Re: State of the Pilot

[JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>]

On Mon, 2005-03-28 at 21:36 -0500, David Malcolm wrote: 
> On Mon, 2005-03-28 at 15:37 -0500, JP Rosevear wrote:
> > There have recently been several mails about what's happening with
> > gnome-pilot development lately.  Basically as Dave Malcolm noted, its a
> > time issue for me, althought I'm attempting to do better.
> 
> Thanks for this email, various random comments inline...
> 
> > 
> > Several people have asked about the bonobo daemon branch, its a major
> > overhaul I started months and months ago.  
> > 
> > It accomplishes several technical things:
> > 
> > 1. Removes GOB usage
> Excellent!
> 
> > 2. Switches to gconf from gnome-config, and no longer requires the
> > daemon to catch a signal it order to know to re-load config
> > 3. Cleans up the architecture, each sync type (usb/serial/irda) is a
> > class that implments the virtual class gnome-pilot-device
> > 4. Uses bonobo object instead of dealing with all the corba cruft itself
> > 5. Do gnome-pilot-client notifications via bonobo-listener/event-source
> > 6. Simplifies conduit creation in some cases
> > 7. Improved logging/error messaging
> > 8. Probably some other stuff I've now forgotten
> 
> The UI could probably do with some love at some point as well, IIRC much
> of the code predates the HIG.

Yes, some of this has also been done, higification of frames and instant
apply for instance.

> > 
> > As well as several usuability things:
> > 1. Makes it easier for users by allowing the user to create a new
> > "profile" during a sync.  ie the user can just put in a device press
> > hotsync and set up the device without pre-configuring it
> > 2. Simplifies the cradle setup (more windows like - you just check off
> > "serial" or "usb" or whatever and enter the port - hal/dbus can
> > hopefully can the usb port bit)
> With HAL it should be possible to entirely automate USB device handling.
> There are some questions as to where PDA handling should take place, my
> vote is to push it down the stack into HAL as much as possible.
> 
> > 
> > Its missing porting of conduits other than file/backup and some polish.
> > Ideally I'd like new development to take place here.
> Do you have a full list?  Any idea how much work would be needed to get
> this into a releasable state?

-applet preferences working again
-applet click to open capplet working again
-porting over any bug fixes from the current packages that are relevant
-get network settings dialog done in capplet
-port all conduits except time (i've done this in my local tree - half
the code) in gnome-pilot-conduits

> > 
> > So for 2.0.x:
> > 
> > I started going through patches in bugzilla this past weekend.  There
> > are also patches on the list that need review.  Regardless of how far I
> > get, I'll probably do a release in time for GNOME 2.10.1.
> > 
> > I'm aware of the HAL patches and i did briefly look at one a couple of
> > months ago and I remember being unsatisfied, but I don't remember being
> > why, so clearly I need to look again and give feedback.  It also looks
> > like for several of the OS5 devices we are going to have to move to
> > pilot-link 0.12.  I need to go back and look at DM's and Dave
> > Desrosier's patches for this.
> BTW there was a posting about PDAs to the HAL list today.
> 
> pilot-link-0.12 has a few API changes; buffers are handled explicitly by
> pilot-link, so this requires lots of little changes in all of the
> conduits.  We could in theory isolate this with a wrapper API, so that
> the code can be used against both pilot-link-0.11 and 0.12.  Any
> thoughts on how useful this would be?  Is it a goal to get
> gnome-pilot-2.0.* to work against p-l-0.12, or are you thinking of doing
> this for the bonobo-daemon-branch ?

I think 0.12 is fine for 2.0.x, how hard is it to #ifdef?  The wrapper
API seems like too much effort, especially since wrapping for the sake
of "gnomifying" the interfaces caused more trouble than it was worth.

> > 
> > Some things I'd like some help with:
> > 1. Mark old 0.1.xx bugs as obsolete (except for feature requests)
> > 2. Review all other bugs for duplicates
> > 3. Debugging evolution pilot related issues - people with source
> > installs of evolution and gnome-pilot preferrably with repeatable issues
> > who can use gdb and possibly valgrind.
> > 4. Testing of p-l 0.12 patches with OS5 devices that have issues
> > currently (I believe a lot of these revolve around backing up files).
> 
> What's the preferred route for submitting patches?  This mailing list,
> or as attachments to bugzilla?

Bugzilla with the patch keyword.

> Do we have an IRC channel?

We do not currently.

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>
Novell, Inc.