Thursday, March 31. 2005Autopackaging amaroK
I remember first hearing about Autopackage 2-3 years ago and it struck a note with me. At the time I was new to Linux and hated RPMs and never had much luck with autotools (not much has changed with the latter
 or the former really  ) So the idea of Windows-style installers was brilliant! I tried to get involved with the project but I rapidly came to realise I didn't have a clue when it came to all the important stuff I needed to know.With time comes understanding, and now I realise autopackage isn't great because of the graphical installers. Many other projects have proved you can bundle a graphical installer, that compiles from source or provides a binary that is built in a "distro-neutral" fashion. I find their technology exciting, and I hope it will reduce the amount of time we have to spend helping people who are new to Linux getting amaroK installed. amaroK could probably be autopackaged quite easily. We have 2 certain dependencies, KDElibs and Taglib, and it should be quite simple to make the detection scripts for those. The engines are loaded at runtime, and we can show helpful failure messages, like "Install xine-lib!" (well almost helpful). The biggest problem is our use of the STL. libstdc++ has no binary compatability (unlike KDE and Qt). So we have to basically build an autopackage for each GCC version (ouch), or remove as much STL dependence as we dare. Another issue is that most of amaroK has to be installed to a KDE prefix (Autopackage allows packages to be installed anywhere). But, at least at first, I will force installation to kde-config --prefix. I don't think I'll make headway removing STL usage. People like the STL, I even like some parts of it  So maybe we can just hope that things like std::vector are binary safe? Maybe.Still this is an interesting new project I look forward to attempting. Thursday, March 31. 2005Autopackaging amaroKI remember first hearing about Autopackage 2-3 years ago and it struck a note with me. At the time I was new to Linux and hated RPMs and never had much luck with autotools (not much has changed with the latter With time comes understanding, and now I realise autopackage isn’t great because of the graphical installers. Many other projects have proved you can bundle a graphical installer, that compiles from source or provides a binary that is built in a “distro-neutral” fashion. I find their technology exciting, and I hope it will reduce the amount of time we have to spend helping people who are new to Linux getting amaroK installed. amaroK could probably be autopackaged quite easily. We have 2 certain dependencies, KDElibs and Taglib, and it should be quite simple to make the detection scripts for those. The engines are loaded at runtime, and we can show helpful failure messages, like “Install xine-lib!” (well almost helpful). The biggest problem is our use of the STL. libstdc++ has no binary compatability (unlike KDE and Qt). So we have to basically build an autopackage for each GCC version (ouch), or remove as much STL dependence as we dare. Another issue is that most of amaroK has to be installed to a KDE prefix (Autopackage allows packages to be installed anywhere). But, at least at first, I will force installation to kde-config –prefix. I don’t think I’ll make headway removing STL usage. People like the STL, I even like some parts of it Still this is an interesting new project I look forward to attempting. Thursday, March 31. 2005Autopackaging amaroKI remember first hearing about Autopackage 2-3 years ago and it struck a note with me. At the time I was new to Linux and hated RPMs and never had much luck with autotools (not much has changed with the latter With time comes understanding, and now I realise autopackage isn’t great because of the graphical installers. Many other projects have proved you can bundle a graphical installer, that compiles from source or provides a binary that is built in a “distro-neutral” fashion. I find their technology exciting, and I hope it will reduce the amount of time we have to spend helping people who are new to Linux getting amaroK installed. amaroK could probably be autopackaged quite easily. We have 2 certain dependencies, KDElibs and Taglib, and it should be quite simple to make the detection scripts for those. The engines are loaded at runtime, and we can show helpful failure messages, like “Install xine-lib!” (well almost helpful). The biggest problem is our use of the STL. libstdc++ has no binary compatability (unlike KDE and Qt). So we have to basically build an autopackage for each GCC version (ouch), or remove as much STL dependence as we dare. Another issue is that most of amaroK has to be installed to a KDE prefix (Autopackage allows packages to be installed anywhere). But, at least at first, I will force installation to kde-config –prefix. I don’t think I’ll make headway removing STL usage. People like the STL, I even like some parts of it Still this is an interesting new project I look forward to attempting. Thursday, March 31. 2005Monday, March 21. 2005Another idea...
So i have been doing less coding and more thinking of the last week, as a result of waiting for code and to avoid having to recode to make things better. With some ideas from various people, I came up with another option for the party mode. I'll show you. I don't have too much to say, I just wanted to show you all!
Seb  Idea #2 for party mode Friday, March 18. 2005Smart playlists getting smarter Experimenting with the smart-playlists Inspired by mxcl's blog, I thought I might let you all know whats going on in +10 hours zone. Thats Sydney. Where I live. For those of you who frequently update to cvs versions of amaroK, you may have noticed the addition of a 'dynamic playlist' mode previous to the release of version 1.2.2. This was my attempt to experiment with a different style of playlist usage, where a continuous playlist could be managed over a 'very' small area. How, I hear you ask. Well that isn't so difficult - simply remove the first track in the playlist and append another to the playlists. It may sound ridiculous, but it's clearer to understand once used. Turned out quite nifty as well. Read on for more... Continue reading "Smart playlists getting smarter" Thursday, March 17. 2005Monday, March 7. 2005Thursday, March 3. 2005new eq
Got the new eq working using the DCOP call I added today. For a while I was really stumped with some things, but they turned out to not be so bad. There's still some issues I need to figure out, need to put the equalizer in a proper dialog etc. Right now my plan is to make it an amaroK "script" and then putting it into amaroK itself at a later date (not in 1.2.x).
 Looking forward to the LiveCD. Thursday, March 3. 2005new eqGot the new eq working using the DCOP call I added today. For a while I was really stumped with some things, but they turned out to not be so bad. There's still some issues I need to figure out, need to put the equalizer in a proper dialog etc. Right now my plan is to make it an amaroK "script" and then putting it into amaroK itself at a later date (not in 1.2.x). Looking forward to the LiveCD. Thursday, March 3. 2005Wednesday, March 2. 2005Tuesday, March 1. 2005I am sad ....
I am sad since there will be a delay in getting a final iso out for amaroK LiveCD. The final tweaking is taking a lot of time, and I am trying to resolve a few minor issues to make this thing work on as many machines as possible. The last I want to happen is for this thing to suck and have people blast amaroK because it doesn't work right.
I received some late feedback from a couple of the testers that made me want to do one more revision. Most of the problem are little details (polish, if you will) that make the cd regress properly if things like the network are unavailable, etc. I will post more later, but it will be out soon. Tuesday, March 1. 2005amaroK LiveCD Well, after 35 iso images, amaroK LiveCD version 1.2.1 looks done. I am doing some final testing but I should be able to get it distributed tomorrow. This has been quite an interesting project for me, mostly because it is the first contribution other than bug reporting and documentation I have made to an OSS project. I am not a coder, so the most I can usually contribute is bug testing, money and encouragement (complaints). I learned a lot, made some friends and had a lot of fun.Thanks to Mark, Max and Chris for making this such an easy thing to contribute, to Kobsession and Tightcode for your assistance with artwork (why do graphic artists never use their real names), to all the people that tested this, to Texstar for making PCLinuxOS so easy to work with and packaging so many things upon request, to Tom Kelly for maintaining the mklivecd scripts and to everyone else that I annoyed over the last three weeks. Things I learned: - How to remove too many packages from a linux installation and end up with an unbootable system - How to make a syslinux bootscreen with gif2lss - How to make a bootsplash theme - Why the Creative Commons licenses are really cool - How to use cd-rw's instead of cdr's when working on a Live CD project - How to use scp (never heard of it, but it is cool) - How to make a torrent and get a tracker running and I got a much better understanding of how ALSA works. Check it out at http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/index.php/AmaroK_Live Now, what do I do with all these iso images? Tuesday, March 1. 2005Ruuuuuuuush We currently are in one. A rush, I mean. Just checkout the ChangeLog between 1.2 and 1.2.1. No wait! Of course I already did that for you.+ 32 Lines. See what I mean? 1.2.1 was released exactly 2 weeks eq. 14 days after 1.2. Which then means: More than 2 new ChangeLog entries per day. Amazing! Right now we are already in a 1.2.2 mood, planning various little fixes and new features. The ContextBrowser will offer a fresh new Home tab and a Statistics tab/page will be introduced. Ideas? We would love to hear about them. Comment here or visit our forum! 1.2.2 will be (prolly) released in another two weeks. Afterwards the 1.2 branch will close and we will head on to 1.3 development. So you better hurry up! Have fun, muesli |
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or the former really 
) So the idea of Windows-style installers was brilliant! I tried to get involved with the project but I rapidly came to realise I didn’t have a clue when it came to all the important stuff I needed to know.
So maybe we can just hope that things like std::vector are binary safe? Maybe.
