]

Thank you for this information. As of March 2020, the package install option is working wonderfully.

[jumpzero]

Hi!

I can confim: it works. Thanks a lot for publishing that.

As of 01/April/2020 with Raspbian lite Buster and PiTFT 2.8” resistive on a Pi 1 Rev2

1st: adafruit easy-install script still works with Buster.
Download latest Raspbian lite, burn it on the SD, boot the Pi, apt update, apt upgrade, then run adafruit easy-install. At this stage the screen is working.

2nd: install pygame. As explained by hifi here above the touch part of the touchscreen isn’t working because of libsdl1.2. The solution given by hifi worked perfectly for me. I tried both, first: download the deb package from Dropbox and second: (because I like to do it myself) build the package. Both works.
However I would like to share my experience for others to avoid the traps while building the package:

Details for Step 6:
6.1 Add “libts-dev” to the "Build-Depends:"-section at the top of /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/debian/control
6.2 Add “libts-dev” to the "Depends:"-section for "Package: libsdl1.2-dev" at the bottom of /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/debian/control
But for both don't forget to put the comma (as I did) at the end of previous item in the list.
Part of the top after the modification:

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...
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 11~),
               nasm [any-i386],
               libx11-dev, 
               libxext-dev,
               libxt-dev,
               libxv-dev,
               x11proto-core-dev,
               libpulse-dev,
               libgl1-mesa-dev,
               libasound2-dev [linux-any],
               libcaca-dev,
               libusbhid-dev [kfreebsd-any],
               libglu1-mesa-dev,
               libts-dev
Vcs-Git: https://salsa.debian.org/sdl-team/libsdl1.2.git
...

and part of the bottom after the modification:

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...
Package: libsdl1.2-dev
Architecture: any
Section: libdevel
Depends: ${misc:Depends},
         libsdl1.2debian (= ${binary:Version}),
         libasound2-dev [linux-any],
         libcaca-dev,
         libglu1-mesa-dev | libglu-dev,
         libpulse-dev,
         libusbhid-dev [kfreebsd-any],
         libx11-dev,
         libxext-dev,
         libts-dev
Replaces: libsdl-dev
...

I also found in step 9 the path is to correct:
replace:

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mv /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2.orig.tar.gz /home/pi/SDL-1.2.15/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+veloci1.orig.tar.gz

by:

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mv /home/pi/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+dfsg2.orig.tar.gz /home/pi/libsdl1.2_1.2.15+veloci1.orig.tar.gz

Thanks again for sharing
--
Jmp0