Association Subscribers Manager and Open source stuffs

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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