Author: admin

Make gdk_threads_enter and _leave recursive locks. Is there a good reason why they are normal locks today?

This is the first release of libgee 0.1.0, the GObject collection
library.

libgee 0.1.0 is now available for download at:
   http://www.paldo.org/libgee/libgee-0.1.0.tar.bz2

libgee is a collection library providing GObject-based interfaces and
classes for commonly used data structures.

libgee provides the following interfaces:

        * Iterable
          * Collection
            * List
            * Set
        * Iterator
        * Map

The ArrayList, HashSet, and HashMap classes provide a reasonable sample
implementation of the List, Set, and Map interfaces. ReadOnlyCollection,
ReadOnlyList, ReadOnlySet, and ReadOnlyMap are read-only wrapper classes
that prevent modification of the underlying collection.

libgee is written in Vala and can be used like any GObject-based C library.
It's planned to provide bindings for further languages.

Development is going on at svn://www.paldo.org/libgee/trunk

        Jürg Billeter

Dave writes on his blog an interesting point of view on why mobile device vendors should stick to the open standards. He’s on a blogging spree, so make sure to read the follow-ups on this item too:

This also highlights a serious issue with closed and non-standard platforms. If this were an ordinary smartphone, you could just shrug, ditch the in-built email client, and use something different. I’ve no idea whether, for instance, the email clients on the 770 and N800 are safe to use or not – but if I were using them, and I found it was insecure, I could switch to a different one. Security issue solved. I can switch to a different client because anyone can – in principle – write one, because the platform is open (allowing them to write programs for the platform) and the standards are open (allowing them to write an email client).

With Apple’s choice to use a proprietary system with Yahoo, the option to be secure has been denied to their users.

Had Apple and Yahoo chosen to use the existing, open-standard, Lemonade protocol suite, this simply couldn’t have happened.

ps. Tinymail and Modest of course use the standards, securely.

Although I’m one of those guys who’d like to see all platform code to be run by a jitter that can support all the programming languages, platforms and devices that we use today and in future, I got a very nice second introduction to Vala at GUADEC.

The nice thing about Vala is that it gives you a programming language that looks and feels like C# and D (generics, interfaces, properties, classes, delegates and all that in a syntax that looks almost exactly like C#), yet it’s completely compatible with GObject and GTypeInterface. That’s because the Vala compiler behind your back first compiles to a GTypeInterface or GObject before passing it to your normal C compiler.

Which sure sounds scary. Though … if you think about it for longer than a few seconds, it’s absolutely not a very bad idea at all. Especially not when it comes to integrating with existing GObject infrastructure. When it comes to having a nice higher programming language where your software’s release tarballs need nothing more than a C compiler and glib with gobject.

Vala is smart enough to also do this right, to generate clean GObject code and to allow inheritance and implementing from existing GObjects and GTypeInterfaces. It manages to get generics and reference counting to be just right (reference counting is done using smartpointer likes. It’s done for you automatically, so there’s no funky C++ syntax involved. You also have weak references to avoid embraced references).

The author is also working on automatic language binding generation to programming languages like Python and .NET. This is more easy with a Vala programmed piece of library because the Vala compiler knows from the Vala syntax that the developer did everything in a certain way (and not in one of the ten million ways that the C programming language allowed him to work).

On top of that is Rob Taylor working on his stuff to parse the C tree of a piece of C header code to an XML file. For this XML is useful because on that resulting XML we can apply XSL stylesheets. For example one that formats it into something that we can embed into the shared object file of a GObject library, to add introspection data. Or another XSL to aid a tool like gtk-doc to create an indexable API documentation database, HTML or whatever file that can then be used to be put online or to be used in tools like Devhelp or for code completion in an IDE like Anjuta.

But also something that can be utilized to fully automatically generate completely correct language bindings. On dynamic or so called “always late binding” programming languages, like Python and PHP, it could even do this at runtime. With type safe programming languages it could at compile time use this new and extra information to without any real help from a human developer, create a completely correct language binding.

Since today for both POP and IMAP it’s possible to, while you are retrieving summary items, start opening (downloading) uncached E-mails. On IMAP this is done (a few weeks ago) using an extra socket. With POP this is done (today) by throwing RETR commands in between the TOPs that are needed for the summary fetch on the same connection (most POP servers lock the access to one connection per user). It’s also possible and well tested to have Push E-mail events of 1000ths of new and expunged E-mails. It’s possible to see your headers (summary) view to get filled up while retrieving summary info. All this while Tinymail attempts to keep the bandwidth acceptable low for GPRS.

Jose Dapena Paz also recently added support for removing attachments from already cached E-mails. This is a feature that is interesting for devices that don’t have a lot of (flash) disk space. Again retrieving the uncached attachment should also work. Partial retrieval (initially retrieving without attachments) is working, but suboptimal. We’ll be working on improving features like this soon. POP is of course much more difficult as there’s no way to know where a MIME part starts nor to select which of the lines you want to retrieve.

Huge amounts of small and big things are being fixed. Required features being implemented. A lot of work is being done.

By changing the way work is done, electronic networks may lead to a new kind of economy centered on the individual. — Thomas W. Malone and Robert J. Laubacher.

In business, I believe the future lies in loosely connected individual contractors, dynamically coming together to attack a project or idea. — Rob Taylor.

When Rob blogged about it, I decided to order my copy of that document. I just read it. Sounds good to me.

Let’s talk about it at GUADEC. I will arrive at BHX the 15th around 13:50 by the way.

I would, out of the blue, like to highlight the work the people doing the Anjuta 2.x series have done. I have been working with whatever is in Subversion (and before that, CVS) for multiple years now. It had its weeks of total instability, weeks of total stability too. But on features, especially on features, it has seen vast improvements. It’s a totally different experience when compared to the 1.x series of Anjuta.

pvanhoof@schtrumpf:~/repos/gnome/anjuta$ sudo make install
...
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 'anjuta.desktop' '/opt/anjuta//share/applications/anjuta.desktop'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/pvanhoof/repos/gnome/anjuta'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/pvanhoof/repos/gnome/anjuta'
pvanhoof@schtrumpf:~/repos/gnome/anjuta$ 

They are now working on integrating some bits and pieces with scratchbox. The integration with autotools (which utilizes gnome-build) is unimaginable good. I’ve become a total addict of features like the symbol browser and the symbol searcher. I’m sure I’m missing quite a lot of other features that could potentially glue and duck tape me forever to Anjuta’s 2.x. A requirement for any distribution that I’ll use has been, since more than a year, that I can easily build whatever I find in Anjuta Subversion -> “apt-get install gnome-devel”. Thank you, Ubuntu and Debian, for that.

I believe we need more of our developers to use this project. That way we can get this project to become a product, too. Because frustrated developers will fix Anjuta’s code. In contrast, I haven’t seen a lot of GNOME-developer’s frustration get converted into code for the Eclipse CDT project. I’m confident that since Anjuta is purely GNOME/Gtk+ style of development, Anjuta would be different.

I often got so pissed at whoever broke the search dialog of Anjuta’s Subversion this time. Forcing me to go back to ‘grep’ and ‘find’, to find things. Slowing me down. But then again, I should just help them in stead. Right? In stead of remaining pissed, I’ll truly apologize for being a user of their software yet not having contributed a lot to their fabulous 2.x series. On the bright side, I did do some work on the file dialog of the 1.x series of Anjuta. That code has now vanished and been replaced by superior things, of course.

I’ll put an icon on my desktop that throws Anjuta’s process into gdb. Being a developer you’ll be surprised how often you click it and then actually fix that annoying bug in stead of just restarting the software. I used to do this with Evolution too.

We’re getting there. Although I’m thinking in months, not in weeks. If you’re working on a feature for Tinymail and you want it in its first release: you better start hurrying up.

It’s becoming a product that just works. A lot of the release work will be low hanging fruit like getting gtk-doc in perfect shape, making sure ‘make distcheck’ does the right thing, killing a few more major defects and writing some more documentation.

When those items are finished, the project can be delivered as a product. Above all, it must earn the status “product”. That’s the point where I’ll release a first version.

Rob (Taylor) used to be one of the lead developers of the Telepathy project, he co-founded Collabora and is now starting up Codethink Ltd. He has worked on HAL, D-BUS, Telepathy and various other bits and bytes of the many GMAE and GNOME components.

Although not the only participant in this, I believe he played an important role at encouraging a number of companies in working with us, the GNOME Free Software community. He combined his technical expertise with business expertise.

It’s therefore my opinion that Rob has become one of our most skilled and needed people. At LinuxTag we agreed to start working together under Codethink’s flag. I will be the first contractor to come on under the new Codethink plan.

With our expertise we are planning to change the mobile landscape. We’re both passionate people who’s goal is to make the difference, which is exactly what we’ll do.

The Evolution maintainer announced a new release. This time the release fixes a significant security problem.

The problem is a remotely exploitable one. I strongly suggest everybody updating his or her Evolution setup. Even if your Evolution package is incredibly old. I think nearly all Evolution’s versions are affected.

Evolution-data-server:
=====================
...
#447414: Security Fix - negative index of an array (Philip Van Hoof)

At LinuxTag Rob and I met and talked quite a lot to some Qt and KDE guys. We somehow came to the conclusion that a combined conference for our communities would be something positive. We concluded that the majority of people in both communities who truly matter (the people who do things, not the people who only talk about things), enjoy the competition between GNOME and KDE. That they love the other guys. That competing each other is giving both project’s members a reason for innovating their own project. Yet that the same competition should focus on being the best at what we do while that this competition should not make it difficult for the many companies and users that use our infrastructure.

Therefore we agreed that as much as possible of the D-BUS API should be shared between the KDE and the GNOME projects.

Our conclusion was that we need more social networking for this synergy to happen. We concluded that both Akademy and GUADEC share the same conference atmosphere and goals: they are both heavily oriented at meeting each other.

I would therefore, hereby, like to propose using the FOSDEM conference to pioneer the idea of perhaps in future having the GUADEC and Akademy conference to take place at the same time and location. Note that in this idea neither GUADEC nor Akademy change names nor that it would become one big conference. Note that it’s only an idea and that I think for it to succeed, it needs a pilot event. FOSDEM can be used for this.

We could play with the idea of having a few shared social events, like a game of soccer. Maybe making music together (as that was one of the greater ideas at GUADEC last year)? Social events with an emphasis on cooperating yet competing? Friendly competing!

I’m planning to ask the FOSDEM organisation to, in stead of two rooms, have one big room for both GNOME and KDE people. Or two rooms while mixing the presentations equally over the two rooms.

I hope I will be flooded by opinions coming from both sides, as this is probably a hard decision. Though I believe that both communities need to do this for our users and for the companies who get to deal with our differences.

I would like to state, clearly, that as a GNOME community member: I love KDE, I love the people who do KDE, I clearly disagree with a lot of their strategies and architecture ideas and I totally love the competition that got created by this disagreement. Let’s strengthen both and get them to share as much D-BUS API as humanly possible. Yet let’s keep competing each other by trying to provide the best implementation behind those APIs.

Let’s ignore the people who think that we are duplicating efforts, as we know we are not.

Let’s be friends who meet each other often and who have respect for each other. Let’s agree to disagree, but let’s agree on the things that we can easily agree on: D-BUS API.

Finally and most importantly, let’s not just talk and have good intentions but let’s also make it happen. Let’s compete in style.

Look at those cute little devices! All doing Push E-mail with a Tinymail based E-mail client. All at the same time! A Nokia N800, a Nokia 770, my Feisty desktop and a OLPC. Next on the list .. the iLiad and Openmoko?

Video demo, Youtube version

Just like with the OLPC build I have fixed the builds for GPE and the builds for Maemo with older distributions like Mistral and Gregale (the rootstraps in Scratchbox that’ll compile for your Nokia 770). The build for Maemo’s Bora rootstrap (for the Nokia N800) and the one for GNOME desktops were of course already functional.

On all these devices and platforms (N800, 770, OLPC, GPE) you can now out of the box compile yourself a Tinymail demo user interface with the latest features. I will bring a few such devices with me at LinuxTag. Although very unfinished, I can demo a recent development version of Modest running on my N800 too. Which, by the way, is becoming more and more useful as fine dog food. The GPE and GPEPhone folks told me they will bring some GPE devices too (it wont take long before we’ll have the Tinymail demo ui running on all of them).

~# apt-cache search empathy
~#

While preparing my OLPC laptop for LinuxTag, I noticed some glitches in the OLPC build of Tinymail. These have now all been fixed and the demo-ui will run and work as-is. You will of course need to edit your $HOME/.xinitrc to override the “exec sugar” with an “exec xterm”, start matchbox-windowmanager and then the Tinymail demoui binary.

You can also try to use the development console which is accessible when typing the [alt]+[=] key combination. But I found it quite hard to make the application usable this way (it gets pushed to the back by the Sugar window manager or something).

The demoui is indeed not suitable nor has already been made suitable as a typical Sugar application. I would of course welcome attempts at this.

To compile do this on any typical x86 computer:

./autogen.sh --with-platform=olpc --prefix=/opt/tinymail-olpc
make && sudo make install

Now tar /opt/tinymail-olpc and untar it into the same directory on your device’s root filesystem.

After deployment follow these instructions for creating an account and in the xterm just launch /opt/tinymail-olpc/bin/demoui.

It’ll ask you for the password each time. I haven’t yet found which password storage API is going to be used on the laptop, so the platform specific implementation is just going to call a GtkDialog box that will each time ask you for the password.

Hey Benjamin, good that you mention “creativity” and Mozilla in the same blog post.

I’m sure the people at Mozilla and the distributions have a slightly better solution to this current situation of having to do funny things in your configure.ac to figure absurd things out. Things like having to search which of the Mozilla development packages are available: a developer can choose between nss.pc, mozilla-nss.pc, firefox-nss.pc and xulrunner-nss.pc. I’m sure there are a few more too. Like nspr.pc, mozilla-nspr.pc, firefox-nspr.pc and xulrunner-nspr. And like xpcom.pc, mozilla-xpcom.pc, firefox-xpcom.pc and xulrunner-xpcom.pc. And of course also gtkmozembed.pc, mozilla-gtkmozembed.pc, firefox-gtkmozembed.pc and xulrunner-gtkmozembed. Just to make sure our configure.acs will be bloated like crap just for figuring out what the system actually has installed for those libraries.

I wonder what the use of pkg-config is if everybody starts doing that, Mozilla team?

For some fun reason they also decided to have -rpath in some of their “Libs: ” lines too. Making it totally fun for the maintainer to figure out why certain symbols can’t be found in a lot of circumstances (like when you used to have a function that was static, and now became a non-static, those rpath tricks will trick your linker into trying to use the installed libraries that are located in the prefix location if you once did a “make install”).

Awesome things if you don’t know that and expect sanity from pkg-config configuration files.

Tinymail’s camel-lite is still being developed extensively. While making changes, though, I made sure that the API that once got implemented by some existing custom Camel providers more or less stays the same. Myself, I added support for a bunch of Lemonade -and related features and improved the bandwidth consumption a lot in the IMAP provider, while adding support for summaries in the POP provider. These changes included a huge amount of bug fixing and other improvements too, of course. Especially on memory consumption. The majority of the changes, though, happened in the implementation, not so much Camel’s API.

Although an existing Camel provider usually needs a lot of bandwidth improvements before being acceptable for usage for Tinymail’s target audience (I looked at a lot of them, they do), you can very quickly make any such existing provider work with Tinymail. It comes down to rewriting one method: the CamelFolderSummary::message_info_load one. Noting that even the CamelFolderSummary::message_info_save stays the same. The load one needs to be rewritten because it’s in this method that in stead of read()-ing the data from the FILE*, you’ll have to implement getting the pointers from the mmap(). At entry of the method you’ll get the offset where the data that you wrote to the file using CamelFolderSummary::message_info_save starts. You are responsible for moving that offset further (for example += it).

The file I/O API of Camel has been modified to always do data padding, which is necessary for some architectures with mmap(), and to always end strings with a ‘\0’, which is of course important when pointing to offsets and using the pointer as a char pointer C string. You’ll always do it right if you use the standard Camel file I/O API.

I created a trac wiki page on the Tinymail documentation describing how to do this. It has some examples too. On bandwidth it’s of course vital to understand that a lot Tinymail based E-mail clients will be used on flaky networks like GPRS. Dealing with being offline (being very good at synchronization, while trusting that the connection will die at totally unexeptected locations in your code) and dealing well with timeout situations is of course very important. Compression and SSL are vital too.