Bitcoin and litecoin wallet

I have started an effort to port Litecoin and Bitcoin QT wallet to Haiku. I think it is possible. I just have to first compile the perquisites, as some of them don't have Haiku patches or the versions that exist are outdated.

For now I have found that Boost library, Miniupnpc and db-4.8 are compiling but I have to write patches for some of them. Next step should be the QT interface.

This is really exciting, since my c++ is really rusty, so I am refreshing my memory and learning a few new things in the process.

If this works out and I have some free time during June, I will try to help with the port of QTWebKit 2.3

Some news

I am now preparing 2 systems to continue development of BeOS Max on them. Work will restart this week. Main focus will be to add some new drivers and test them and also finish the Max Updater so I can update and install new software with it.

As you may know the CUPS port has been restarted by other developers, so I am not going to go on with it (I got to a dead end anyways). Hopefully my few notes on that have helped them.

no progress yet

Tomorrow is my last day at work for this month, so I have a lot to do and I couldn't get any work done on BeOS. However, this weekend will be spend mostly working on CUPS, so I expect to have something to report on Monday. If not, then that means I have a new girlfriend... (working on it) and threading priority has changed!!!

libxml2

Yesterday I ported the latest libxml2, version 2.6.27. This should help in other projects that require it. I have mostly been studying the inner workings of CUPS and will do so during the weekend. I will blog any progress made.

CUPS requirements so far...

So far I have found the following requirements for the various parts of CUPS:

Perl 5.8.0
file 3.31
automake 1.8
autoconf 2.58
libm 5.4
libxml 2.6.2

Now:
perl 5.8.0 exists.
file 3.31 seems to be ported with no problems.
autoconf 2.58 I had to do a dirty port as BeOS R5 doesn't support flock
automake 1.8 can be ported after autoconf 2.58 (done)
libm 5.4 needs to be ported. I haven't yet managed to create the static library, however using trig.h PI definitions from Haiku makes it compile. Any help?
libxml 2.6.2 was a surprise as it seems to be ported with no problems. At the time of this post my dev system is running the libxml tests.

Update: Found out that ginstall is also needed. No time to check on that now. Be back tomorrow.

More on CUPS

I managed to compile the cups 1.1.23 source tree, but no drivers yet and it gives a Missing library error on startup. Probably I need to compile the rest of the cups tree as it contains the drivers and a database driven system for intergrating the drivers, called Foomatic.

To build Foomatic, I need the unix utility called File. I downloaded it and started porting that too. The newest version however did not compile due to the usage of mmap. So I downloaded an older version and it compiled after tampering a little with its code.

Tomorrow I will look into compiling the rest of the tree. But first I need to read a bit more on the architecture of CUPS.

CUPS

Today I restarted work on BeOS Max V4 and I had an epiphany...while talking to my BeOS friends on IRC who suggested it :-). Why not try and see what would be involved in porting CUPS to BeOS R5. It has already been ported to Zeta with success, so I downloaded the source code and started playing with it.

3 hours into fiddling with the source code, I have managed to compile more than 70% of CUPS. A few functions are missing from BeOS, but I believe I can have it fully compiled. Having it work though is another issue!

Max update

It has been almost 3 weeks since my last post on the blog. I am currently under a lot of pressure from work, so it is going slowly. I won't be able to have a final release next month, so I will be giving a second Beta.

This beta will include the Haiku usb stack as an option. If it is detected that your system isn't supported by the R5 USB stack, the Haiku stack will be automatically installed, otherwise you will have to select it.

I will be keeping you up to date on progress. Thanks.

Yabbing on...

I have worked a bit with Yab, and I found it extremely easy to program with and quite powerful. Now, of course you won't create a Diablo killer with it, or an office suite, but certain software and utilities can easily be created with yab.

A few features that should be added for a version 2 would be SQL support (SQLite and Postgres for starters), attribute and query support (after all we are talking about BeOS) and perhaps basic network support. What do you think?

Even faster

I don't know how i did it, but MaxUpdater is now even faster. It loaded the 800 application info in under 6 seconds. It seems that serializing the read works best when all pieces of info are parsed with the code I wrote.

Now I start writing the code to handle the actual download and update. First update will probably be ready sometime on Sunday, because I have real life work to do also.

By the way, I will also give this to users of BeOS Max V3.1b1. The updates will start from that version. Any takers with unaltered Max V3.1b1 who wish to test it when it goes into beta?

Yab / MaxUpdater Testing performance

Yab amazed me today.

I tried to get MaxUpdater to show an extremely large number of applications and dynamically create tabs, views, checkboxes after reading a text file with the info needed.

What was the result? Well, not only did it do it for 800 applications, but it took only 14 seconds, when I was told that just reading a file of that size would take a lot longer. However that wasn't what amazed me. It was the fact that dynamically creating the 800 views (1 view per application) didn't take more than a few milliseconds and only raised the usage of memory by 1/7th (from 7500kb to 8600kb) !!!

This is cool. Hope I have enough time this weekend to get further along with the MaxUpdater. Next step is to do a real update/install of an app from the Internet repository. So keep watching this blog for more news of progress.

The mandatory screenshot.

D20 Dice Roller app for BeOS

The Be Dungeon Master Dice Roller 0.9 is now online for download at BeBits .

The break from Max Version 4 is over. Development will now continue. I plan to do a break every 7 days, work on a different app for 2 days and then continue on Max Version 4.

So, what kind of app would you like to see next? Please don't say a new Word Processor!!! Some simple app you think is missing from BeOS.

I am planning to do more apps for DMs in the future too as I have outlined.

Logic behind MaxUpdater

First let me say this: BeOS way of installation is excellent. It is simple and brilliant.

So after saying that, it comes to terms that MaxUpdater is not going to change that nor should it and neither should any other package management application in the future.

MaxUpdater is just going to help users find what they need, or want, or must install and do it as simply as 1-2-3. In fact it is just that:

1. Open MaxUpater
2. Select Application(s) you wish to install
3. Press install

Simple yet brilliant? Well it is the BeOS way, only in fewer steps if you need to install more than 1 application at a time.

All the other features are just add-ons. Useful, but not essentials.

Taking a break and DMing...

Yesterday I took a break and played a small Dungeon and Dragons game.

Before playing I did a little search to see if there are any programs on BeOS that can help Dungeon Masters (yeap, I am a DM... geeky heh?) and I found there is none. So today I decided to start a series of small programs. Don't worry, MaxUpdater and Max V4 are proceeding as scheduled. I just had a little more time off work....

So here we are. Introducing the BeOS DM Dice Roller

I will upload the program with the code as soon as one more feature is implemented.

more progress

MaxUpdater is progressing quite well. It now loads, parses and displays lists of Updates and Applications. It even creates categories on the fly and puts all applications belonging to a category on the correct Tab.

Next step will be to know what applications you have already installed, so they will be checked by default and shown on a different tab with installed apps. Unchecking them would mean unistalling them. Installed updates will not show on the list by default.

Now if anyone can help with making the interface better looking (I am a software engineer, not an artist) I would be very grateful.

MaxUpdater progress

Milestone 1 was reached with MaxUpdater.

It can now use wget to download itself (or any other file) from our file repository and it also updates itself.

The code will be 100% open, so you anyone can review it. Also I have decided to add 1 more feature to MaxUpdater. The ability to create your own repository so others can add it to MaxUpdater.

What I am thinking of finally creating is something that will work like the CNR service of Freespire.

Any thoughts, ideas or coding help would be appreciated.

MaxUpdater System

Design of the updater system is progressing. Main functions I wish to include are:

• Download and install critical updates automatically
• Download and install applications on demand
• Download dependencies and install with dependant updates
• Uninstall option for non critical updates
• Distribution of packages to other BeOS Max computers in the same network

For now, MaxUpdater get a list of update packages from my main download site. A full mock-up app will be created next and I will post screen shots as soon as it is ready.

Not much to report...

but I thought I'll let you know I am alive :-)

Happy New Year. May this year bring an R1 release of our favorite OS, Haiku.

Although not much work has been done on YaGui or anything else on Haiku by me, I am here and I am planning a few things. I will post some news of my plans soon I hope.

Yab and YaGui

Yesterday, I resumed work on Yab (Yet Another Basic), and fixed a bug on a feature I had added, that allowed me to continue work on YaGui, a Visual Tool for creating programs with Yab.

For now, I fixed a bug in the creation and destruction of Windows in YaGui (although a small bug still lingers) and started work on the Properties Editor. It follows focus and gives info on Name, Caption, Width, Height and position of a Window.

However, the CVS version of Yab is not enough for the creation of YaGui, since it is missing a few features that were temporarily disabled to keep backwards compatibility. No problem there... I will fork it, until the code can be entered on the main source tree.

I will later post some screenshots, and I will keep you informed of my progress.

getprotobyname , getprotobynumber

In Zeta and BeOS those two functions are not implemented. In fact, BeOS doesn't declare them at all. However some posix compliant programs require them, although they don't use them, and a few use them. Yesterday I stambled on one of them and tried to find a solution.

What I did was I created for Zeta a new library, called libmoreposix.so and included a simple implementation of those functions, I found on Koders. And guess what? It seems to have worked!!! I will be posting the library up soon, for everyone to try.