Association Subscribers Manager and Open source stuffs

Association Subscribers Manager under Sourceforge's lights

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:38:00 +0100

Hi,

A bit after the Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 release, I was contacted by Lee Schlesinger from Sourceforge.net for an interview about Association Subscribers Manager. The result of this interview is available here:

http://sourceforge.net/blog/along-comes-association-subscribers-manager/

You can learn some fresh things about the futur of Association Subscribers Manager. Speaking of that, I currently have a very interesting conversation with a French association (I'll put the link in the comment after asking for the permission) and the person I'm talking with have lots of good ideas that will be implemented in the next release (mostly because I should have had those ideas before the release).

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 is out !

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:03:00 +0100

I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Association Subscribers Manager 3.1 !

This one is a major bugfixe version and feature improvement of Association Subscribers Manager.

I want to particularly thanks all testers for their feedback and welcome a new member in the team : Márcio Moraes.

You can download packages and installer at :

https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

You can also visit the website for more information :

http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.1

- add theme feature

- add custom fields feature

- add more compilation macros to help packagers

- huge settings system code rewrite to make it simplier

- GUI changes to reflect settings update

- fix a bug wich was refreshing the edit fields and the main list view many times, causing the keyboard cursor to be sent at the end of an edit line at each typed characters

- fix a character encoding problem in mail sending

- fix and improve the updater/download manager

Association Subscribers Manager is available as a source package (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD*, Windows, require a compiler), binary package for Linux and windows installer.

Enjoy !

NOTE: more packages are to come in the upcoming hours/days.

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 new release date

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:24:00 +0100

Hi,

after a look at the auto-updater issue, I found out that the problem is deeper than I first thought. Mainly built on the QHttp class, this updater's architecture is old and poorly done. I will re-code it before releasing anything.

So the new (estimated) release date is the 22th of February. This date is a maximum and I could release it before if the work is finished and tested earlier.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 release delayed

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:18:00 +0100

Hi,

Due to issues in the auto-updater, the release of Association Subscribers Manager is delayed at least until tomorrow. Stay tuned for more informations.

Arnaud Dupuis

New feature in 3.1: splitted user settings

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:34:00 +0100

Hi,

Today I will continue to unveil Association Subscribers Manager new features. Actually it is not really a new feature, it is more an improvement.

Anyway, settings was sure a hard part in previous version of Association Subscribers Manager, until now ! Started with the 3.1 version, ladies and gentlemen, behold the new simplicity of the settings system ! Basically settings have been splitted in two : association settings and application ones. They are both accessible through the toolbar.

The idea is to make users life more simple by presenting only relevant informations. What I mean is : when you want to add a new activity with new fees, you do not really care about the locales of the application. So even if the amount of options have not decrease (actually, with custom fields, it increased) the settings system is more easy to use. Mainly because there is now only 3 or 4 tabs of settings instead of 8 !

That is certainly not the killing feature of the 3.1 version of Association Subscribers Manager but it sure will make life easier for many people. Here is some screenshots of the new settings organisation :

Application settings:

(please note that in those screenshots Association Subscribers Manager was not compiled with the updater support so the "Updates" tab is missing).

Association settings:

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 BETA1 released

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:34:00 +0100

Hi,

The first beta version of Association Subscribers Manager version 3.1 have just been released ! Has usual, you can find files and bug tracker/feature requests tracker at :

You can download packages and installer at :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

This version features many changes and the most important are:

add theme feature
add custom fields feature
add more compilation macros to help packagers
huge settings system code rewrite to make it simpler
GUI changes to reflect settings update
many bugfixes

I would like to use this release announcement to welcome and thanks Márcio Moraes for his work on the Brazilian Portuguese translation. He is the new official maintainer of this translation. Welcome aboard matey !

For the moment only the source packages is available, windows and GNU/Linux installers will comes later. As usual, this beta version's translation and documentation are not up-to-date, they will be in the stable release 2 weeks from now.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis & the Association Subscribers Manager team.

New feature in 3.1: Custom fields

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +0100

Hi,

First of all, happy birthday blog ! This is the 100th post of this blog ! Woohoo ! Ok then if it's a birthday I have to come with something big and nice... Let's say custom fields in Association Subscribers Manager !

The first beta version of Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 will be out in few hours and will have a long requested feature : custom fields. The principle is that there is a bunch of pre-defined fields in Association Subscribers Manager and they cover a large scale of classical associations/clubs needs, but they certainly cannot covers for all the needs of every users. So for this users, it is now possible to add user defined fields and to use them like any other fields in Association Subscribers Manager.

Custom fields can be of many types:

"One line text" : create a one line input field (based on a QLineEdit)
"Multiple line text" : create a multiple line input field (based on a QTextEdit)
"Date selector" : create a date input field with popup calendar (based on a QDateEdit)
"Ok/Not ok combobox" : create a yes/no combo box with editable label (based on QComboBox)
"Multiple value selector" : create a free combo box with customizable items (also based on a QComboBox)
"Fee field" : create a fee input field, fee being a floating point number (based on a QDoubleSpinBox)

All those fields are 100% customizable and can be used (after an application restart) directly in the subscriber's edition part of Association Subscribers Manager. You can also follow everyday news through Twitter.

Check this video for an introduction:

Until the official release of Association Subscribers Manager, I will feed you with videos and screenshots of the new features of the 3.1 version.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager and KDE

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:36:00 +0100

Hi,

I was ask today if I have plan to better integrate Association Subscribers Manager with KDE. Since the answer can be of interest for other people that the person who asked me, I will (also) answer here.

First, Association Subscribers Manager is designed and developed to be multi-platform (GNU/Linux, *BSD, MS windows and Apple's Mac OS X). On some of the supported platforms, KDE is not really widely installed. And amongst the target audience of Association Subscribers Manager there are people who are far from being geeks. Those are facts.

In the other hand, I am a firm supporter of KDE, I use it everyday both at home and at work and I would like to integrate Association Subscribers Manager a lot more into KDE.

So, to answer the question : I will do it and make it possible to enable at compile time. At least until I made a clear evaluation of KDE on windows and mac os X (since I have no windows nor mac boxes, I am not friendly with those platforms and the state of KDE on them).

But considering the road things are taking it is likely that Association Subscribers Manager will get a better KDE integration before it's 3.3 release...

Arnaud Dupuis

Happy new year and updates

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:39:00 +0100

Hi,

First things comes first : happy new year ! I wish you all the best for this 2010 year (a bit late... as usual).

Then, after a quick come back to my Perl modules, I now am back to Association Subscribers Manager ! Things have changed a lot on this side. First, the settings' user interface was to complicated so it have been split in two : association's settings and application settings. During this part of the work Association Subscribers Manager got a highly requested feature : the custom fields.

Custom fields are user defined input fields. This feature, as well with the settings part are all implemented and I now only need to fix some remaining bugs before the release. This "release" thing leads me to another point : the initial release plan was out of scale. Current changes are already lots of changes and I would like to not confuse Association Subscribers Manager's users with to many changes. And, by the way, it took me so much time to get all those working that the next release will occur next year if I keep waiting for the perfect finished program ! So the 3.1 release will feature 2 main things/changes :

a complete re-organisation of the settings mechanism (under the hood as well as user interface)
the brand new custom fields mechanism

I will post again about this specific feature (custom fields) soon.

Arnaud Dupuis

Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps v0.4 is out !

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:56:00 +0100

Hi,

After many months (years...) Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps have a new release ! The original company which paid me to develop this module have bankrupted so I resumed the work on this module on my free time. It took some time...

This version introduce the new Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps::Response object, fix for the user agent, documentation, a better test suite and many improvements. It also brings a major change in the API which will require you to update your scripts. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the changes since the 0.2 version (well... 0.3, 0.3.1 and 0.3.2 were kind of tests... and thanks to Slaven Rezic and RT it's now stable) :

Huge API change : geocode() now returns a Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps::Response ;
Documentation update ;
KML update (KML 2.2 with ExtendedData support)
many bug fixes.

I hope this will meet requirements and needs concerning geocoding with Perl.

Arnaud Dupuis

Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps got its own Google code

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:34:00 +0100

Hi,

I am resuming the work I did more than one year ago on some of my Perl modules. I don't know why but I got tired of Perl coding (certainly because I did a lot of Perl in my professional life). But in holidays, before or after snowboarding, Perl looks fun again ! After updating my Games::CroqueMonsters module, I resumed the work on Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps.

I looked at the CPAN's RT, noted bugs and feature requests and start working again on this module. Then I though that it would be nice to have a code repository for this work. Being a Sourceforge fan I tough about it first, but the over long new project form convinced me that it was not the right choice. So I gave Google Code a chance, and fortunately it do the job pretty well ! So, the new place to find development code for the Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps Perl module is here :

http://code.google.com/p/geo-coder-googlemaps/

Do not hesitate to drop by and even do/request a code review !

Arnaud Dupuis

How to install Google Chrome on Slackware 13 GNU/Linux

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:10:00 +0100

Hi,

The topic have been treated already on the internet but since the official build of Google Chrome only landed few hours ago, some extra informations and "re-post" cannot be bad.

So ! Google Chrome is not packaged for Slackware GNU/Linux distributions, well... That's not completely unexpected. And it is not packaged as a universal GNU/Linux binary either, which is more troublesome. Anyway here is my 2 ways to install Google Chrome on Slackware 13.

Important: I made everything on my EeePC (since I'm currently in holidays snowboarding in the French Alps) which runs a Slackware 13 x86, but everything should be exactly the same on Slackware64. I also have to warn you about my own install method : it's dirty and not especially quick

Method 1:

My own method, it's what I used to install Chrome as soon as I got the Google's email telling me the beta version of Chrome official Linux build was out in the wild ! So it's pretty dirty, and not the quickest way to do it. It's how I installed it even before thinking about looking at the web to see if something have been done by somebody else. You have been warned.

So first, download the Fedora RPM (32 or 64 bits), then run rpm2tgz :

su -c "rpm2tgz google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm"

Then install the resulting package. Do not waste your time to launch it, it will not start. For me the first reason is : I have not installed seamonkey and I miss the libnss3, so a quick sprint to slackbuilds.org and I had the mozilla-nss package installed (compiling and installing a package from a slackbuild script is very well documented on slackbuilds.org).

Almost, but it does not launch... The reason is, some poor links against libnss3. Well, at this point, I know I will not back off ! Let's shoot some ln shots !

ln -s /usr/lib/libnss3.so /usr/lib/libnss3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libnssutil3.so /usr/lib/libnssutil3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libsmime3.so /usr/lib/libsmime3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libssl3.so /usr/lib/libssl3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libplds4.so /usr/lib/libplds4.so.0d

ln -s /usr/lib/libplc4.so /usr/lib/libplc4.so.0d

ln -s /usr/lib/libnspr4.so /usr/lib/libnspr4.so.0d

If you are running a Slackware 64, just replace /usr/lib/ by /usr/lib64/ and if you are using this way to install Google Chrome, bookmark this post to be able to clean your system

If you are not very fond of the manual linking (you are a wise person), please follow the Method 2 !

Method 2:

Well, the result is the same : you will get a working Google Chrome. The path to this result is considerably easiest and quickest (given the fact you have libnss3 on your system) :

Go to slackbuilds.org and get the Google Chrome slackbuild, install it (please refer to Method 1 for the link to the howto use a slackbuild).

That's all !

As a conclusion I would say that there is the equivalent of Method 1 for the Debian 5 package, but the Slackbuild do it better than I care to explain

Enjoy Google Chrome and do not hesitate to give your feedback on it in the comments. So far for me, the difference in performance and CPU usage with Firefox on my EeePC is amazing ! I could barely run 4 tabs in Firefox, and look at the screenshot ! With 9 opened tabs it's still amazingly fast ! I will benchmark it against Fennec soon !

Arnaud Dupuis

New version for Games::CroqueMonster

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:17:00 +0100

Hi,

this weekend I have put online a new version of my Perl module Games::CroqueMonster. This version is still for the 0.8.1 API (since there is no update of the API on the server side) but fixes some issues in the documentation. Mainly I fixed typos and examples.

The new version is installable via the cpan tool :

cpan Games::CroqueMonster

You can also download it on CPAN :

http://search.cpan.org/~dupuisarn/Games-CroqueMonster-0.8.1-2/

Arnaud Dupuis

Back from the deads

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:59:00 +0100

Hi,
once again I gave no news for a while... My bad, but this time I have tons of good reasons !
First, my wife and me are awaiting an "happy event", this kept me busy.
Moreover, I work a lot (and I really mean a lot). I am currently in mission for Orange (European ISP, phone carrier, etc.) where I am technical project manager/coordinator (and developer) on their next set-top box. Believe me it is a lot of work.
The box is the next Intel's STB based on the Sodaville processor, my team and I are developping/integrating lots of cool stuff in this box like a full browser with Flash 10, a video game portal (from Transgaming), and a full bluray player. All those features are well presented in a brand new 3D GUI (thanks to Intel's plateform performances ! See around 1'45 of the video).

Well, all this kept me out of the web for a while but that do not means I have not coded anything ! So on Association Subscribers Manager's side, there was some changes too :

theme feature is fully functionnal and fully supported
flash plugin have been activated in the help browser and a new entry in the help menu allows you to directly the YouTube help channel in Association Subscribers Manager
lots of compilation options added like the possibility for packagers to not compile all code related to the updater
initial work on the custom fields editor

I will soon post a screen cast of all those new features to show you guys the reality behind the words ! You can of course test all this by compiling the code from the trunk.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Portuguese Brazilian translation update !

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:25:00 +0200

Hi,

After Daniel's recent update on the Swedish translation, it is now the Portuguese Brazilian translation's turn to be updated.

This allow me to introduce a new contributor to Association Subscribers Manager: Márcio Moraes (marciopanto <atnospam> gmail <dotnospam> com). Márcio have updated Diego's initial work on the Portuguese Brazilian translation. And what update ! All the interface is now available localized for Brazilian users ! Thank you very much Márcio. Here are some screenshots:

I don't know if you all know how important those contributions are, but they really are and they really count for me and all users of Association Subscribers Manager.

Once again, thanks to all the contributors !

Arnaud Dupuis.

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0.1 is out !

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:41:00 +0200

I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Association Subscribers Manager 3.0.1 !
This one is a major bugfixe version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks all testers for their feedback and particularly two of them : Fabrice Eyraud for all his bug reports and his French translation of the documentation and the French association Forme et Santé (from La Couture Boussey) for the feedback on live usage they did.

You can download packages and installer at :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

You can also visit the website for more information :
http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org

Here is a list of the main changes :
Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0.1
- integration of the patches from Sascha Manns and David Haller from OpenSUSE packaging team
- fix a bug in the re-translation of the UI's tooltips
- fix a bug in the passive message system (messages still visible after being hidden if the window is made biggest)
- fix a bug in the federation editor (see bug 2848046 on the tracker)
- fix a bug in the search feature
- fix a bug in the mail sending system
- add French documentation translated by Fabrice Eyraud
- made packagers life easier by adding an install target to the Makefile and possibility to configure the install destination (see README file).

Association Subscribers Manager is available as a source package (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD*, Windows, require a compiler), binary package for Linux and windows installer.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

New release in the pipe !

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:37:00 +0200

Hi,

The current 3.0.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager have been found with some important bugs. I am working right now to provide as fast as possible (so far it will be later on today) a fix version of Association Subscribers Manager. This 3.0.1 release will include the following fixes :

integration of the patches from the OpenSUSE packagers (Sascha Manns and David Haller)
a fix for the tooltips re-translation bug
a fix for the bug in the passive message system (still visible after being closed)
a fix for the huge bug in the federation editor
a fix for the search features button's bug
and a fix for the email sending window

This is quite a huge update since it fixes many bugs. This is not the complete list of changes but this is the main thing you will get working (a lot) better after you get the upgrade.

Stay tuned !

Arnaud Dupuis

[Howto] Comment faire fonctionner le répondeur visuel de SFR sur n'importe quelle ROM d'Android ou n'importe quel smartphone.

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:45:00 +0200

Hi,

This post will be in French since it only is relevant for French people using an Android smartphone with the French carrier SFR.

Bonjour à toi visiteur !

Si toi aussi tu es grand, beau, fort et intelligent, félicitation ! Tu as donc un smartphone sous Android. C'est bien mais... Je sens que tu me cache quelque chose... Ah ! Mais c'est bien sur ! Tu es chez SFR ! Ne t'en veux pas trop, nous sommes plusieurs à avoir fait ce choix, judicieux (haem...), pour pouvoir avoir un HTC Magic tout beau tout neuf.

Visiteur, si toi aussi tu as un magic avec une ROM qui n'est pas celle d'origine, ou que tu n'as pas de Magic mais que tu es chez SFR, et si tu veux utiliser le répondeur visuel quand même, lit la suite ! (Si tu veux la gloire, la fortune et l'honneur tu peux aussi lire la suite mais je ne garantit pas l'efficacité, d'autant que si tu es l'heureux possesseur d'un téléphone sous Android tu as déjà tous cela).

Donc voilà, SFR fait parfois (qui a dit "souvent" !?) des choix qui laisse rêveur. Par exemple, un jour, à une foire à tout / brocante dans le Gers, SFR a troqué tout ses designer (et ceux de 9telecom) contre 763 Kg de courgettes... Du coup maintenant, c'est le laveur de carreaux qui fait le design des applis SFR. Voilà pourquoi SFR ne sort que de très très laid "design" rouge et blanc tout carré.

Une autre fois, par mesquinerie pour se venger d'Orange qui avait sortit un smartphone sous Android en premier, SFR a réservé l'accès à son service de répondeur visuel aux seuls possesseur de HTC Magic ! Et malgrès des commentaires assassin sur le market, aucune mise à jour corrigeant ce trait de caractère pour le moins singulier d'une application qui, sinon, serait tout à fait honorable (exception faite du design) n'est disponible.

Heureusement, le tableau n'est pas si noir : une solution existe et celle-ci te permettra, cher visiteur, d'utiliser toi aussi cette application bien pratique.

Viennent maintenant les traditionnelles mises en garde : en suivant ce how-to, vous allez touchez à des fichiers système d'Android. Ceci est une opération périlleuse (d'aucun dirais "dangereuse") qui peut faire du mal à votre smartphone. Bref, si vous cassez votre Android, ce n'est pas de ma faute ! Je décline toute responsabilité en cas de pépin te forçant, cher visiteur, a réinstallé ton système voir pire.

Ceci dit en avant ! Ah au fait, il vous faut un smartphone rooté pour pouvoir mettre en place ce how-to.

Le contexte : j'ai récemment installé une ROM CyanogenMod 4.0.2 sur mon Magic. Problème, le numéro de modèle du téléphone est "T-Mobile mytouch 3G", et comme de juste, le répondeur visuel de SFR ne veut pas se lancer :

Premier constat, je suis sur un Magic, et l'appli ne le détecte pas. Donc le test doit être succin voir même simpliste. Et ça l'est. Il suffit de modifier le numéro de modèle dans le fichier /system/build.prop. Dans mon cas (CyanogenMod 4.0.2) il faut modifier le /system/build.sapphire.prop.

Note: dans la suite, les commandes à taper peuvent être suivit de mes commentaires (à ne pas taper) entre parenthèses.

Dans un premier temps, récupérer ledit fichier (visiteur, n'oublie pas de brancher ton smartphone à ton ordinateur préalablement à toute manipulation. Sans cela tu t'expose à un cuisant échec) :

adb pull /system/build.prop build.prop adb pull /system/build.sapphire.prop build.sapphire.prop (pour les utilisateurs de ROM CyanogenMod 4.0.2) cp build.prop build.prop.backup (car on est jamais trop prudent) cp build.sapphire.prop build.sapphire.prop.backup (même punition)

Une fois les fichiers sur votre ordinateur éditez les (avec un éditeur qui supporte les retours à la ligne UNIX pour les BillGatesiens). Les clés à changer/ajouter sont les suivantes (dans le fichier build.sapphire.prop pour les CyanogenMod-addict et dans le build.prop pour les autres) :

ro.product.model=HTC Magic ro.product.brand=generic ro.product.name=htc_sapphire ro.product.device=sapphire ro.product.board=sapphire ro.product.manufacturer=HTC ro.product.locale.language=fr ro.product.locale.region=FR ro.board.platform=msm7k ro.build.product=sapphire

Vous devriez en avoir un certain nombre déjà présentes. A mon humble avis, seul le ro.product.model est vraiment important. Maintenant il ne reste qu'a remettre le fichier en place :

adb remount adb push build.sapphire.prop /system/build.sapphire.prop (pour les utilisateurs d'une ROM CyanogenMod) adb push build.prop /system/build.prop (pour les autres) reboot

Et après le reboot, vous devriez, une larme à l'oeil, pouvoir utiliser SFR Répondeur visuel. Cool isn't it ?

Quelques remarques en vrac. Ce petit "truc" devrait pouvoir permettre aux utilisateurs de Hero et de Dream d'utiliser le répondeur visuel. Attention, modifier l'identité peut (va) certainement avoir des effets de bords sur le reste de votre téléphone (pour ne citer que ça : HTC fait peut être le même genre de test dans l'interface du Hero). Dans tous les cas, n'oubliez pas de faire un backup de votre build.prop ou build.sapphire.prop ! Mon petit truc n'a pas été testé sur d'autre smartphone ou ROM que le HTC Magic 32B avec une ROM CyanogenMod 4.0.2, tout autre configuration est donc à tester avec précautions. N'hésitez pas à laisser le résultat de vos tests dans les commentaires.

Les informations nécessaires à ce petit "truc" ont été récupéré un peut partout sur le net, mais particulièrement sur les forum dédiés à la ROM SPF.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

New video tutorial and new YouTube group !

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:33:00 +0200

Hi !

Back from my holidays I resumed works on Association Subscribers Manager :

Here is the new (English) video tutorial which covers the presentation of the Federation Editor (watch on You Tube).

And here is the new You Tube group that I created to promote Association Subscribers Manager (See on You Tube).

About the code, I have made some patches to fix little issues in the 3.0 version (like a re-translation bug for example), I need to backport them and hunt for some more bugs and I'll release a bugfix version (3.0.1) of Association Subscribers Manager.
See you later !
Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager got its OpenSUSE 11.1 package

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:25:00 +0200

Hi,

Thanks to Sascha Manns Association Subscribers manager is now packaged for OpenSUSE 11.1 ! The package is available here, the 1-Click install is here, and the repository is available here.

I am very grateful to Sascha and David Haller for their work and their patches. I will integrate their patches upstream and maintains them (if needed).

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 is out !

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:28:00 +0200

Hi,

I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 !
This one is the first stable version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks all testers for their feedback and particularly two of them : Lucie Moore-Dupuis, my wife who was a great help with user interface tests and who successfully bears with my Open Source obsession ! The second one is Patrick Dupuis, my father who is the one who came with the original idea of Association Subscribers Manager (it was originally developed because his own association was in need of a software like this... it helps a lot when your son is actually a developer) and gave some very useful advices about the version 3.0.

You can download packages and installer at :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

You can also have a look to the website to find more documentation, videos and screenshots :
http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org

Here is a list of the main changes :
Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0

Branch main changes from 2.1.2 are :
- software completely recoded from Perl/Qt3 to C++/Qt4
- more efficient database file format
- huge performance improvement
- brand new UI
- more powerfull addon system
- internationalization support

Releases main changes are :
* Translations:
Association Subscribers Manager now supports the following languages :
- Romanian (Lucian Lupescu - http://lucianlupescu.co.cc/)
- Swedish (Daniel Persson)
- Brazilian Portuguese (Diego Ferreira)
- French (Arnaud Dupuis)
- English (Arnaud Dupuis)

* Software changes (from 3.0rc1):
- fix many bugs (please see the bugtracker at Sourceforge for a complete list of corrected bugs)
- many UI fixes
- new federations files
- new first run wizard
- fix many real time data reload bugs
- new system for in-place edition
- performance improvement
- federations and license systems now works properly (with new and old database format, new format have been changed a little)
- brand new UI graphical effects
- new user documentation
- complete API documentation
- in-place edition system have been polished

Association Subscribers Manager is available as a source package (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD*, Windows, require a compiler), binary package for Linux and windows installer.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release postponed

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:34:00 +0200

Hi,

I am falling asleep in front of my computer... Release 3.0 is ready but I have not enough remaining power to test all packages extensively tonight, so the release of Association Subscribers Manager is postponed until tomorrow.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager release day

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:45:00 +0200

Hi,

Today is the Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release day, so the entire day is dedicated to integration, last translations, last bugfixes, last documentation efforts, packaging and testing !

Let's hope the release will occur without any problem, but I'm quite confident about bugs and software issues. All possible problems may comes from the other part of Association Subscribers Manager : uncomplete documentation, packaging issues, uncomplete translations but somehow, we will manage to deliver a nice piece of software !

Arnaud Dupuis.

New video and updates

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:26:00 +0200

Hi !

I posted a new video about the AssumaEffect class super powers on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltABJbAW0Do.

This one show the use of 2 effects combined and control thanks to the signals and slots of this class. This will allow more eye candy in the futur but for the moment that will be all. Indeed I had a support request on Sourceforge's tracker wich pointed some bugs to fix. So since I still have to write user documentation, I will clearly focus on bug hunting in the next few days.

By the way, for you that read this blog and use Twitter there is a #Assuma hashtag for Association Subscribers Manager on Twitter !

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Update, progress and release date.

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:09:00 +0200

Hi,

I have been quite lazy on blog update recently... Sorry for that. In the other hand I was not for the development of Association Subscribers Manager !

First, I fixed lots of the remaining problems and at the top of the list was the license system which gave me headaches ! It is now the past and it cost only a little change in the susbcribers database file format (.adb). Changes in the source code are heavy (of course...) but the good news is : it do not break backward compatibility with development releases !

Talking about release, the Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release will be on the 25th of july. It lets enough time for writting user documentation and to polish translations.

There is lots of changes I would like to talk about (the new possibility to print the database, the new first-run-wizard, etc.) but today is my first wedding birthday so I will give time to my wife instead of OSS for once

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

How to get the version number of your Slackware distro ?

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:30:00 +0200

Hi,

This question seams to bother some peoples because it is one of the top queries which leads geeks from Google to my blog. So since, I don't want to let this question unanswered here is one answer :

In a terminal, type:

cat /etc/slackware-version

Although it is not very reliable if the Slackware is in sync with current or current64.

That's all for today, see you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

New Association Subscribers Manager's website !

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:48:00 +0200

Hi,

After months of thinking, after months spent telling myself "you should do it", I did it ! (at last...)

Association Subscribers Manager now have its own website available at :
http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org/

On this website, you will find everything you need about Association Subscribers Manager like information on development, roadmap, download links, contributors list and contacts, announcements, and so on and so forth.

You will also find the user documentation on this website... as soon as it is done...

Well, give it a try and you'll see by yourself !

Arnaud Dupuis

Here it comes : AssumaEffect unleashed !

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:25:00 +0200

Hi,

today I would like to introduce to you all a new class in Association Subscribers Manager API : AssumaEffect (err... the API doc might not be finished right now).

The point is : this class introduce fancy user interface effects in Association Subscribers Manager ! You doubt it ? Ok see by yourselves :

Note: if no youtube player appear, because of the stupid behavior of this blog engine (who wants to escape html in html code ???), just watch it on youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Jv3aRuZcI.

It is fancy, isn't it ? Not very usefull but as I always say : useless fancy things that looks great makes the user experience more comfortable !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0rc1 re-released

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 23 May 2009 23:24:00 +0200

Hi,

I made a mistake in the 3.0rc1 source package, preventing the compile process to succeed.

The mistake is now corrected and I released a new source package available on sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=211536&filename=AssociationSubscribersManager-3.0rc1-2.tar.gz&a=53006189

New package have been released under the name : AssociationSubscribersManager-3.0rc1-2.tar.gz

I am very sorry for the inconvenience caused by this mistake.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0rc1 released !

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:40:00 +0200

Hi,

I am very pleased to annouce the immediate availability of the first Release Candidate
version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks translators for their work on this release. A special thanks to Lucian Lupescu who recently join the team and translate Association Subscribers Manager in Romanian.

You can download packages and installer at :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=211536&package_id=254244&release_id=683866

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0rc1

Releases main changes are :

* Translations:
Association Subscribers Manager now supports the following languages :
- Romanian (Lucian Lupescu - http://lucianlupescu.co.cc/) [new]
- Swedish (Daniel Persson)
- Brazilian Portuguese (Diego Ferreira)
- French
- English

* Software changes:
    - made a global UI redesign
    - add a federation editor/creator
    - add the possibility to configure the displayed currency
    - made all tables in the application easily editable
    - re-code from scratch all the in-place editing system
    - fix differents UI retranslation bugs
    - fix a bug concerning address handling
    - fix a bug in the update dialog (now display a message when no updates are available)
    - fix multiple bug affecting the dues calculation
    - Fix bugs 2792058 and 2793190

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager's new look and feel

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:09:00 +0200

Hi,

I made tons of modifications in Association Subscribers Manager this week end, I will blog about them next time. For today, I just wanted to let a quick post to show you the most visible update : the look and feel.

This is how Association Subscribers Manager used to be (click to enlarge):

and this how Association Subscribers Manager now look like (click to enlarge):

From my point of view, it is a big improvement !

Arnaud Dupuis

Romanian translation for Association Subscribers Manager !

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:33:00 +0200

Hi ! Another translation have been added to Association Subscribers Manager : Romanian !
This is all thanks to Lucian Lupescu (http://lucianlupescu.co.cc/).
The whole interface support Romanian since SVN revision 182.
And here is a little screenshot (click to enlarge) :

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0BETA1 released !

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:04:00 +0200

Hi,

I am very pleased to annouce the immediate availability of the first Beta
version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks Daniel Persson and Diego Ferreira for their
amazing work on Association Subscribers Manager translations. Thanks to them
the software is now also available in Swedish and Brazilian Portuguese.

You can download packages and installer at :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=211536&package_id=254244&release_id=680291

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0BETA1

Releases main changes are :

* Translations:
Association Subscribers Manager now supports the following languages :
- Swedish (Daniel Persson)
- Brazilian Portuguese (Diego Ferreira)
- French
- English

* Software changes:
        - Add 8 countries' postal codes : Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Mexico, Netherlands, USA.
        - all code is now fully licensed under the GPLv3 license
        - multiple bugfixes in the XML handlers
        - update user interface layouts to make it fit in many screen types (from
netbooks to wide screens)
        - group all regionalisation related settings into a Locales tab in the
settings window
        - Code-rewrite for a better support of translations
        - Add country flag icons (borrowed from http://www.IconDrawer.com)
        - fix bug 2778971
        - suppress the (ugly) blinking effect on passive popups
        - fix code in the setting window to prevent user from unwillingly removing
emails, fees or activity
        - add new artworks : application icon and splashscreen
        - fix some of the error messages issued at application's first run
        - fix postal codes writing codes (now save postal codes only when it was
changed)
        - fix a bug in the UI allowing the edition of non existent members.
        - lots of UI behaviour modification (click on edit action now hide config
widget if shown, on edit mode, on settings activation edit mode is unchecked,
etc).

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Week end progess

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:47:00 +0200

Hi,

There was tons of progress during this week end in Association Subscribers Manager. We are quickly heading to the 3.0BETA1 release and as time pass I think that it will go all smooth !

First things comes first, it is all thanks to all Association Subscribers Manager's translators ! A huge thanks to Daniel Persson who's doing a lot to help me by taking care alone of his SVN part. As a bonus Association Subscribers Manager may be translated in Romanian but I am still waiting for translations files so I'll keep you update.

Now for code updates, during this week end I have made the following fix/improvements in Association Subscribers Manager :

fix the bug 2778971
finish the addon system
add addon management interface to the settings window
suppress the blinking in the passive popup windows
change settings windows behavior to prevent users to remove items (email, fees, activities, etc.) by mistake. Now all those windows are disabled until users confirm or cancel the deletion
add a default account for the update server (oss_user, oss_user_password)
fix lots of errors issued at first run (mostly by setting better default values)
fix UI bug which was allowing the edition of unselected members (now you have to select a member for the edition features to activate)
fix a bug in the postal codes writing code (postal codes files were unconditionally written at application close, now it is done only if there was modifications)
and the most important of all : I made a new splashscreen !

(Click to enlarge)

All this works leads to 3 important points :

This week end was string freeze date, no new string will be added before the beta release (though I already spotted some error messages in need of modifications).
This week end was feature freeze date. Until the beta release there will only be bug fix modifications, no new features.
I officially call for artists and packagers. Association Subscribers Manager could really use its own icons theme (instead of borrowing Oxygen's ones), and I will need packagers for different GNU/Linux distributions and for Mac OS X.

See you later !

Arnaud Dupuis

Musical break

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:12:00 +0200

Hi,

One short post to help you discover a French band I recently discovered on Jamendo : Shtrafilclux.

You can listen to their music through the little Jamendo widget on the side bar.

Good listenning !

Arnaud Dupuis

Howto translate Association Subscribers Manager.

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:10:00 +0200

Update: I have updated this tutorial to include the testing part.

Hi !

My "Help wanted" call for translators on Sourceforge was quite a success. It is a success since I had answers, but not that much since I have no actual work done so far. That may be because of a lack of informations on how to do the translation job in Association Subscribers Manager.

So ! For all the peoples who wants to translate Association Subscribers Manager (or any other Qt4-based software) in their own language, here is my super quick howto.

Prepare to fight !

First thing comes first : be sure that your system have all required software installed. To work on the Association Subscribers Manager translation ou will need to access the code repository on Sourceforge. This is the place were all the files related to the project are stored (code, artwork, data, translations, etc.). This is publicly accessible for reading but I have to give you write access for you to be able to put your work on the repository.

The repository is a Subversion (shortened in SVN) on, and is accessible on Sourceforge.To be able to retrieve files from this SVN repository you have to install a subversion client on your system. On GNU/Linux based system their is high chances that you already have one, if it is not the case install it via your distribution package manager. On windows... well, obviously if you did not installed it before, you don't have a subversion client. You have to install one like TortoiseSVN. On Mac OS X I have no idea about the pre-installed SVN client, but I found a package from Martin Ott. So maybe you don't have any SVN client installed either.

Once the SVN client installed, please install the Qt 4 framework (if not already installed). On GNU/Linux it should be already installed (take care : we are talking about Qt 4 >= 4.4.0 not Qt 3 !). If it is not, for all plateforms, the quickest way to install Qt 4 and all the required tools is to install the brand new Qt 4.5 SDK. To do this, go on http://www.qtsoftware.com/downloads and choose the LGPL / Free downoad. Download the SDK (Software Development Kit) for your plateform. Once downloaded install it on you computer.

You are now ready to translate (or develop...) Association Subscribers Manager. If I summarize, you need :

a SVN client
the Qt 4 framework.

Retrieve files from the repository.

This is called "check out", you check the code out of the repository, easy to remember; isn't it ? You have various ways to do this, with tortoiseSVN it looks like you have to right clic in your file explorer and select "check out repository" (or something like that...), but the easiest way is to type in a console :

svn co https://assuma.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/assuma assuma

It will create a new directory called "assuma" (for ASsociation SUbscribers MAnager). This one contains all the code (and the translation files).

You are now ready to start translating !

Translate Association Subscribers Manager.

First, you have to be sure that your translation is supported by the project file. To do so, edit the association_subscribers_manager.pro file. This is a text file saved in the UTF8 encoding. Search for the line starting with the word TRANSLATIONS and check if the language you want to work on have a translation file (ending with .ts). Translation files are named after this template : assuma_<language code>.ts. For example for Italian : assuma_it.ts. All .ts file are stored in the i18n/ directory. If there is no file for your language, just add it at the end of the TRANSLATIONS line. For example for Italian, I just have to add at the end of the line : i18n/assuma_it.ts

Once this is done, just save the file to continue.

You will need to update the translations tokens. To do so, open a terminal, go in the assuma/ directory and type :

lupdate association_subscribers_manager.pro

This will create the new files and update existing one with new and deprecated translations tokens.

Now it is easy, all the translation is done with Qt Linguist, so start the (Qt) Linguist tool. On windows it is in Start -> Qt SDK by Nokia ... -> Tools -> Qt Linguist, on Linux it is wherever your distribution linked it but probably in the "Development" section of the Gnome or KDE menu, or wherever you installed the SDK. Mac users... please search by yourself, I don't have any Mac to test.

Load a translation file, they are in the assuma/i18n/ directory (where assuma is the SVN repository you checked out before). The .ts files are the one you are interested in (the .qm are the compiled versions). You now should have a list of tokens to translates. Please refer to the Qt Linguist manual for translators to learn how to use this tool efficiently.

Once you have finished the job or you have something else to do, please save your work and commit it to the repository. Commit your work is done by selecting the appropriate "commit" command on whatever graphical interface you use, or by typing this in a shell :

svn commit

You can also commit a specific file :

svn commit i18n/assuma_fr-FR.ts

Sometime the EDITOR environment variable is not set and the svn command complains about it. In this case just do :

EDITOR=vim svn commit

Off course you can use any text editor instead of vim.

Test the result of your work

Actually this should be done before committing anything...

To test your work, it is very easy. First you need to compile the .ts file into a .qm one (Qt 's own binary format for translation files). To do this, open a terminal, go to the assuma/ directory and type :

lrelease association_subscribers_manager.pro

This will create all the .qm files. Then you have to file the language list description. This is the data/langpack.lst file the format is :

Language name;Language icon;Translation file

for example for Italian:

Italiano;images/flags/it.png;i18n/assuma_it.qm

Then you just have to restart the Association Subscribers Manager binary and go to Settings -> Locales and you will see be able to change the language to your freshly created one.

Conclusion.

That was not that difficult no ? I hope it helped a little, please feel free to ask questions in the comments or by dropping me an email at: a dot dupuis at infinityperl dot org. You can also try to find me on skype (arnaud underscore dupuis).

I hope this post will generate new vocations !

Arnaud Dupuis.

Swedish translation for Association Subscribers Manager !

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:58:00 +0200

Hi !

One more translation is on its way : the Swedish one. This is all thanks to Daniel Persson.

I thank him very much for all his efforts. Particularly I thank him for using the SVN directly ! This saves me lots of troubles

And here is the screenshot of the application in Swedish (click to enlarge) :

Arnaud Dupuis

Brazilian Portuguese translation for Association Subscribers Manager !

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:26:00 +0200

Hi !

Thanks to Diego Ferreira, Association Subscribers Manager is now available in Brazilian Portuguese !

The whole interface support this new language from the SVN r146.

My great thanks to Diego for his excellent work on this translation. He told me that it is his first time helping an Open Source software so I welcome him in our great community ! Once again thank you very much Diego.

Here is a screenshot of the result (click to enlarge):

Arnaud Dupuis

/(bb|[^b]{2})/ 4 g33k....

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:58:00 +0100

Hi,

A little post completly off topic... I took a geek quizz and damn, I am very geek... I was even laughting during the test... Anyway, here is the result :

96% Geek
And still I got married last year ! Nothing's impossible

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0-alpha1 released

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:48:00 +0100

The first alpha version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager is finally out !

This release features a whole code rewritting, so no more Perl / PerlQt3, long live the C++/Qt4 couple ! This version have been successfully tested with various Qt version from 4.4.0 to 4.5.0.
Almost all features from the previous version have been recoded and are available in this test release. The remarkable exception is the plug-in system (still unavailable, will be included in the beta version).
There is limitations to this release :
- as said previously : no plug-in stystem
- only few cities/postal codes and only French
- only one federation (and a French one).

I am now waiting for reports, that can be submited on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/), on the Sourceforge's mailing list (see previous link) or here.

This release can be downloaded at Sourceforge's download page.

Please enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Blog new layout

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:31:00 +0100

Hi !

Since debates about the french "Internet and Creation" law are stalled until the end of the month (it's not going very well even if the governement propaganda website was DDoS yesterday ^^), I hereby present to you all the new layout of this blog !

This is an little adaption of the Alto theme for DotClear 2. I hope you will like it !

Arnaud Dupuis

Edit: The propaganda website (jaimelesartistes.fr means : iloveartists.fr) build by the governement is down for the count (click on the image to enlarge)

Association Subscribers Manager's new artwork.

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:40:00 +0100

Hi,

once again, the title of the post states something true : Association Subscribers manager have a brand new icon ! Here it is (click on image to enlarge) :

You may wonder why a new icon ? First, because the old one was ugly, then because the first alpha version is not far from being released.

The first alpha release will lack some features like the plugin system and some features may still not works correctly like the fee calculation system wich will be fully functionnal only after the federation's file parser. But as soon as the public API is fully documented and code is stabilized I will release the first alpha version of the 3.0 branch.

Expect the first 3.0-alpha version before the end of april.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager is on Ohloh !

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:41:00 +0100

Hi,

As the title states it Association subscribers Manager is on Ohloh and that's good :).

Unfortunatly there is some problems with Ohloh's automatic tools and Assuma is not well analyzed. For example, it is analyzed as mostly written in Ada... since I don't know a word of Ada it is highly improbable that this analyze is true... But maybe it have to do with the Qt code or the users' database being named .adb. Anyway, it is a good way to see what I do bad with this project, so I will do my best to fix those project. One of the first measure was to suppress the huge amount of test users' database from the test/ directory. Another measure will be to accept both of the .adb and .assumaml file extensions for users' database.

Still a lot to do

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager is on the road of being fully documented.

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:42:00 +0100

Hi,

in the development process one thing is very important : the documentation. And Assuma lakes one very important thing: documentation !

But fortunatly this problem is about to be solved ! Starting with the revision 119 I will change this and documents all public methods/slots of the Association Subscribers Manager API. At this point of the project, documentation is really importante since I plan on openning the source code to external contributions. Moreover the upcomming plugin system will also need an excellent documentation if I want people to develop plugins for Association Subscribers Manager ;-).

Arnaud Dupuis

PS: I am almost done with the super-ultra-absolute-comprehensive-howto-install-cutting-edge-Slackware-Linux-on-EeePC !

French web is black-out against our minister stupidity called HADOPI / Black-out du web Français contre la stupidité nommée HADOPI

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:34:00 +0100

Hi,

For all the week (or until the debate turn in favor of freedom), I will support all other french website by turning my blog black. I am really sorry for all non french visitors who are not concerned by the stupidy of our ministers, but for all people from New Zealand, Eire, Great Britain, Canada and all other non free countries, you should all join the web black-out to contest those stupid laws !

Internet is not a place where you find only illegal content, porn and terrorist websites ! This is a great place to share everything starting with knowledge !

And for once I will translate this in French.

Pour toute la semaine (ou jusqu'à ce que les débats tournent en faveur de la libertés), je soutiendrais les autres sites Français en mettant mon blog en berne. Je suis vraiment navré pour tous mes visiteurs qui ne sont pas concernés par la stupidité de nos sinistres (la sinistre de l'inculture, Christine Albanel en tête), mais pour tous les gens qui viennent de Nouvelles Zelande, d'Irelande, d'Angleterre, du Canada et de tous les pays non libre (qui ne valent pas mieux que des dictatures), rejoignez le black-out du web pour protester contre ces lois stupides et liberticides.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Black-out in order to protest against the French "Internet & Creation" law

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:26:00 +0100

Sorry to break the usual "no French" policy but exceptionally I am posting this image to protest against the French law project call "Internet & Creation" which is such a shame for a country used to be called "the country of all liberties".
This law is the pathetic try of old geezer, who don't event understand the internet, to control and spy information exchange on the internet. This could be laughable if it was not that important : they try to limit our fundamentals rights to communicate, express ourselves, learn and share our knowledge. For French ministers the internet is nothing less that the place where all terrorists and mafia gathers. For French ministers, the internet holds only bad things they have no considerations for Wikipedia, the Open Source and the billions of websites who share some knowledge. Most of the time, this is no usefull knowledge for everybody but it is usefull for somebody. Sharing knowledge is the basis of the internet, not pedophilia ! Are we trying to close all cars manufacturer facilities ? No ! But they manufactures car that can easily break the speed limit so we have to stop them because speed is directly reponsible for thousands of dead each year ! Cars manufacturer are participating to a mass genocid !! Ridiculous isn't it ? It's as ridiculous as the French law or the trial of The Pirate Bay (which turn to be an enjoyable joke where you can see everyday that majors lawiers and boss had 3 years to prepare this trial and turned to be completly and ridiculously unprepared !).

I will turn this blog black from this week-end to after the vote to protest against the "Internet & Creation" (a.k.a Hadopi) stupidity !

Arnaud Dupuis

I've got a new toy : an Asus Eee PC 1000h !!

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:16:00 +0100

Hi all,
Indeed I have a new geek-toy : a brand new Asus Eee PC 1000h ! Woohoo !
Unfortunatly even if Asus is manufacturing this computer with Xandros Linux the stupid Asus France do not ship it in France... The only operating system available is ... sorry I can't write it here (but it is finishing by XP).
So I am now fighting with Asus France to get those licences reimbursed.

With all that said, it's a wonderfull little computer ! I installed (almost flawlessly) a Slackware 12.2 on it and it works just fine. I have a KDE 4.2 working very well with compositing and all the fancy things ! Really it is an amazing computer.
The only thing that was bothering me is the hotkeys... Only the one controlling screen brightness were working, so I wrote a new acpi handler to extends basic Slackware one. I made a Slackware package from this one and I will post it here (and/or I will create a Freashmeat project).

I will come back soon with a HOWTO to install Slackware 12.2 on Eee PC 1000h, it's nothing difficult since almost everything is supported out of the box by the kernel-huge-smp (actually very few things needs to be be compiled by hand). I would like to come with a super-optimized kernel config file for 2.6.28 Linux kernel.

See you soon,

Arnaud Dupuis

New mailing list for Association Subscribers Manager project

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:38:00 +0100

Hi,

I created 2 new mailing list for Association Subscribers Manager on the Sourceforge's project page.
Those 2 lists' goals are to allow me to keep you all up-to-date with the upcomming releases, development, test phases, etc.
The lists are :

assuma-announcement: used by me to keep everybody informed about Association Subscribers Manager new releases. On this list we will announce releases of the core application, plugins, data files, translations, etc. Users can use this to react on releases but this is more an information list than a communication list.
assuma-contrib: This is the communication list ! On this list users can ask for new development, contribute by submitting plugins, translations, data files, participate by sending feedbacks, bug reports. They can also ask to be included in the tests phases (usually in 4 stages : pre-alpha, alpha, beta, Release Candidate).

I hope it will help users to be kept up-to-date with the development and release. I also hope to increase communication between development team and users/contributors community.

Arnaud

A little update (and more about Association Subscribers Manager's next release).

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:23:00 +0100

Hi,

I've been busy recently so I forgot to update the blog. Actually, I worked a lot on Association Subscribers Manager and got most of the application working.
The last progress I made were in the updater. Here is some screenshots of it (windows version) :

As you can see it is perfectly functional ! The only major features that the current version lack are :

Support for federations (current state: 5 %)
Better comparison system for embed fees (current state: 80 %)
Support for plugins (current state: 0 %)

When the 2 first are finished to be coded, I will launch the first pre-alpha test phase (I think in a week or two).

Well, work is getting done slowly but surely

As you may have noticed I put slack-get in a stalled mode until I release the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager.

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

Winter break : the Snowboarding vacations !!

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:00:00 +0100

Hi !
Like the title says, I left the Paris pollution and go to the French Alps for a little winter break.
Here is a freshly nice view from the "chalet" :

As you can see, we have a pretty good weather here even if the weather forecast for the week end is : lot's of snow !!!

I will post a longer post to expose the recent changes in Association Subscribers Manager.

Arnaud Supuis

Stop software patents !!!

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:08:00 +0100

Do not forget to sign the "Stop Software Patents" petition !

Association Subscribers Manager: Iso-functionnality test surprises !

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:10:00 +0100

Hi,

I am still very busy with the upcomming release of the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager, right now I am testing the iso-functionnality with the previous version (2.2).
While doing those test, I ran into something very funny... funny because it was quickly fixed, else it could have been a real drama for Association Subscribers Manager users !
The actual problem was that I forgot to include the "Address" field in the new version. While it look like something completly harmless it is the total opposite. In fact, the 3.0 version introduce a brand new subscribers database XML based file format named ADB. Obviously the old XML format is also supported and Association Subscribers Manager users can import their old file in the new version and Association Subscribers Manager will automatically convert the old file into the new format. All those are pretty well tested features and very bug resistant (since the original file is not modified no informations can be lost). This is where the critical point is : between an old file and a new one Association Subscribers Manager loose the address since it was not supported by the GUI...
Fortunatly, this awfull "bug" is now corrected in the SVN trunk and hopefully I will not run into such big mistakes again !

The final release of the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager is planned to be release by the end of april.

As already described, this software is completly FOSS and can be downloaded and installed from the SVN for free under the term of the GPL.
Additionnaly I will provide purchasable binary build of this software for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Season greetings

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:17:00 +0100

Hi,
I wish you all a very happy new year full of discovering, coding and all the best !
Hopefully I will successfully release a new version of slack-get this year
My other project (Association Subscribers Manager) is comming close to alpha test release. I need to implements some missing functionnalities and finish the configuration panel and it will be ready for bug tracking.

Anyway, happy new year !

Arnaud Dupuis

Some updates.. at last

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:54:00 +0100

Hi,
It's been a while since I last update the blog... Sorry for that, but in the other hand I worked a lot on Association Subscribers Manager.
I worked so much that I'm almost ready for a pre-alpha release. Some features are still not yet implemented but most of the hard work is already done. There is tons of new features in this new 3.0 version. I can list, from my deficient memory, the followings :

direct edition in the list view by double-clicking on a subscriber
the whole software has been recoded with C++/Qt4 which means that it is now available on microsoft windows and apple mac os x
new subscribers' database format which allow, for example, to embed fee settings
a brand new interface with fancy elements like sliding popup
a new user interface paradygm : popup limited to the minimum, most of the time all windows are embed in the main one
lots of performance improvements
compatibility with previous versions of Association Manager
and so on, and so forth...

All of these things are available right now on the SVN repository. For those who subscribed to the "Assuma Service Pack", the latest compiled version is available at http://download.infinityperl.org/association_manager/3.0-poc/.
Once again, I remind to all people who may read this, that Association Subscribers Manager is an Open Source software and the sources can be downloaded from Sourceforge's SVN. But, I am selling some services around this software, like trainning, packaging, automatic updates, etc.

I am planning a final release of the 3.0 version in the beginning of 2009 (maybe during february). Anyway I will keep you informed.
And concerning slack-get... Well... I have work a lot on Association Subscribers Manager

News and update, my recent development in Association Subscribers Manager

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:02:00 +0200

Hi,
It's been a while since I last post here... Sorry, I have tons of super-bad excuses for that (working too much, not enough time, etc.).
The truth is that I am so busy coding that I forget to post on the blog !
Lately, I have coded a lot on one of my project out of slack-get. The project name is Association Subscribers Manager (short name is Assuma) and it is an associations subscribers manager !
The source code is available on Sourceforge's SVN as usual. This software is a little different than my other traditionnals Open Sources ones because I am selling the packages.
The source code is available for free but all services associated with it are not free. In time, when the 3.0 release will be fully ready, you will be able to buy working binaries for the main plateforms available on the market.
The source code is completly free (as "Free Software" and "as a beer"), only the services of compilations, auto-update, etc. will be costing you money.
The reason why I think this software can be better than another ? Because since the 0.1 version (we are now aiming at the 3.0) it has been developped in collaboration with French sports associations.
So I am pretty confident in the application fitting for small and middle sized associations. The application is daily tested with databases exceeding 1000 subscibers, so it can be used for pretty huge associations/clubs.
It is of course not limited to one kind of association/club, it has been developped with multi-usage in mind.
On the plateform support side, until the 2.0 version the only supported plateform was Linux (the application is developped in Perl and PerlQt3). The 3.0 release will bring Association Subscribers Manager to all plateforms with a code completly rewritten in C++/Qt4.

So as you can easily figured I have work a lot on this project and, unfortunatly, not really on slack-get ... Mainly because as all humans I have to sleep sometimes
Here are the SVN statistics for the last 7 days:

It has been a busy week

See you later !

Arnaud Dupuis

A little pause from slack-get : coding a Perl module for the croquemonster API.

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:54:00 +0200

Hi,
After the huge code update I made on slack-get, I must say that I was a bit tired of thinking about the same problems every second.
Fortunatly my young wife is both a good writer and a super-geek, invite me to a new game-to-loose-lots-of-time named croquemonster.
It is unfortunatly only in French, but gues what... They have a XML api ! So, of course, I made a Perl module out of this API.
The Games::CroqueMonster module implements the whole 0.8.1 api specification. The module version is gave after the api version.

You can try this module by downloading it from here (attachement) or from my page on CPAN.

I will release some scripts using this module soon.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Another new feature in slack-get media system

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:35:00 +0200

Hello,

There is one thing I hate a lot : answering stupid questions. It makes me loose my time and I certainly do not like that !
The problem is that slack-get is asking stupid questions ! Take the dependencies tracking for example :
Even if it find a package with the exact name you requested it propose to you all the matching results.
And one other thing I really don't like in slack-get (and maybe in other package manager) is that if it find the same package on more than one media it asks you to choose one.
I do not like that because it is typically something which can be decided by software itself. If I talk about slack-get, there is a simple way to prefer one media to another : you have to fill a <official-media> tag in the configuration file ! I mean, it is an obvious way to prefer this official media and not bother user asking him if he prefer to install amarok from Slackware's official servers or from linuxpackages.
But since, yuo can actually prefer this I added a new feature to the media system : a ranking system.
You can now add a <rank> tag in the medias.xml file (inside a <media></media> group), with an integer inside. Since it is a rank, the smaller the number is the highest priority the media get.
In a near futur (this week at most), I will implements the following new decision algorithm in the dependencies tracking and package installation/upgrade systems :
- if there is more than one result for a package check :
   - check if there is packages with their name exactly equal to the request select them
      - if their is more than one package like that (name == request) :
          - check if the medias use ranks
              - if yes, then select the package with the highest rank (the smaller number inside <rank></rank>)
              - if not, check if the official-media have the requested package
                   - if yes, select the package
                   - if not, ask user to choose a package
      - else if there is only one, select this package
      - else (there is no package where name == request), ask user to choose between the original search results.
- else (there is only one response) select the package.

I think this algorithm, will help to not stupidly bother users by asking unnecessary questions. And since I am fully aware that some users will not like this automated thing, I will also add a configuration key and a command line option to allow them to enable/disable this system.

That's all for today !

See ya' for the slack-get development diary #8.

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get feature highlights #3 : add FTP credentials to your medias.xml configuration file.

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:32:00 +0200

Hi,
Today, I will highlights a brand new mechanism in slack-get : how to add your FTP credentials to the medias.xml confniguration file.
First let's remind how was the ftp authentification mechanism before.
In the old ages, you had to fill a section in the config.xml file. The section look like that :
<network-parameters>
     <ftp>
        <login><![CDATA[anonymous]]></login>
        <password><![CDATA[slack-get@infinityperl.org]]></password>
     </ftp>
</network-parameters>

This section (in the <common> configuration bloc) is (still) used by the sg_daemon to authenticate himself on FTP server (this is the global credentials).
But you may have to provide particular credentials for one ftp server, so I added the possibility to use the standard URL syntax in the medias.xml file.
So starting from the svn revision 198, you can use the ftp://<login>:<password>@<some ftp server> syntax in your medias.xml file.
The specific credentials, of course, prevails on the globals ones.

On a developper side now, this trick is done by the Slackware::Slackget::Network::Connection->parse_url() method. This is a specific case of the ftp so far but I can easily make it available for any protocols if there is a need to do so.
I plan on testing, in this parse_url() method, the availability of a __parse_url() method drivers' specific. This could help to develop specific drivers with specific url format.
I will think about that.

That's all for today ! Enjoy the end of the week end !

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get Perl api available (again)

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:00:00 +0200

Hi,
The Slackware::Slackget api is available on CPAN, but the latest documenation is now available in the SVN tree (viewable on Sourceforge's viewsvn service) and on my own server.
The two last ones will be more up-to-date than the CPAN one.

I hope that it will helps contributors !

Arnaud Dupuis.

Another huge bug discovered and fixed in slack-get !!

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:06:00 +0200

Hi,
Today I was going to improve (let's say "finish") the dependency tracking system, which is not good enough yet, and I ran into something very very bad...
Before doing anything with the package system, I all the time modify my medias.xml and add a local repository wich contains only one package and it's dependency tree.
Doing this I found a pretty importantly bad bug. This one is described on the slack-get bugtracking system on Sourceforge.
In one word the Slackware::Slackget::Connection's drivers system was completly bugged and had a very important namespace corruption wich was leading to a massive code malfunction.
So far, I strongly recommend to update your local SVN copy.

Fortunatly I fixed this in the latest SVN revision (198).
I hope that I will not found any other surprises like this one !

Arnaud Dupuis

Sourceforge SVN downtime : no slack-get commits for the next 24 hours

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:00:00 +0200

Hi,
Sourceforce is migrating Subversion's data on to new storage hardware and conduct performance
testing today from 04:00 UTC and for approximatively 24hours.
As a consequence all write operations will fail, so there will not be any updates of the slack-get svn tree during this time.
Read operations are unaffected by this process.

Good day,

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #7

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:00:00 +0200

Hi,
Here is the 7th opus of the slack-get development diary. There is a lot to say because I made lots of changes since the last diary.

1) The C++ API's first parts :
Since the last post where I was talking about this I added to the existing Slackget::Package and Slackget::PackageList 3 new classes : Slackget::Config, Slackget::Utils and Slackget::QSimpleUpdate.
Slackget::Config is used to represent slack-get's XML configuration file and Slackget::Utils contains some static utilitary methods.
Slackget::QSimpleUpdate is a Qt 4 widget. Its goal is to present a list of packages to users in the most simple way. It behave very simply by showing a list of items wich contains an image, a package name and its version. More informations about a package are available via the Qt's traditionnal tooltip system.

I plan in renaming Slackget::Utils to simply Slackget but I am not yet sure. I am not sure because I want to re-organize the C++ api's tree.
There is currently a trunk/src/ directory which contains QSimpleUpdate sources, and a trunk/lib/Cpp/ which contains the other classes.
More specifically, it contains the SlackgetCore module. I plan on modify this tree the following way :
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetCore/src/ -> contains all source files for the SlackgetCore modules (currently : Slackget::Package, Slackget::PackageList, Slackget::Config and Slackget::Utils)
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetCore/include/ -> contains all headers file for the SlackgetCore modules
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetGui/src/ -> contains all source files for the SlackgetGui modules (currently : Slackget::QSimpleUpdate)... This module actually do not exists at the time I am writting this article
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetGui/include/ -> contains all headers file for the SlackgetCore modules
And of course I want to delete the trunk/src/ directory.
I am indeed a big fan of the Qt 4 modular architecture. Talking about Qt 4, all parts of the slack-get C++ api links against Qt 4. SlackgetCore links against QtCore (for all the super handy data types) and, of course, SlackgetGui will links against QtGui.

2) The Perl API and sg_daemon :
Well... It changed a lot so I made a new release of Slackware::Slackget on CPAN ... And again it changed so much since then that I could make another release !
The medias variables system is one of the good examples. But the huge bugs in sg_daemon which was not managing media's host efficiently is the main cause of changes in the Perl API.
This bug (or bugs) was preventing the sg_daemon to switch from a media's host to the next one. I corrected this issue and it is now working as it should do.
The main changes in the Slackware::Slackget Perl module are :
* I changed Slackware::Slackget::Network::Connection behavior by replacing the host's constructor parameter by a media one (see modules documentation). I also added a next_host() method to this module. The goal is to take care of operations needed by the Connection.pm module (like parsing the URL and loading drivers).
* I fixed a little bug in Slackware::Slackget::Network::Connection::HTTP.pm (the file was moved to its final destination before all tests).
* I fixed a bug in Slackware::Slackget::Base and Slackware::Slackget::MediaList. The bug was very simple : I forgot to tell XML::Simple's parser to force array on all <li> elements. This result in a bug when there was only one element in a list.
* I also spent some time cleanning lots of code (removed unneccessary comments, comments unnecessary code, etc.).
* All this things result in a massive documentation's update.
* I finally made all needed changes in the sg_daemon (which is not part of the Perl API...) which is now handling well dead hosts and host changing.

The next focus points in the development are :
     1 - Improve the C++ api (and particularly develop all classes needed to connect to a sg_daemon)
     2 - Port the plugin system to the new daemon.
     3 - Develop a real working GUI.
     4 - Start coding the multi-daemon cooperative work.

Still a lot to do !

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

New feature: slack-get medias' options

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:07:00 +0200

Hi,
I just added a new feature to the slack-get media system. It is something I wanted to add for a long time now but I never had the time.
But since I am still stuck at home because of this stupid pneumonia, I now have the time...
What I wanted is a variables system in the medias.xml syntax. The direct benefit is that it is much more easier to modify the medias file after an upgrade of your Slackware box.
Indeed, if it is nice to be able to maintain multiple sources of packages, it is sometime a pain in the ass to update this file after an upgrade... When all URL of mirrors must be changed...
The Slackware version number is, indeed, the first "official" variable.
This system is very easy to use : you just have to declare an attribute in the <medialist> tag and it will be automatically converted to a variable by the Slackware::Slackget::MediaList and Slackware::Slackget::Media classes. You can use the variable in any tag content by using the special syntax ${<variable name>}.
Here is a simple example :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes"?>
<medialist slackware-version="12.1">
<media id="slackware-official">
<files>
<filelist>FILELIST.TXT</filelist>
<checksums>CHECKSUMS.md5</checksums>
<packages>PACKAGES.TXT</packages>
</files>
<download-signature>1</download-signature>
<update-repository>
<faster>http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-${slackware-version}/</faster>
<fast>
<li>http://ftp.bit.nl/mirror/slackware/slackware-${slackware-version}/</li>
<li>http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/slackware/slackware-${slackware-version}/</li>
</fast>
</update-repository>
<description>The official Slackware web site</description>
<web-link>http://www.slackware.com/</web-link>
</media>
</medialist>

As you can see it is both convinient and easy to implement. I am quite sure it will be very usefull when we will upgrade from Slackware 12.1 to 13.0

Arnaud Dupuis.

slack-get user interface: step 1, how I see the futur

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:43:00 +0200

Hi,

as I already said I am currently developping the C++ API of slack-get. I also wrote that I am concentrating on usefull part of the API, skipping the generative parts that are not absolutly required at the moment. So in parallel to this development, I made some tests for the graphical user interface. I came up with the conclusion that there is 2 different way to use slack-get :

Keep a Slackware box up-to-date by installing security fixes and Slackware patches
Keep a box up-to-date, upgrade and install packages (but not patches)

So, considering that I decided to come with 2 different GUI : a dock application to tell users that there is patches available and the full graphical client (like the previous slack-get GUI).
I starts coding a little widget (Slackget::QSimpleUpdate). This one looks like that :

I am interested in any opinion/advice/suggestion concerning this. The code of this proof-of-concept is available on the SVN (in trunk/src/QSimpleUpdate/). I made it themable thanks to Qt4 support of CSS.
So far, I think it is a quite fine dock application. I wanted it to be simple to get working, and I also wanted that this widget is able to display enough informations.

That's all for today

Arnaud Dupuis

Release: Slackware::Slackget v0.17

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:15:00 +0200

Hi,

A new version of the Slackware::Slackget module was released on CPAN.
This release features the followings changes :
- lots of fix in order to make all classes of the module SGNC Compliant
- Slackware::Slackget::GPG have had many methods implemented
- change the to_string() behavior of the Slackware::Slackget::PackageList, Slackware::Slackget::Package and Slackware::Slackget::List to make them able to generate a Slackware's PACKAGES.TXT (supporting, of course, the slapt-get/swaret format for dependencies).

This module was in a need of a new release since the documentation have been updated a lot (and I personally use CPAN as my API doc reference ^^).

Arnaud Dupuis

First parts of the C++ API

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:29:00 +0200

Hi,

I uploaded on the SVN repository the first part of the slack-get C++ API.

I am coding this one to be as close as possible to the Perl one. So the first two classes uploaded are, of course, Slackget::Package and Slackget::PackageList. As you can see I am using the Slackget:: namespace in order to identify slack-get's classes.

As usual, the documentation and all doxygen needed files are already on the SVN too.

I am focusing on usability and stable features for this C++ API. This means that, in a first time, I will not translate all features. All classes that will fall in those exceptions will be adequatly documented.

My goal with this API is to start coding the graphical user interface as quickly as possible.

Arnaud Dupuis

Some updates on Infinity Perl domain

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:44:00 +0200

Hi,

Like I announced previously on this blog, I'm changing the architecture of Infinity Perl domain.

So I rented a server to my registar (Gandi), and installed WebGUI 7. The current result is available at http://www2.infinityperl.org. It is still in early development stage but I have a good idea of what I want to do with this website.

To conclude this post, I wanted to keep you informed : work has been pretty slow (freeze is the right word) this week. This is because I have caught something quite bad and I have a bad lung infection. That makes me quite weak and it's a bit painfull to even stands up.

So the first parts of the C++ API will be a bit delayed. Sorry.

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #6

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:35:00 +0200

Back from a long silence period, here it is : the 6th opus of the "slack-get development diary" !
There is a lot of new things that I need to talk about !
First the bad news : I saw on CPAN reports that the "fix" I made for Slackware::Slackget to properly test on Solaris OS is not working.
That is a bad thing but... I don't really see the purpose on trying to fix an issue on an OS which is not a Slackware based one and not even a GNU/Linux OS ! The Slackware::Slackget module will never be usefull on this OS, so since I have no Solaris to test I will just forget about it (unless somebody provides me with a patch for this system.

Now for all the good news :

slack-get suite (sg_daemon + slack-get) is now able to install, upgrade and remove packages

That's the first point, and I think it's a pretty important one. I fixed all the daemon and the (cli) client to make them able to perform packages operations without any problems.
So from now on, you can start a daemon and do a

"slack-get install
flightgear"

for example
That's a very important point but it's nothing worth talking about without the dependencies tracking system.
Talking about that...

the dependencies tracking system is now fully functionnal

Woohooo ! This part was certainly one of the most painfull, but I finally manage to get it working the right way.
This part still need to be tested and there is no guarantees, so far, that it is working properly in all cases.
But so far my tests where very promisefull ! I add no problems and for the moment I have not yet discovered any bugs in this feature.
Again, that does not means that I will not uncover bugs later.

add support for automatic GPG key import

I added the possibility for the sg_daemon to download and import a GPG key. For the moment it only import Slackware Project's key and it is almost hardcoded but there is no reasons to extend this feature to all medias sooner or later.
This feature works well and is totally automatic : if sg_daemon do not find the Slackware Project's key in the user's GPG keyring, it download it and import it. Nice and easy.

add new feature to slack-get (cli client)

I added a new command to slack-get, it is called "info". You can use it the exact same way than the "search" command (this is the exact same code which is processing it).
The goal of this command is to provide more informations about a package. Here is an usage example :

$ ./slack-get info flightgear --media=slacky

Package: flightgear-1.0.0-i686-1as

Size (compressed): 3158 KB

Version: 1.0.0

Source: slacky

Description: The FlightGear flight simulator open-source project.The 
goal  of  the  FlightGear project is to create a

sophisticated flight simulator framework for  use  in 
research  or  academic environments,  for the development and
pursuit

of other interesting flight simulation ideas, and as an end-user
application

http://www.flightgear.org/ WWW.SLACKY.IT PackaGer Gohanz.

This little example, allow me to introduce the new command line option : --media. This one allow you to restrict the "search" or "info" commandes to the choosen media (in the previous example I wanted only results from the Slacky.it website).

Last about the slack-get cli client, I fixed lots of "non closing bugs". The non closing bugs are an annoying problem of slack-get cli client.
While the whole system became multitasks, it's becomming difficult to keep track of what the client asked by itself (particularly in a multi-administrators context), and after asking a sg_daemon to perform some tasks (and after the tasks are finished) the client does not end.
I corrected a lot of thoses problems.
A good example of this issue is with the "slack-get update" command. This one scheduled a tasks to upgrade all packages which have new ones in the patches/ subtree of the official-media (see config.xml). After the update, the client was not quitting. It is now corrected.

dynamic network backends negociation

Some of you may have noticed that sg_daemon should be able to dynamically negociate what network backends the client and it should use to understand each others. Until this morning it was not working, and it is now !
If sg_daemon supports XML and Base64 backends, and if the slack-get client supports XML and Gzip backends ; they will both agree on using the biggest common denominator (in this case they will use XML only).
I am very happy (and quite proud) of this mechanism. It allows tons of new development and many plugins to come !

lots of updates in the Slackware::Slackget Perl module

Last but not least I made tons of modifications in the Slackware::Slackget module. I added constants, generative methods to Slackware::Slackget::Media, add codes to Slackware::Slackget::GPG to support new import features, add method to Slackware::Slackget to check host's Slackware's version, and so on and so forth !

As a conclusion, I will just say that there is still some works to do but it's becomming to be a very usable tool. I'm using it every day now.
I hope all the work I made on slack-get will be of interets for you all !
As a bonus track I give you the new slack-get logo (that I made myself... so be kind )

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Back online and work resuming !

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:27:00 +0200

Hi all !
I'm back from Japan and back online !!
I resumed the work on slack-get, and yet added an option to the slack-get client program.
A while ago I thought about some kind of mechanism to display more accurate search results.
Like everybody before myself, I came with a score system where result are evaluated by not-so-simple rules.
As a result each package (I mean Slackware::Slackget::Package) returned by the daemon (sg_daemon) contains a little more data and particularly have a "score" number.
This score wasn't use until today. It's now possible to limit the displayed search results.
For exemple :
slack-get --mid-score search lives
Will display only result with a score greater or equal to 10. Score values can be infinite but most of the time they are under 50.
From what I experienced they are going from 0 to 50. the lesser the score the lesser the probability for he result to be accurate.
By default, slack-get now skip all result with a score under 5.

Well that's not a big improvement, and I still need to write the code for dependencies tracking, but hey ! I'm back to work

Arnaud Dupuis

Honeymoon in Japan !!!

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:59:00 +0200

Hi all !
I'm with my wife in Japan for my honeymoon ! We are now in Oosaka where we finally have the internet in our room.
We are resting in Dotonbori a really "genki" street !
We already stay in Kyoto, Himeji, Kobe and Nara... Japan is wonderful and I will provide you with some pictures when I'll be back in France.
Next in our trip is Tokyo where we stay in Shinjuku for the week end ! That's before climbing mount Fuji ... Still a lot to do.
See you in a while !

Arnaud.

News & updates

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:38:00 +0200

Hi,

It's been a long time since I last posted. Well, I'm sorry... I greatly misjudge the time that my wedding planning would take !
If I didn't told you already, I'm marrying myself with my dear Fiancée on June 28th.
It's approaching at a freaking speed and nothing is ready !! **PANIC**

As you may imagine, I have not many time for all the Open Sources stuffs... As a consequence I will put all my project in "standby" mode until I'm back from my honeymoon (around July 20). To compensate this huge lack of informations, and me being out of business for a while (until July) I will provide you with pictures from my trip in Japan (yes my honeymoon is in Japan).

The other reason for my silence, is that I've been very busy with my work too. In addition to my normal job, I've written 4 (quite) big articles for a French development newspaper (called Programmez!), 1 about XML and 3 about Qt 4.x programing.

Now about slack-get, I wanted to make an announce but the code is not enough clean for a "development diary". In the other hand I would like you to know that the work is progressing quite while despite appearances ! So here I go :

    slack-get, and more particularly sg_daemon, 

    is finally able to install packages from 

    any supported media !

But it still need a lot of work ! You can install any package you want while there no dependencies (like there is in packages from linuxpackages or slacky). It means everything from official Slackware repositories. The slack-get update feature is also fully functional. I personnaly use it to keep my main computer up-to-date !
I know need to get this f****** dependency tracking mechanism working and it'll be almost ready for release (I think... but I have bad memory when it comes to the work I still need to do...).

Last but not least, when I'll come back I will change all the web architecture of Infinity Perl. Indeed the current one is not adapted at all. So I will rent a new server (outside my flat, 'cause my futur wife don't like fan sound... beats me...), and install on it a new website WebGUI based, and keep the blog for what it should be : a blog !
A new website will help me to present all my work on a single place. I will centralyze here all my projects from CPAN modules to slack-get, passing by PKanaEditor and Association Subscribers Manager (still in early development state).
For all this, I will need you to disable your adblock

I will try to update the blog and I'll do my maximum to commit some codes before my weddings, but I do not promise anything !

See you

Arnaud Dupuis

Hardware failure and slack-get delay

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:21:00 +0100

Hi,
Like the title of this post can let you imagine, my main computer's hardware is all broken.
After a hard disk drive, replacement (87 EUR or 137 USD), a CPU replacement (190 EUR or 300 USD) I now need to replace my mainboard (225 EUR or 353 USD)...
All those thing leads to 2 things :

I've no more money (so please enjoy a click on a google add )
I spend a lot of time trying to go to the shop, and try to fix this damn computer.

The direct consequence is that the slack-get development diary is delayed until I fix my computer.
Why ? Just because there is an important pending SVN commit (waiting a data recovering) on one of my broken disk...

Sorry for the delay but hu...

By the way I strongly advice French preoples against the IT shops in Paris' "rue montgallet" unless they are willing to save 200 € on 1500 in order to cancel their hardware's garantuee.

Arnaud Dupuis

New english data file for PKanaEditor

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:50:00 +0100

Hi,

I saw - thanks to users mails - that I only gave a french data file with PKanaEditor 0.2.
So I hereby correct this mistake by providing you (attach to this post) an english localized data file (PKanaEditor English localized data file).
I hope it will fit english speaker needs !

To use this file, you just have to download it, open PKanaEditor's settings, choose a "Custom..." data source and select the file you just download as the source.

In version 0.3 there will be an automatic OS language discovering. While I'm confessing about the next release I can also tell you that I'm rewritting the auto-completion engine. The current one is indeed... a bit buggy... It generally works not too bad but their is some important issues (for example when you hit the carriage return key, you have to also hit the space key or no completion is done...).
The new engine is way better because I put the code I wrote to the dustbin and I'm now using Qt's features... And wonder what ? It's A LOT better

Oh and by the way the slack-get development diary will be back this week (probably on wednesday), because I have one or two little thing to tell you.

Enjoy!

Arnaud Dupuis.

PKanaEditor - The "P" Kana Editor v0.2 - windows binaries

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 07:32:00 +0100

Hi,
Since I'm currently working on a windows xp computer, I got the occasion to compile PKanaEditor on this platform.
So, attached to this post is the windows installer containing required Qt dll and PKanaEditor binary.

This version is provided for convenience without any guarantee it will work on your windows install

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Release: Slackware::Slackget - Main Perl library for the slack-get package manager - v0.16

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:20:00 +0100

Hi,
The new version of the Slackware::Slackget Perl module have just been released on CPAN.
This 0.16 version add more unit tests to the test suite, should fix the incompatibility problems on Solaris, and fix some bugs in the API.
Particularly, in the Slackware::Slackget::File and in Slackware::Slackget::List classes.

Next changes in the API will be to add Java like iterators to the Slackware::Slackget::List class.

You can download this module on CPAN.

Arnaud Dupuis

PKanaEditor - The "P" Kana Editor v0.2 released

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:21:00 +0100

Hi,
After some weeks of kind of hard work, here is the 0.2 version of the "P" Kana Editor.
It's now fully rewrote in C++/Qt 4.x and that's one of the smallest changes I made !
I also add a configuration window and the editor now features an intuitive "kana" completion and an help system on completion's proposal !
Moreover PKanaEditor is now multiplateform and can be used on Linux based system but also on windows systems (only XP tested) and Mac OS X (hum... it should be...) and most of the UNIX based system (*BSD, etc.).
You can download the sources from Qt-apps.org or from here. The archive is also attached to this post.

The one thing I couldn't do for this release is to find a meaning to the "P"

I hope you will enjoy it !

Arnaud Dupuis

Public test of the PKanaEditor main widgets (KanaEditor, KanaTextEdit and KanaListWidgetItem)

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:55:00 +0100

Hi,

I finished to implements almost all features I wanted for PKanaEditor 0.2... in the editor widget. Well that left some works to have a complete application working smooth and fine. But since the editor widget is almost finished, I would like to have some feedback.
So I hereby release the first alpha version of this editor. Please note that this is not the complete application, it do not allow you to save your work and do nothing else but to translate what you write from romanji to kana.

I still would like some feedback about the choice I made in the implementation.
I am particularly interested in your opinion about the following points :

the way the kana are automatically presented to user (the completion through the "helper" popup)
the contextual help system (when you let your mouse above a kana a tooltip with a big version of the kana and it's meaning (for kanjis) is drawn)
your global feeling about this editor.

Please keep in mind that this is only the editor part of the software !
There is still time before the release of the whole program. So if some brave souls could test this editor and give me interesting feedback, I could make it better.

In order to use this editor you have to compile it. This means you need Qt4 (at least 4.2.0 but 4.3.0 or newer is recommended), g++ and make.
To compile the code for your plateform you just have to do the followings :

qmake PKanaEditor.pro

make

./PKanaEditor

I tested it on GNU/Linux (Slackware+KDE) and Windows XP and it should compile and run on Mac OS X and most of the common Unice (*BSD, etc.).
Here is a screenshot of the windows xp version :

I hope you will like it !

don't forget: feel free to send me your feelings about this... Did I mention that I wanted feedback ?

Arnaud Dupuis

PKanaEditor updates

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:54:00 +0100

Hi,
After some thoughs I choose to change the way the helper is shown in the KanaEditor.
The tab-based widget was not easy to use in real usage conditions.
So I changed the thing and made a new helper based on a single QListWidget.
Here is the new result on Linux/KDE :

And on windows XP :

I think the Japanese font installed on the windows I use are just crappy.
Else, I can't explain the difference in quality between the windows version and the Linux one.
Next time, I will try to compile it on apple's Mac OS X.

Last but not least, I made a Qt Designer plugin of this KanaEditor widget. And thanks to the guy of irc://irc.freenode.net#qt I fixed a damn semi-colon at the end of the class definition which was "preventing" my code to compile...

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

PKanaEditor new version proof of concept

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:40:00 +0100

Hi,
I never talk about my private life (or very few), but this time it had an influence on my Open Source work !
So here is the information : I will be married by june !
And my futur wife and I decided to spend our honeymoon in Japan... So make the link by yourself between this journey and PKanaEditor

So I have begin to code a proof of concept in C++/Qt4 and with some surprise it works pretty good ! Have a look at this screenshots :

Moreover, my new mission force me to code under microsoft windows xp, so I tried to recompile this PoC under windows and it works too ! Have a look :

Dudes from Trolltech made some incredible works ! I know it works since years but I didn't put my hands on a windows computer in more than 8 years, and at this time I wasn't programming at all... I was too young ;-).

I now lack the XML loading of the data file and this PoC will be a stable version

For those who are interested in Qt programming, I do the trick translating romanji to (hiraga|kataka)na|kanji by subclassing QListWidgetItem and adding a _romanji internal QString to this item. The actual displayed character is set as the item text. Pretty simple, like the major part of Qt programming !!

The only real problem is to find a new meaning to the "P" of PKanaEditor (because it originally means Perl Kana Editor)...

Arnaud Dupuis

compatibility of the Slackware::Slackget Perl module version 0.15_99

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:20:00 +0100

Hi,
It looks like that the latest released version of the Slackware::Slackget Perl module is quite incompatible with the Solaris operating system.
I was expecting this kind of problem with this release because I added more tests to the test suite. And Slackware::Slackget, as its name said, is designed to run on Slackware GNU/Linux based distributions.
So before the 0.15 final release, in order to provide a very usefull test suite, I will add some more tests.
And unfortunately, I expect more issues... The more the test suite is accurate, the more it will point the problem with Slackware incompatible systems.

The problem with the Solaris systems is that the `file` command do not support the -b switch. I use the file command instead of a CPAN module to reduce the amount of dependencies of Slackware::Slackget but I will look at this and try to make the Slackware::Slackget::File class use a CPAN module if installed (like File::Type).

Arnaud Dupuis

Websites and (bothering) stuffs like that (bis repetita)

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:17:00 +0100

Hi,
Err, I think it was quite a bad idea to automatically import all article from this blog to http://slackget.infinityperl.org... Since the massive amount of new articles may have made slackget.infinityperl looks like exactly the same than the blog... and Google do not like that at all...
I'm so bad with referencing and stuff like that

If someone have advice on this point, feel free to contact me at (suppress all underscores) a_[dot]_d_u_p_u_i_s_[at]_i_n_f_i_n_i_t_y_p_e_r_l_[dot]_o_r_g

Bye.

Arnaud Dupuis

Websites and (bothering) stuffs like that

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:14:00 +0100

Hi,
As you could have figured I'm not really fond of website designing and stuffs like that...
But, in order to have some visibility on the Internet, this is my needed curse.
I intended to send http://slackget.infinityperl.org to oblivion but I realized that it was not really a good idea regarding google's stats.
So to fool the <insert your favorite search engine here>bot, I wrote a script (which is now running with cron), to automatically import all the post I do on this blog, and to do a static export in html from the blog to slackget.infinityperl.org.

I just wanted to keep you aware that you could read two times the same post

Just a little reminder about slack-get project websites :
Official web site : this blog
Old website : http://slackget.infinityperl.org
Web SVN interface : http://slack-get-10.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/slack-get-10/
Sourceforge page : https://sourceforge.net/projects/slack-get-10/
Freshmeat page : http://freshmeat.net/projects/ipslackget/

Arnaud Dupuis

Release: Slackware::Slackget v0.15_99 and SGNC documentation

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 19:40:00 +0100

Hi,

A new version of the Slackware::Slackget module was released few hours ago on CPAN.
This release features the followings changes :
    - modify Slackware::Slackget::File->filename() behavior to allow it to set the filename
    - fix is_heavy_word() method in Slackware::Slackget::Package, wich now return the correct result
    - update Slackware::Slackget::Date to make it fill the month-name from the month-number
    - update Slackware::Slackget::Date by overloading '<=>' and 'cmp'
    - changed all classes of the Slackware::Slackget module to be compliant with the slack-get naming convention (SGNCC : Slack-Get Naming Convention Compliant) (http://www.infinityperl.org/post/2008/01/30/slack-get-API-review)
    - add more tests to the test suite for the followings classes :
        * Slackware::Slackget::File (SGNCC & backward compatible)
        * Slackware::Slackget::Media (SGNCC & backward compatible)
        * Slackware::Slackget::Date (SGNCC& backward compatible)
        * Slackware::Slackget::Package (SGNCC & backward compatible)

It is tagged as a developers' release for the moment since all the test for all modified (SGNCC) modules, the documentation is not yet up-to-date considering all the changes made, and I still need some time to test if their is absolutely no side effects due to the changes I made in the API.

Arnaud Dupuis

SGNCC - Slack-Get Naming Convention Compliant : the new slack-get's naming convention document

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:35:00 +0100

Document purpose :

The purpose of this document is to "standardize" slack-get development by imposing a naming convention for both (but not only) : slack-get clients, sg_daemon, all Perl modules and the C++ library.
This include of course, all plug-in which can be released in the futur.

Vocabulary :

In the future, we will refers to the slack-get naming convention as :
SGNC: for Slack-Get Naming Convention.

Additionally, we will refers to SGNC compliant code as SGNCC (SGNC Compliant).

Scope of the SGNC :

All the code released under the "slack-get development team" label must be SGNC compliant (SGNCC).
More generally, all code released and packaged with slack-get must be (and will be) SGNCC.
The SGNC apply to all API visible method names. Every methods in a class or bundle must be SGNCC. By extension to this principle all methods in the sg_daemon, slack-get and the upcoming slack-get GUI have to be SGNCC.
All script released and packaged with slack-get should be SGNCC too. But in order to not slow down some developments it is acceptable to keep not SGNCC code in the branch/ SVN tree. If released with slack-get, this code will be optional at building and installation time. It will also be released in a different package.

Rules of SGNC :

We refer to functions and methods as the same generic term of "method".
The SGNC consist in the following 3 simple programing rules :

a method name consist of lower case, English words where space are replaced with underscores ;
if the method name is conflicting with Perl or C++ built-in function or language syntax, change the case of the first letter to upper case.
if a conflict was solved according to rule 2), and if the name conflicts with only one of the supported languages (Perl and C++), add a wrapper method around the renamed one, in order to comply with the rule 1).

The slack-get development team

slack-get API review

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:39:00 +0100

Hi,

Back from holidays, I started to work again on slack-get by a huge code review and documentation updates of the API.
My current contract had an impact on this process since it consists in extending the NMIS tool. This tool is really great and useful like no other ones when it comes to network monitoring tasks.
But this tool also have an important flaw : its API is a real mess. It consist of a main script of 7000 code lines and few modules (around 10) totally undocumented !
My job is currently to run into this code, understand it (hopefully it's not too hard to guess) and find a way to add something like a plug-in system to it. Unfortunately, all NMIS modules exports all their functions in the calling script's namespace...
So I choose to have a different naming convention than the one in NMIS for plug-in's methods name... And their is no naming convention in NMIS...

And I sadly saw that it was exactly the same with slack-get Perl API... So starting today I will change that and tag along with the following naming convention :

a method name consist of English words where space are replaced with underscores ;
if the name is conflicting with Perl or C++ built-in function or language syntax, change the case of the first letter to upper case.
if a conflict was solved according to rule 2), and if the name do not conflict with the other language, add a wrapper method around the renamed one, in order to comply with the rule 1).

Boring work but I deserve to do it...

Arnaud Dupuis

Big day today : KDE 4.0.0 announcement and starting 10 days snowboarding

Arnaud Dupuis — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:49:00 +0100

Hi,
Well almost everything was said in the title... The main information for the planet is the official KDE 4.0.0 announcement (and the huge party in Mountain View) ! I tried to help the dream to become true, and I want to thanks all the KDE core developers : THANK YOU SO MUCH !

Thanks to Aaron, Anne-Marie, Jonathan, Adriaan and all the community the next generation desktop is now a reality and for the sake of the Open Source community's dynamism it's a great news. And for the sake of my desktop it's even a greater news !
I just can't wait for the images/video/blog entries of the release party ! I hope you will enjoy the same feeling I did the first time I got Plasma running.
Now for my little announcement : as soon as the C++ part of the slack-get library is written, I'll write a Plasmoid which will allow you to stay up-to-date by just looking at your (beautiful) desktop !

Last but not least, starting today I take a break from all coding activities (slack-get as well as KDE), and go 10 days in the Alps trying breaking one or two legs on my snowboard !
I'll try to provide some pictures
If the internet can't climb to Val d'Isère, or if I'm so badly hurt that i can't use my laptop, or if i'm just too lazy to write a blog entry : see you in 10 days ! More probably : see you in few days.

Arnaud Dupuis

Little question from a slack-get user

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:52:00 +0100

Hello,
I recently received an email from Mark, a slack-get user, who asked me a very simple question : why have I called slack-get this way ?
Well, this is a tricky question. Let me answer this :

At first I wanted to call it get-slack, this is the name of the menu you have to click on Slackware's website. But it was to close from the website and I didn't want to take this initiative (at least not alone, I could have ask for the permission of Pat or the crew). So helped by a huge sense of originaluty and creation, I decided to switch syllable and/or letters.
I came with some nice thing like : gsletack or gstckael but I was afraid somebody else already took the name (and a bit afraid about the poor americans unable to pronounce that ... not talking about Japanese... and not talking about me !).
So I finally came with slack-get, a bit inspired (i must admit it) by an obscur soft called apt-get, and largelly because of the signification of slack-get's acronyme :

So, Mark, I hope that I answered your question Else feel free to send me another email (I like receving email from slack-get users, particularly when they are kind with me and slack-get !).

See you later,

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #5

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 09:56:00 +0100

Hi !

First of everything : I wish you all an happy new year. May all your desires come to reality !

My own desire is to release a first version of the new slack-get daemon quickly as possible. I'm coding the real work for the upgrade and install actions (update, remove, search and the others are already working but the remove one was still not test on a real case).
Some things actually happened on slack-get development since the last diary.

Bugfixes

I fix a lots of (very old) bugs. For example, in the Slackware::Slackget::Base class (which is untouched since months), there was a bug and the FILELIST: tag from the packages text file was not removed correctly and was still present in the XML. This is now fixed.
I also improve a lot the way metadata are parsed by classes like Slackware::Slackget::Package by simplifying the parsing regular expressions.
Without turning this diary in a bugfixe list, I also modify some XML parsing behaviors in order to make the resulting data structure consistent over time. I modified the Slackware::Slackget::Package class quite a lot and it now parse itself the dependency fields in the packages metadata and translates them into XML. The impact of this is : a bigger XML file (packages.xml), and an increased loading time. But in the other end, all data are now completely parsed in the XML file and there is no extra work to do after parsing, and the dependency tracking is a lot easier (and actually quicker ^^).

Remaining bugs

There is still a bug in Slackware::Slackget::Network::Backend::Gzip. The backend which is in charge to compress and uncompress the network messages... Well it's not working at all, and worst i don't know why. But in the other hand, i have not tried a lot to fix this module. I focus on sg_daemon and slack-get for the moment (and the involved vital modules).
The Base64 and XML backends are still working fine.

Other stuff

You should also be aware that I'm trying to help as much as I can for the KDE 4.0 release, so until the 11th of January the slack-get's development will certainly be slowed down by my involvement in KDE 4.0 development.
And on the 11th of January i'm going to snowboarding in the Alps until the 20th of January ! So I will not be available at all during this time... Off course, because I'll be too busy trying to break some of my bones

"slack-get update" command on the way !

Arnaud Dupuis — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:26:00 +0100

Hi,
Just to keep you up-to-date, the "slack-get remove <packages list>" command now works correctly (although I still need to do tons of testing) and the "slack-get update" command is on the good way.
Once it will be finished, the "slack-get upgrade <packages list>" will also be ready because both of those commands are closely bounded.
The difference between the two commands is pretty simple :
while the "upgrade" one allow you to upgrade (download + upgradepkg) a named list of packages, the "update" command check for all updates available in <repository root>/patches/packages/.
On a freshly installed Slackware 12.0 you get the following output (click on the image to enlarge it) :

That's all for today. See you later for the development diary.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Trolltech's big move !

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:25:00 +0100

TodayTrolltech announced that the Phonon back-ends they have developped are being hosted on KDE's SVN repository !
That's a hell of great news since it bring back-ends for both windows and Mac OS X KDE's port !
As a programmer I'm very excited with KDE 4 and all the things around like Phonon, Solid and the others. And since I'm a big fan of Qt I'm very glad that Trolltech made such a great move.
Keep going on !

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #4

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:00:00 +0100

Hi,
There is a lot to say for this development diary #4 !

Perl module: Slackware::Slackget vs slackget10 :

First of all, the Perl part of the project (currently the biggest part). As you may all know now : the slack-get Perl module is now listed in the official Perl Module list on CPAN in the Operating System Interface category. And for this big promotion the module changed its name from slackget10 to Slackware::Slackget.
If some of you still wondered : slackget10 is officially abandoned, and today, completely outdated.
I added a lot of features to this module like the stackable backends. I also released on CPAN a debug module which add the support for a debug:// network protocol. This is a totally fake protocol which help development by outputing loads of informations on the standard output. The module name is Slackware::Slackget::Network::Connection::DEBUG. It's not a part of the Slackware::Slackget distribution, it's even not in the SVN trunk but in branch/perl-modules.
One of the big improvement of the Slackware::Slackget module is its test suite : the latest release on CPAN (0.14) haven't encounter even 1 fail !
I also tried a lot to make the module platform independent, and more generic. I have rewrite lots of code in order to take all the interdependent code out of the modules. It's now partially done and the next module which will feel my scalpel is Slackware::Slackget::PkgTools... I saw some horrible things inside of this one !

The slack-get suite programs : sg_daemon and slack-get :

Everything have changed ! Beginning with slack-get : this program wasn't available 2 weeks ago. It's a command line client for the sg_daemon it allow you to query the daemon. At the moment I write this development diary (svn revision 110) you can perform the following actions with slack-get : search a package (based on it's name, or anything in the description of this package), ask the daemon to rebuild the installed packages cache, ask the daemon to reload it's media list, ask the daemon to rebuild the update list. Well... now it only lack the possibility to install, upgrade and remove packages to be released... I'm already on the remove part (the easiest ^^).
Let's show you some search request performed on a cache which contains the official Slackware current repository, Linuxpackages repository and my own perl-modules repository (totally outdated) :

This is a big improvement since it actually do something... You may wonder how it is possible for me to implements 3 or 4 possible actions (features) for slack-get and have wait for so long before doing it. In fact it's now very easy and quick to add features to sg_daemon and slack-get because the base architecture is done coding (and well designed :D).
From now on, the remaining features I will include before releasing a first version (without any GUI but with the CLI client) are :

install package
upgrade package
remove package
run background for the daemon

Once it'll be done I will bundle it and release the 1.0.0-alpha2 version. Obviously, it will be a testing version.
In the real coding side, the last SVN revision of sg_daemon include tons of improvements like : automatic message formating, a first version of the backend stack negotiation system (between the daemon and the client), a real and simple network protocol, a powerfull and working base architecture and a bullet proof internal communication ! (with that if I don't attract some geek devs I don't know how to do it ).
The next big part of the work will be the implementation of collaborative part. But fortunately, a huge amount of this code was already wrote in slack-get-1.0.0-alpha1. To give you an example, all the code related to the master/slave mechanism is already written and slack-getd is able to work with many other daemons withtout to much pain in the configuration side (assuming you talk XML...).
But in addition to the existing code (that I will still need to port to the new event-based architecture), I want to add an "auto discover" feature to allow many sg_daemon(s) to work together without any configuration or human supervision. I want the daemons able to elect a master, change their mode between master and slave, and many other distributed stuffs like that, based on some simple rules (what's the sysload, the average sysload, etc.) in total autonomy (if the sysadmin allow it !).
In addition to all of this development, I will publish a debug backend for Slackware::Slackget::Network to allow developers to track the state of a network message during the encoding and decoding process.

Some news from the GUI point :

I made a graphical interface to get the list of official Slackware mirrors (from the "Get Slack" page of the official website). It's still not finished (it cannot update the medias.xml file yet), but it's already working to get the list and writting it down to the hard disk. I think this dialog will be part of the final slack-get GUI.
And since it's the first screenshot I can show, here it is :

Well... nothing to climb to the roof but it's a beginning
All the testing GUI are available from the SVN branch : branch/gui_test.
The GUI is the next main development priority after getting the daemon working.

I think I'm done with this week (and a half...) diary, I'll keep you informed !

Cya

Arnaud Dupuis.

Slackware::Slackget is born !

Arnaud Dupuis — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:52:00 +0100

Hi,
As I announced many times, the slackget10 is now dead since the Slackware::Slackget namespace was created on CPAN.
I already released 2 versions of this module and will keep going !
With the last release, I finally managed to fix the test suite in in order to pass all tests on all testers architectures (even on Cygwin !).
I also improved a lot the network backend system by making it stackable and even if some problems are still here the global thing is on the rails.

What I'm not very happy with is the remaining problems with the S::Sg::Network module... On the paper it works just great, I can take the output of the decode() method to give it as input to the encode() one and all runs perfectly smoothly (see the network-backend.pl test script). But in real life... the sg_daemon and slack-get have some difficulties to talk to each other...

Anyway things are going pretty well and I have a lot to write in the "development diary" !!

Cya !

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get perl module change its name !

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:32:00 +0100

Hi,
Like I announced on the developers' mailing list, the slackget10 was about to die. It's now done. The PAUSE (Perl Authors Upload SErver) admins sent me an email confirming the creation of the Slackware::Slackget registered namespace on PAUSE/CPAN.
I will modify all the library to fit the new namespace and release the changes as soon as possible.
One more thing : I created a new branch on the SVN for the GUI tests

Cya,

Arnaud Dupuis

New Network backend mechanism

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:32:00 +0100

Today I implemented the new slackget10::Network mechanism I wanted to. What is it you ask ?
Clearly something which will help everything to be super-easy to improve. As you may know (or not) the slackget10::Network Perl Module has been completely redesigned and will be largely recoded.
The changes are quite important and the API is completely new. It's now a front end module (like slackget10::Network::Connection is) and it aim at providing a unified interface for all kind of "protocol" implementation.
The idea is to answer the question : "what are you doing with an incoming network packet ?". The answer is simple : you decode it, you interpret it, you build the answer and you encode the answer before sending it. Hi,
Today I implemented the new slackget10::Network mechanism I wanted to. What is it you ask ?
Clearly something which will help everything to be super-easy to improve. As you may know (or not) the slackget10::Network Perl Module has been completely redesigned and will be largely recoded.
The changes are quite important and the API is completely new. It's now a front end module (like slackget10::Network::Connection is) and it aim at providing a unified interface for all kind of "protocol" implementation.
The idea is to answer the question : "what are you doing with an incoming network packet ?". The answer is simple : you decode it, you interpret it, you build the answer and you encode the answer before sending it.
Very well ! the new API behave exactly like that and you can test it with the last SVN revision of slack-get trunk (83) and the following code :

#!/usr/bin/perl

usestrict;

usewarnings;

useslackget10::Network;

my$net = new slackget10::Network ;

my$message = $net->decode('<?xml version="1.0" ?>'.

'<SlackGetProtocol version="1.0">'.

'       <Enveloppe>'.

'              <Action id="123456">get_connection_id</Action>'.

'     </Enveloppe>'.

'</SlackGetProtocol>');

print$net->encode($message), "\n";

I think it's quite a natural of of doing things. Of course, the sg10::Network class provide the interpret() method !
And to actually do the encoding and decoding part it rely on slackget10::Network::Backend::* class.
I already coded the slackget10::Network::Backend::XML backend and do not plan on coding other backends until I have decided how to implements secure connections.
I will work on tutorials/howto which will describes how to code network backends and add the support for new protocol for the slackget10::Network::Connection class.

See ya !

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #3

Arnaud Dupuis — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:19:00 +0100

Hi,

I was a bit lazy about blogging the slack-get development progression... Me bad, please accept my deepest apologies.
In the other hand, where do you think I spent all the time I didn't on blog ? Yes, you are right : playing SSX Blur on my Wii
More seriously, I made some nice improvements in sg_daemon :

The file downloading code is now working and use a lot POE. If you checkout the code on Sourceforge's SVN and try out sg_daemon you will see that it is downloading all files to build the updates cache ! I'm quite happy to have this functionality working. Although it's not perfect and I'll make the slackget10::Network::Connection* drivers using the POE way of passing parameters. This will become very handy when I will update the drivers to a trully POE based architecture.
The other big progress is about the network protocol. I think that I finally managed to define the needs of slack-get . The keys points are : flexibility and powerfullness. The XML based protocol I defined should meet those requirements. So I defined a base data structure that all network messages must respect, and after that I defined a way to serialize those data. So basically you just need the right serialization component to change the way sg_daemon and slack-get client talks. For the moment I will only develop the XML one but, in order to make easy the creation of other components, when a client connects to sg_daemon a quick handshake is made (sg_daemon send a message with the protocol version, client send a message with its protocol version and his supported serialisation method.
Following the move slackget10::Network.pm was almost entirely rewrote to only format the network messages. A new class appeared : slackget10::Network::Message wich is an abstraction of a network message (unbelievable isn't it ?), an object of this type must now be give as parameter to all sg10::Network methods. Those changes are all due to the redefinition of the network protocol and to the rewriting of sg_daemon.

Last but not least : I promise to be more active on this blog

See ya next time !

Arnaud Dupuis

New slackget10 Perl Module release - version 0.11

Arnaud Dupuis — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:21:00 +0100

Hi,

Well.. I changed so much slackget10::Network::Connection* modules that I made a release of the whole module on CPAN !
This release features :

Dynamic driver loading. As explained in another post I made the driver loading code completly dynamic. From now on, you just have a slackget10::Network::Connection::<PROTOCOL>.pm module to add support for <protocol>:// protocol to slackget10::Network::Connection.pm.
New slackget10::Network::Connection API. Loads of things have changed in the API of this class. First it's now event driven and it means you have to pass a InlineStates => {} parameter to the constructor. Then the old construction behavior (with only one parameter) is now deprecated and unsupported. Please have a look at the documentation for more information about this.
New slackget10::Network::Connection::*.pm API. It's now way easier to create a protocol driver ! You just have to create a module with the 3 followings methods defined inside : __test_server(), __get_file(), __fetch_file(). They'll be called by slackget10::Network::Connection.pm wich will take care of everything (like event throwing).

This class is now fully usable out of the box in other programs than just slack-get, and that was one of the goal of the slackget10 module !
I'll made a HOWTO on the wiki to explain how to create a driver.

Good day

Arnaud Dupuis

Week end planning

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 15:46:00 +0100

Hi ,

I'm working a lot on slack-get this week end ! Today's morning was concentrated on slackget10::Network::Connection modifications. I made quite a lot of them. I made two major changes in the module architecture :

I made the protocol driver's loading completly dynamic (no more static, hardcoded hash table to track authorized protocols)
I changed all drivers (slackget10::Network::Connection::*) and made them independents from the slackget10::Config. The "config" parameter is not required anymore. In place of this option you have to give the "download_directory".

The other thing I planned for the week end is to polish my skills with Qt4. I'll try to make the configuration widget for the GUI this week end... even if I can't promise anything.

I also updates the Wiki by creating some API documentation pages.

Let's keep the pace !

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #2

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 07:23:00 +0100

Hi,

First let me tell you some things about me : I've got a new job recently. I'm now working in a IT consulting company in their Open Source business unit. That's great !

I also marry my fiancée in June... So you can tell that I have less time to code

That was for the explanation why I haven't code a lot this week

But the slack-get development is still moving quite nicely, even if I had loads of problems this week. I focused on turning all the network handling code in sg_daemon POE compliant. So I looked at a POE Component (PoCo) wich implements the HTTP protocol.. Great the is one who manage parallel downloads !! I tried it and it is just what I need. So I began to search the same things but for other protocols sg_daemon support... and here are the problems.

I found nothing for the FILE protocol and the PoCo for FTP is still young and do not provide the same API than PoCo::Client::HTTP. So I ended to reverse the changes I already made to slackget10::Network::Connection::HTTP and decided to change the API to emulate the POE way of doing things. So the slackget10::Network::Connection object must, now, be constructed with an argument InlineState => {}which contains 3 events : progress, download_finished, and download_error. You have to associates a handler to each of this events.

Talking about this class, the internal architecture have changed and it is now way easier to add drivers for slackget10::Network::Connection. You just have to create a class wich implements some methods. It will be the feature highlights of the week.

I have not much to say considering that all my family stuff for my weddings and all the problems I met with the "POE-ification" of the network code slowed me down a lot.

Let's hope for next week

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get feature highlights #1 : managing the install medias

Arnaud Dupuis — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:30:00 +0100

Hi !

Today I'm introducing a new kind of post : the slack-get functionality highlights. What is that ? Well once a week (or more often maybe) I will introduce and explain a specific functionality of slack-get.
It can be in sg_daemon, or slack-get tools (CLI or GUI). It can also be some nice features of one of the slack-get libraries (slackget10 Perl module or the upcoming C++ one).

Enough introduction ! Today's highlight is about the media management system. Before everything, please note that all the examples in this diary will work on all slack-get version >= 1.0.0_pre-alpha1

How do slack-get manage its media and how the daemon choose to download a package from a server or another ? This is indeed a good question because there is very few documentation about this feature.... my bad
So.. slack-get use a configuration file called medias.xml where all medias are listed. This file is a XML one (as suggested by its extension...), and look like that :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes"?>

<medialist>

    <media id="media1">

       // lets forget this part for now

    </media>

    <media id="media2">

       // ...

    </media>

</medialist>

Quite easy to understand isn't it ? there is a media list which contains a list of media... fair enough
Now what about the <media></media> entity ? It's basically THE basic entity for all media you want to use as an install source.
As I write this, you can have 3 types of media :

http ones. For all repositories you access via the http protocol ;
ftp ones. For... yes : all the repositories you can access via the ftp protocol ;
file ones. That's the general one. You can use it for installing Slackware packages from your Slackware DVD, from a NFS drive or any other repository which can be seen as "local filesystem" by your system.

The structure of the XML entity <media></media> look like that :



<media id="a_media_id">

    <files>

       
<filelist>FILELIST.TXT</filelist>

       
<checksums>CHECKSUMS.md5</checksums>

       
<packages>PACKAGES.TXT.gz</packages>

    </files>

    <update-repository>

        <faster><!-- an URL
--></faster>

       <fast>

          <li><!-- an URL
--></li>

          <li><!-- another URL
--></li>

       </fast>

       <slow>

          <li><!-- an URL
--></li>

          <li><!-- another URL
--></li>

       </slow>

    </update-repository>

    <description>The description of this
media.</description>

    <web-link>http://www.mysite.org</web-site>

</media>

The <files></files> entity gives the name of the files which actually contains the wanted informations. there is 3 informations wanted :

the list of the repository files ( usually in the FILELIST.TXT file ) ;
the list of the files checksums ( usually in the CHECKSUMS.md5 file ) ;
the detailled list of packages ( usually in the PACKAGES.txt file ).

the slackget10 Perl module compile all those informations in a single file ( called installed.xml, we will discuss about it in another "slack-get functionality highlights" issue ).
You can say here if you prefer to download the compressed version if exists and if the repository is not really standard (file name in lower case for example) you also have more flexibility here.
I got emails from a bunch of peoples who even used the old slack-get daemon (slack-getd) to install red hat packages ! Which means one thing : you can do more than I coded with slack-get :D
Actually, it's not hard to modify the initial way-of-doing-things of slack-get, you just have to replace some of the Perl modules.

Let's see a simple example : adding the Slackware 12.0 DVD to the media list.
First open the medias.xml file with your favorite editor, then add the following :

    <media id="SlackDvd12.0">

        <files>

           
<filelist>FILELIST.TXT</filelist>

           
<checksums>CHECKSUMS.md5</checksums>

           
<packages>PACKAGES.TXT</packages>

        </files>

        <update-repository>

           
<faster>file:///mnt/cdrom/</faster>

        </update-repository>

        <description>The official 12.0
cd-rom directory.</description>

    </media>

The first thing you can note is that we didn't used all the possible XML entity in this example. Indeed all fields are not mandatories. The only mandatories "fields" (attribute or tag) are :

id : the media id attribute ;
the <update-repository></update-repository> tag ;
the <faster></faster> tag.

So we added a new media, its id is "SlackDvd12.0", it use the standard files (so we can simplify this entry and remove the <files></files> section), and the only repository we have is in the /mnt/cdrom/ and have a small description.
We can simplify this media section (without loosing any informations), like that :

    <media id="SlackDvd12.0">

        <update-repository>

           
<faster>file:///mnt/cdrom/</faster>

        </update-repository>

        <description>The official 12.0
cd-rom directory.</description>

    </media>

This example, is simple and quickly added, let's have a look at a more complete example, by adding the LinuxPackages repository to our medias list :

    <media id="linuxpackages">

        <files>

           
<filelist>FILELIST.TXT</filelist>

           
<checksums>CHECKSUMS.md5.gz</checksums>

           
<packages>PACKAGES.TXT.gz</packages>

        </files>

        <update-repository>

           
<faster>http://opensys.linuxpackages.net/Slackware-11.0/</faster>


            <fast>

               
<li>http://www.nymphomatic.org/mirror/linuxpackages/Slackware-12.0/</li>


               
<li>http://linuxpackages.inode.at/Slackware-12.0/</li>

               
<li>http://ftp.scarlet.be/pub/linuxpackages/Slackware-12.0/</li>


               
<li>http://www2.linuxpackages.net/packages/Slackware-12.0/</li>


               
<li>http://mirror.etf.bg.ac.yu/linuxpackages/Slackware-12.0/</li>


               
<li>http://linuxpackages.slackwaresupport.com/Slackware-12.0/</li>


            </fast>

            <slow>

               
<li>ftp://linuxpackages.inode.at/Slackware-12.0/</li>

               
<li>ftp://ftp.scarlet.be/pub/linuxpackages/Slackware-12.0/</li>


               
<li>http://linuxpackages.cgucccc.org/Slackware-12.0/</li>

               
<li>ftp://ftp3.linuxpackages.net/pub/Slackware-12.0/</li>

               
<li>ftp://mirror.etf.bg.ac.yu/linuxpackages/Slackware-12.0/</li>


               
<li>ftp://ftp.slackware.hu/linuxpackages/Slackware-12.0/</li>

               
<li>ftp://opensys.linuxpackages.net/pub/Slackware-12.0/</li>

               
<li>ftp://ftp.nymphomatic.org/linuxpackages/Slackware-12.0/</li>


            </slow>

        </update-repository>

        <description>Slackware resources to
help install and configure the Linux slackware distribution, Email list,
Discussion Board, Howtos, Contributed packages, and much
more</description>

       
<web-link>http://www.linuxpackages.net</web-link>

    </media>

Here we specify compressed files in the <files></files> section. This is possible because the slackget10::File class can load both of compressed and uncompressed files.
Then we have a list of repositories. The <faster></faster> one is like your preferred mirror, it will always be used unless it is not reachable. If it's not, servers in the <fast></fast> section are tried, then come the ones in the <slow></slow> section.
As you can see we have mixed type of mirrors : some are HTTP ones while other are FTP ones. That is not a problem, you can mix sources of all kinds. The only limitation is that slack-get must have a driver for the specified protocol (for the moment you can use only, http://, ftp:// and file://).
You can also see that we have set a web site for this media. This information is use in many way, for example in the search page of the slack-get site, or in the GUI to provide a link to the repository maintener site.

In real world, slack-get can test all the repositories and classify them by their answer time. Like in many other fields, I tried to make the slack-get's parts as clever as possible and do the right thing with the right informations. I hope it works

Now for the unreleased things and the unbelievably new informations : I will add the support of variables in repository URLs... this will allow you to write things like that in your medias.xml :

<update-repository param="$SLACKWARE_VERSION=12.0">

   
<faster>http://opensys.linuxpackages.net/Slackware-$SLACKWARE_VERSION/</faster>


</update-repository>

Nice isn't it ? I'm still not sure about the final shape of this feature but I think it'll be like I just showed you.

To conclude, you are now more informed on the media management system of slack-get and you can easily manually add new repositories to your medias.xml file.
In the next version of the GUI you will be able to edit this file with a nice window.
I hope this article helped you to better understand some of the slack-get's black magic
Please, feel free to react, comment and propose improvements.

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #1

Arnaud Dupuis — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:41:00 +0200

Hi !

I've got a lot to say today !
First of all I was surprised by the number of failed test in my last release of the slackget10 Perl module. After some work on this, and with the great help of David Cantrell, we managed to find to work out the problem.
It is in the test suite of XML::Simple (used by slackget10::Base and other slackget10::* classes) : if XML::Parser failed to install the XML::Simple's test suite do not chain fail, and the installation is not done well, but it's done.
So if you try to use XML::Simple with the directive :
$XML::Simple::PREFERRED_PARSER='XML::Parser';
slackget10::Base just crash. David submitted a patch which is very simple but also very efficient :

eval 'use XML::Parser';

if($@) {

    warn("XML::Parser is not installed. XML processing
operations will be very slow.\n");

} else {

    $XML::Simple::PREFERRED_PARSER='XML::Parser' ;

}

It fixed the problem, and I have integrated it directly to the trunk of slack-get SVN repository.

The second point is the slack-get communication protocol draft. Things are going well, I think I finished to determine at least 70% of the communication needs.
If you are willing to give me an advice on this draft do not hesitate ! Go checkout the SVN version and have a look in the trunk/devel/ directory.

About sg_daemon now : I've got the internal scheduler working ! yeehaa !
I've finish the porting of the "installed packages list building" functionality and it's now working with the internal scheduler of sg_daemon.
The great thing is : that was the hardest part
Porting the other functionalities will be easy... or not... indeed some internal functions of sg_daemon are not adapted to the POE architecture and will take some time to port.

Last but not least, I've come with a new icon for slack-get, feel free to give your opinion :