Nijel's weblog | blog.cihar.com

Thanks to CMake, it's part CPack and a bit of my hacking, I can now easily produce installers for Gammu on Windows. I haven't much tested result, but it installs and uninstalls fine and Gammu seems to be working.

How it is done? Eveything on Linux. All you need is small patch on CPack to allow using NSIS also on Linux. If you have this one, just download Gammu, cross compile it and start CPack. Everything is so easy:

mkdir build-mingw
cd build-mingw
cmake .. -DCROSS_MINGW=ON
make
cpack

And you will get Gammu installer for Windows (please note that this is not even testing release, it's more some kind of snapshot of my development tree, so it does not have to be release quality).

Thanks again to CMake and NSIS to allow me to do such thing. This is way I can support Windows :-).

I just implemented in my Gammu tree support for cross compiling for Windows on Linux host using MinGW. The support of CMake for this is quite limited, but implementation was not that hard.

The only tricky part was to include compiler settings from Windows and force setting of library and executable prefixes and suffixes. Then only build time configuration had to be disabled. If you want to do this for other project, see changeset for changes needed for this.

Resulting binary works without problems on Windows, the only problem right now is disabled IrDA and Bluetooth support, but I hope I will resolve this soon.

While translating CouchSurfing to Czech, I again noticed funny mistake which often repeats in Czech translations of web mails or similar applications.

In English there is "File into folder". Some translators tend to translate this as "File in folder", which changes meaning a bit :-).

I have no idea why this is so popular, but I saw this for first time in Sieve plug-in for Squirellmail and several times since this time.

Restaurant Orlík is yet another restaurant in Prague center I will write about. It lays on waterfront just next to Šítek water tower (Czech only), few minutes of walk from National theatre.

You can select from many traditional meals, I guess everybody will find something what will attract him. Everything I tasted there so far was very good, so I can really recommend you this place to have a lunch or dinner.

You can drink Budweiser Beer here, it is not cheap, but also not expensive and it tastes good. They also offer variety of wines, which are good priced.

Orlík is yet another restaurant in Prague center, where you can go without affraiding that you will pay too much for food.

New version of Gammu I anounced few minutes ago brings among other changes support for building using CMake. So far it should be able to handle without problems situation on Linux hosts, but I don't have environment for testing Windows and MacOS build. So I'd like to receive some feedback, if it will be possible to completely get rid of autoconf in future.

I just released new version of Gammu, you can download it from download server. There is quite a lot of changes:

• First release by Michal Cihar, this changes some URLS, see readme.txt.
• Experimental CMake build support, so far not completely working (Michal Cihar).
• Improved vCard RRULE parsing (me, Rene Peters).
• Added support for location of alarm (Peter Ondraska).
• Fixed Slovak operator names (Peter Ondraska).
• Improved battery reporting for SE phones (Michal Cihar).
• Fixed small c-cedilla decoding (Samuel Adam) (bug #64).
• Fix memory leak in dll (Petr Stasa - Gord).
• Add some functions to dll (Petr Stasa - Gord).
• PostreSQL support for SMSD (Andrea Riciputi).
• Build fixes for Darwin (Andrea Riciputi).
• Identify M341i over IrDA (Michal Cihar, flewww, bug #65).
• Callback functions now take pointer to state machine to allow full identification of used state machine (Michal Cihar, bug #66).
• Fixed LAC and CID reading for AT phones (Michal Cihar).
• Update operator list (Michal Cihar).
• Updated README.
• Added installation instructions.
• Change RSS URL to my weblog, where will be posted release announcements.

Today it was quite busy day, but I managed to push Gammu sources closer to weekend release. I merged various fixed that I collected in last few days. Mostly they are just small fixes, but they could make using Gammu harder.

Besides that I played a lot with cMake and the build system is in very good shape. There is still some parts missing (some header/function detection and installation phase), but these should be pretty easy, the only trouble is to find time to write them :-).

It looks like next release will have quite a lot of new features thanks to contributed patches. Probably largest improvement will be PostgreSQL support in SMSD. This was many times required feature and Gammu will now finally have it thanks to Andrea Riciputi.

Another important change is completely rewritten vCalendar RRULE parsing, which should be able to handle all standard fields. The only part which is questionable right now is how to decode YD repeating. As I read specification, I think that it should be by day of year (eg. 32 for 1st February), but from real world (and especially Siemens phones) it looks like it is used for date repeating (which means same as YM). Anyway as real difference between both is only on leap years, I will probably switch to date repeating to be compatible with Siemens.

Last small change I want to mention is CMake build support. I'm going to bring it to usable state before release, so that it can be tested in wide set of environments. Then we will see whether it is worth of changing build system.

PS: You can expect testing release this weekend.

For most of winter, we had troubles because there is no snow. Right now there is trouble because there is too much snow. And it is still falling. This happens just few days after Kyrill has caused quite a lot of damage, maybe the Earth wants to get rid of people who destoy its environment ;-).

In most places in Czechia 15 to 30 centimenters of new snow occured over night. Many people can not drive their car safely in these conditions and this causes lots of traffic problems. Maybe they should think before going out and use public transport instead, but it is not as comfortable as driving damn slow, because they still have summer tires…

I probably made something not popular, but I decided to add (minimal) advertisement on all demo pages (using config.footer.inc.php). You can dislike this step, but if number of visits for demo server will grow this way, it will soon need hardware upgrade and I'm not willing to pay it from my money.

If you want me to remove ads, the only way to do it is to donate some amount which might be used for hardware upgrade. In really near future server will probably need more memory.

In middle of Petřín hill, there lies small restaurant called Petřínské terasy (this website does not contain much information). You would not go there for low price, but for nice location, where you can see whole Prague centre.

You can select from variety of special meals, starting from some salads and ending with big steaks. I choose second option and I was pleased by the food. It was really good and I was not hungry after eating it :-).

This time I can not report beer quality, as I didn't drink it, but there was good selection of Czech (well Moravian) and Italian wines.

If you're looking for nice place where to go for some special occasion, or just exclusive view on Prague, this restaurant is definitely for you. Prices are not too high, but you can not expect something at this place to be cheap :-).

As Marcin today officially moved Gammu maintenance to me, I'd like to write down some facts:

Phones support

I will improve AT and OBEX code and related Gammu parts. You can not expect much work for Nokia protocols as I have no experience with those. So if there is somebody willing to help me with this, he will be welcome.

SMSD

Almost same as for Nokia applies to SMSD. However I know this is quite important part and I will do my best to fix errors found in this code, anyway somebody willing to give this piece of code some love is velcome.

Releases

Development will go on in version control system (currently Bazaar, but it might change), there are available daily snapshots, so that you can easily test latest code. Releases will not be regullar, they will happen only if I will feel there is enough stabilised new code.

Future

I'd like to thank Marcin for all his care he devoted to Gammu and I hope I will follow in his steps. The future will show whether he will have enough time to bring Gammu+ to final state.

I used it already for some time, but it stopped working after upgrade to 2.0.0.1. This time I noticed how desperately I need this extension to display plain text files in browser instead of opening another applicatin just to view few lines of text. What am I talking about? Great Open in browser extension!

I thought there is no new version as update didn't find it, but I was obviously wrong, as new version exists, only automatic updater does not find it. So now I'm again happy user of it :-).

I see it now on two projects on which I participate - Gammu and phpMyAdmin - they do not attract new developers and old slowly retire.

phpMyAdmin is very widely used tool and it does not help it attract developers. Only Marc is currently active developing, I sometimes commit few lines of code and I don't see much other activity. Isn't among users some skilled PHP developer who would like to improve our code? Or phpMyAdmin already reached perfect state? I don't think so.

There seems to be big barrier in those projects to attract new developers. They both lack developer documentation, what is unfortunately quite usual in free software world. But is it the real reason? It probably discourages people who look at the code and are not able to understand how it works. They could ask on mailing list and they would get some hints, but this is probably too much for somebody who wants to fix some small issue. So this is something which can be improved and might help.

I also thought that open version control system can help also a bit in this situation, but phpMyAdmin doesn't seem to profit much from this. Gammu never had it (except of my own), now when I will be creating releases, it will have it, but I doubt it will change anything.

I'm really out of ideas how to attract developers, and looks like I'm not alone, as I saw recently, KMobileTools have same issue and there are definitely more such projects…

BTW: Anybody interested in improving mentioned projects? Just contact me or any team member :-).

As I again came across problems with autofoo used in Gammu, I started to look for some alternative. As I heard good things about CMake, I decided to give it a try.

After few minutes I was able to build Gammu using CMake. Well it now probably fails if you don't have MySQL or Bluez installed, but it should not be hard to resolve. Also it doesn't generate config.h file right now, but that's again nothing hard.

I will probably add CMake as alternative build system (it can safely coexists with autofoo) in one of next Gammu releases as it is much easier to write and understand than autofoo madness.

Brave users can unpack gammu-cmake.tar.bz2 into Gammu sources and try it :-).

Marcin offered me today to take over Gammu maintanance, what I gladly accepted. He will make next testing release and then I will have button for creating releases in my hands :-).

Therefore my releases will be uploaded to http://dl.cihar.com/gammu/releases and information about them will be available in simmilar form to Wammu and python-gammu in Gammu releases feed.

In development version of Wammu, I started to add some interaction with my website. For now there are only menu entries to access website and bug tracker, but there should be later integrated some access to phone database.

First part is getting feedback from user. Easiest option is to open web browser with prefilled values. This would not allow to remember state whether user actually already provided feedback, but I don't know how much I want to bother users. More complicated would be to fill in form in Wammu and submit it from python. This should not be much complicated, I'm only abit affraid of synchronisation of enum choices on both sides (eg. connection names).

The second part is integration in phone configuration, so that user can enter his phone name/vendor and will get list of reports. This is a bit harder than reporting stuff, but it is needed to give phone database more usage.

Do you have any other ideas how to integrate this functionality in Wammu? Please write me.

I just noticed that I tend to forget about patches that I received sometimes and didn't have time to review them right as they arrived. Fortunately that person reminded itself by sending another patch, so I got back to original issue, but it's unfortunate to loose patches just because of my bad memory.

So please bug trackers, there is much higher probability that issue won't be forgotten :-).

This weekend I visited restaurant Haštalský dědek. It is new restaurant (I think it has been opened last year) in centre of Prague, in small street near Old Town Square. It has modern interior where man feels good.

You can eat there traditional Czech cuisine for affordable prices. I took great gulash served in small pot with potato pancakes. Only disadvantage this food had what that it was too big when I was not much hungry :-).

Beer was for nice price (22 CZK for lager) and tasted really good (they serve Krušovice beer). They also offer some special beers, however I didn't taste them.

Generally there is nothing to rebuke. I can really recommend you this place if you're looking for good place to eat in centre of Prague.

I decided to add new blog category and new content to this blog. I will write short reviews of pubs and restaurants I visit. Partly it is as diary for me, to remember good and bad places, but maybe somebody who is going to visit Prague (well most of reviewed ones will be from city where I live), will find here good tips where to go and which places to avoid.

I already announced that development version of Wammu has new configuration wizard. Now it's time to show it and maybe gain attention of somebody who would be willing to create original artwork for it (current image is taken from KMobileTools).

So first you have to select how you want to configure your phone connection:

Searching will just find your phone (well at least it should), so it is not much interesting :-), so let's show guided configuration. As next step you select how you connect your phone. I hope every user will know how to answer this:

Next we need to know phone type to limit number of choices to show later:

As we're didn't know in previous step, now we have to select from all possible connection types:

Next step (final driver selection) is quite easy in this situation as we don't have much choices:

The only remaining step is selecting of device out of few listed (you can enter your own):

Now wizard will verify you configuration:

And you can name this phone configuration (phone name is filled in by default):

So that's it! The wizard has still some minor glitches, but I hope they will be polished till release and you will enjoy it!

If you are only interested in information about new releases, you can use new RSS feeds/categories I just created - python-gammu releases and Wammu releases. Those will be really low trafic feeds containing only information about new releases and no ideas or development progress as in regullar python-gammu or Wammu feeds/categories.

I'm really starting to consider this option. Nonody is willing to maintain Win32 build of python-gammu and it is now far behind current version, with many bugs which were already fixed in source code.

It would need quite a lot of effort from me, because I'm really not experienced with Windows (and I don't like that environment). I could setup cross compiling environment and build Windows version on Linux, but this is something what I'm a bit affraid and need some time.

So if nobody is really interested in creating python-gammu binary for Windows, I will probably do it myslef, but you can expect you will have to pay some small amount (eg. 10 €) for download.

It's funny how big are differences in authors of open source programs and their bug handling. Yesterday I finally managed to report problem in gtkthml plugin for Claws mail which caused some HTML mails to be displayed in wrong encoding. I got instantly reply and in few minutes it has been fixed in CVS. Thanks a lot Colin Leroy!

Exactly opposite situation is with Klear. I wrote bug report with patch more than a year ago and it is still without reply from developers. Funny is that somebody else was brave enough to port this patch to curent version. Looking at their bug tracker, I can see that my report is not alone, let's call it black hole…

As you might already know, my website is available in English and Czech languages. I decided to use gettext, because it is easy to manage (when compared to strings which are used eg. in phpMyAdmin. However I sometimes see PHP to crash on localised pages and it randomly sends page in English even when Czech should be sent. I don't know how to fix and even how to debug this as this happens in few situations, which I'm not able to reproduce. So I'm really sorry if you sometimes see site unavailable errors, or you get different translation than you expected. Reload mostly works in such cases.

Last big missing part of Wammu phone configuration wizard has been just implemented - wizard is finally integrated with phone searching and you can now use it to fully configure Gammu or any programs using it (eg. gMobileMedia).

Testing instructions were already in my yesterday blog and they are still valid. As the wizard should not receive any major changes right now, I appreciate any feedback from you.

Known issues, which will be fixed:

• Phone test and searching can not be stopped.
• Phone searching looks at all devices and ignores device type selected in first wizard step.

Today I finally implemented work with .gammurc, so now you can finally configura gammu with new configuration wizard. For now only manual configuration and guided configuration are working, but searching will follow soon, it is just matter of few wrapping classes. If you are brave enough to test development versions, just grab Wammu snapshot and launch wammu-configure.py. There are still lot of things to improve, but at least something is finally working.

I finally managed to merge long pending patch in tracker and here comes new release of Ukolovnik - 0.6:

• Detect concurrent editation.

Phone database now has additional field for Gammu version, so that you can write which version you tested. I introduced this field, because this is most often information listed in reporter comments.

What next might happen to phone database? I'd like to add talkback to Wammu that would automatically fill in values in phone database. It should popup some time after installation to make sure that user had enough time to test it. But what is enough time? Probably one month, but maybe I will change my decision when actually implementing this.

I just added RSS feed to Gammu phone database, so you can follow what phones has been recently added.

Well it's mostly feature for me to allow faster reviewing of recently added entries, but maybe you will also find use for that :-).

After receiving survey about some my links on TuxMobil, I decided to add some links to this site in Gammu phone database. That site contains lot of links to interesting pages where you will much likely find some hints for your phone.

Anyway it would be good if we manage to cooperate a bit more, as most of entries in Gammu phone database can be considered as reports in TuxMobil Linux Mobile (Cellular) Phone Survey.

Maybe I'm a bit late, but happy new year! I was quite silent in last days as I was having rest from computer and enjoyed real life.

What will this year bring? I will hopefully become Debian Developer, as only required step right now is account creation. This is good news for Gammu users who run Debian, as I would like to upload testing versions to experimental (as well as appropriate python-gammu builds).

What else? Some new releases of my projects :-). I'm still working on Wammu and configuration wizard. There is a bit more work than I expected, but it should be ready during January. I don't expect much new features in python-gammu, it will be just kept in sync with gammu.

The only remaining project is Ukolovnik, which is in perfect state for me, however other users request more features and I should sometimes get at least to patch merging :-).