[Banshee-List] Call for testers... if you have an iPod

[Aaron Bockover <abockover novell com>]

Hello Banshee Community!

I have quietly been working on a new utility called PodSleuth. The goal
of this project is to better support iPods at the device level by
providing better model detection. It accomplishes relatively the same
goals as libipoddevice, and in fact, PodSleuth officially deprecates
libipoddevice. 

My main motivation in writing this is to ask for folks to test
PodSleuth. Thus if you just want to jump in and test, please jump to the
"Ok, how do I test this?" section below. I first want to give a little
background behind PodSleuth.

PodSleuth is run transparently and behind the scenes by HAL as soon as
you plug an iPod in. Information discovered by PodSleuth is merged into
the iPod's HAL device node directly. This means that no more library is
needed to scan the device (like libipoddevice). Instead, any application
that can use HAL can access data discovered by PodSleuth.

PodSleuth should address a number of outstanding compatibility and
detection issues that currently exist with libipoddevice. Additionally,
PodSleuth offers some HAL methods that allow applications to actually
download an updated copy of the model detection table, which maps serial
numbers to model information details (like the color of the iPod, the
type of iPod (Nano, Video, etc), its generation, and advertised
capacity). This means that when updates to the table are made, an
application can fetch the update without needing PodSleuth to be
upgraded.

I will be working on integrating PodSleuth into ipod-sharp and Banshee
over the next few days. It will soon be available in svn/trunk, and I
may decide to backport it to the 0.12.x stable branch since it fixes so
many outstanding issues.

Ok, how do I test this?
-----------------------

PodSleuth also comes with a command line utility, called "podsleuth".
This tool is much like the "ipod" utility that comes with libipoddevice.
It is this tool that I would like folks to test right now.

So, check out a copy of PodSleuth:

$ svn co svn://svn.gnome.org/svn/podsleuth/trunk podsleuth

Build it:

$ ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install

Ensure any iPods are UNPLUGGED. You may also need to restart your HAL
daemon to ensure the FDI files are reloaded. This is, in theory,
unnecessary, but your results may vary. Restart HAL just to be safe or
if you have a problem in the next step or so.

Test it:

$ podsleuth

That should list information about any connected iPods. I would greatly
appreciate any and all dumps of this output, ESPECIALLY if any
information is incorrect or missing. You can mail them to me directly:

$ podsleuth > podsleuth-dump

Attach the podsleuth-dump file to the mail. In the body of your email,
please provide some high level information about your iPod ("Video, 5.5
gen, Black, 30GB").

That's all for now. I will follow up with more information and make a
more official announcement when the first release is on the way. 

Thanks!

--
Aaron Bockover