dropline development

new shared development journal

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 16:50:01 GMT

The development journal for dropline.net has moved to the droplinehackers community. This will allow multiple users to post, hopefully creating a better community for discussing dropline.net projects. See you there!

downtime

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 01:08:52 GMT

as many of you have probably noticed, dropline.net is down at the moment due to a bandwidth spike. i've been trying to get hold of the isp all weekend to no avail; hopefully they'll respond monday morning.

in the mean time, i'd like to say thanks for all of the hosting offers received over the past 48 hours :) dropline.net does generate a lot of traffic, but it also generates enough revenue to pay for hosting and i'd rather not intrude on someone else's server unless it was really necessary. i'm going to give cyberpixels another day to get this issue fixed before jumping ship (they've been really good in the past, but their tech support is starting to get ridiculus...) right now i'm looking at oktagone.net.au; their service looks pretty good and has been recommended to me. does anyone have any experience, good or bad, with them?

new development section

Mon, 19 Apr 2004 02:17:39 GMT

i added this development section to dropline.net the other day. if anyone is interested in helping out with dropline gnome development, it's a great place to start. it includes a sample list of projects that need work, and explains how to get started. :)

it looks like most of the bugs have been ironed out of the 2.6 release, so i'll be updating the .torrent files this week as well.

Dropline GNOME 2.6

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 04:14:56 GMT

Straight from the Dropline Forums:

I've put a pair of BitTorrents on http://morva.dropline.net/dropline; one with the binaries, and one with the sources + build system. The binaries have also been uploaded to SourceForge.net and should propogate to all of the mirrors overnight. Tomorrow I'll update the Dropline Installer's file list and you'll have the choice of either updating via BitTorrent or the Dropline Installer. Enjoy!

drivel update

Sun, 04 Apr 2004 17:37:25 GMT

the latest cvs version of drivel now requires gtk+ 2.4. i've already ported the GtkFileSelections to the new GtkFileChooser dialogs, and have begun to move the menus to the GtkAction API. there are also about a dozen new translations, thanks to the gnome translation project :)

dropline gnome 2.6.0-test1 available

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 02:17:21 GMT

the testing cycle for the next dropline gnome release has begun! checkout my forum post for all the gory details.

dropline gnome status

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 22:09:00 GMT

dropline gnome 2.6 is getting closer to a release. all of the gnome packages have been built and, with the exception of the setup tools and gstreamer stuff, working exceptionally well. i still need to update the xfree86 packages to xorg (that's tonight's project), and add samba-3 to the distribution, which is now required for gnome-vfs. once those two packages are in, i'll try and figure out the gstreamer issues, because currently nothing that uses gstreamer works.

once those three areas are under control, i'll try to put up a set of testing packages so that i can get some feedback before the official release, tennatively scheduled for mid-april.

dropline gnome test packages

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 07:11:28 GMT

www.dropline.net/gnome/testing/

please note that these are *testing* packages; they're working on my machines, but i've no idea what they may do to yours ;) install the packages in the order listed in the INSTALL-ORDER file and reboot. please let me know if anything breaks after the update. this is just a base system: pam, x, xml, etc. since everything else depends on these packages, i want to ensure they're stable before moving on to gnome proper.

progress towards dropline gnome 2.6

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 03:07:40 GMT

after some significant data-loss thursday, i've managed to re-write the build system and now have testing packages for everything up to gtk+-2.4.0. integrating x with the latest dri snapshot turned out to cause too many compatibility issues, so x will be version 4.3.0.2 after all. still, it includes some significant bug-fixes over 4.3.0, and feels a bit faster, probably due to compiler optimizations and stripping the libraries. i've also added in the latest render, xrender, xcursor, and xft libraries from freedesktop.org, as well as the bitstream vera truetype fonts. all in all, it should be a fairly significant upgrade over the previous x release to ship with dropline gnome (or slackware, for that matter).

i've noticed that the removal of libiconv does break binary compatibility for any previous glib application (i.e., all of gnome). this will probably create some head-aches in the short-term, but it will restore full binary compatibility between dropline gnome and slackware. this means packages compiled on a dropline gnome system will work on a vanilla slackware system (as long as the slackware machine has all the recent gnome libraries), and i believe it's the right move in the long run. it should also fix the numerous issues with abiword and possibly xine.

so yeah, this update is shaping up to be quite an improvement over previous releases. i'll try and get some testing packages up this weekend so people can bang on them and hopefully iron out any issues before the official 2.6 release.

xfree86 4.3

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 03:28:47 GMT

i've spent the past 2 days working on the x 4.3 build for dropline gnome. it's *very* near completion, but getting the dri-trunk drivers to build and integrate cleanly has been a bit more difficult than i imagined. regardless, i should have it done shortly and plan to make it available as a testing package to get all of the bugs ironed out before the official dropline gnome 2.6 release later this month.

dropline gnome build progress

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 21:01:48 GMT

it seems that most of the bugs have been ironed out of the new dropline build system. in just a few hours, i've managed to compile the following:

libiconv-solibs
cracklib
pam
shadow
intltool
pkgconfig
expat
python
guile
curl
libxml2
libxslt
docbook
gtk-doc

xfree86 is next on the list, but i'm stopping here to think about how i want to handle it. 4.3.0.2, 4.4-rc2, or freedesktop's x.org?

*le sigh*

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 19:29:33 GMT

i finally ripped apart the dropline build system and re-worked it in a semi-sane fashion. i'm still working out bugs as i begin to recompile the desktop, but the latest cvs release is available from the sourceforge page.

gtk-runtime-environment 2.2.4-2

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 17:35:28 GMT

since i *really* didn't want to start writing a history paper this morning, i decided to roll a new release of gtk+ for win32. this update includes the latest binaries from www.gimp.org/win32, as well as adding support for libglade, libxml2, fontconfig, and freetype. downloads are available at www.dropline.net/gtk/download.php.

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 04:47:53 GMT

so while my last libburn patch is still waiting on review, i decided to go ahead and start tidying up the iso level-1 support. it's not particularly pretty, but it looks like it's working. when all is said and done, it will be really cool to have a gpl'ed cd burning library.

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 17:18:52 GMT

stupid abiword, why won't you open .doc files anymore?

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 23:04:41 GMT

it looks like i need to update the GTK+ Win32 packages. now to find the time...

[update] also, this will mark the first time i've booted into windows in weeks. i'm pretty tempted to delay the release until i have multiple things to do in that other os...

i hate pwlib

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 17:55:39 GMT

ack, gnomemeeting/pwlib/openh323 are a *bitch* to compile. but now gnomemeeting-1.00 can be included in dropline gnome 2.4.3, so it wasn't all a waste.

time to start uploading packages...

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:01:00 GMT

www.dropline.net/drivel

i finished up a basic webpage for drivel, and it was accepted to cvs.gnome.org. i've also moved the bug tracking/feature requests from sourceforge.net to bugs.gnome.org.

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 15:24:55 GMT

exhibit a: www.gnome.org
exhibit b: www.e-aim.com

now that's gutsy. i wonder if they realize the gnome foundation keeps laywers on-staff...

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 05:28:27 GMT

gah, finally! libisofs can write iso files at last. now to fire the patch off for review...

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 18:36:16 GMT

libburn-0.2 has been released, including my recent flurry of patches to libisofs. i'm hoping to finish up the iso writing code later this week, so libburn-0.3 may well support creating iso images in addition to burning them :)

drivel 0.9.4

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 16:47:42 GMT

after a few last-minute bug fixes, drivel 0.9.4 is out the door. i think i'll try to get this release onto cvs.gnome.org to pick up some translation support. thanks to everyone who submitted patches!

todo

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 15:26:10 GMT

current todo list:

- get the translation system working in drivel, then make a 0.9.4 release
- get libisofs writing valid iso files
- integrate optimystic with the new libisofs
- push out an early optimystic release with iso support
- keep maintaining dropline gnome

such a fucking nerd

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 06:13:02 GMT

so i started a journal to keep track of current coding ideas and projects. let's see how long this kick will last...