Archive for the ‘NewzGrab’ tag

Pipeline Update

It’s been a while since I discussed pipelines, so I’m going to talk in this post about the state of various projects, as well as some talk on new projects!

COMPLETED PROJECTS:

MacGDBp

Released this summer, MacGDBp has been a tremendous success. This week version 1.1.2 was released, which address two bugs, one of which was a crasher. I’ve got big plans for version 1.2 and 1.3, but these will have to wait for other projects to be completed.

CMS

In my last pipeline update, I mentioned the CMS I was building for my university’s TV station. This project launched only two weeks ago, so the past month and a half I’ve been working feverishly to get this done. It’s now complete and so this will no longer be affecting development.

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Bugdar 2

The first milestone in Bugdar 2’s development phases was completed a few weeks ago. Since then, not much has happened because all of my effort went to deploying the aforementioned CMS. However, work will be resuming on phase 2 and development will be continuing. This week I went through the Blue Static bug tracker and triaged a bunch of bugs that had been left unresolved.

NewzGrab

I’ve started working on this project in the past few days. As stated in the previous pipeline posts, this is a Usenet downloader for NZB files. However, I’m writing this as a cross-platform application. Most of the code is being written using C++ and Boost, which allows it to be platform-portable. I intend to then create native interfaces for various platforms (initially, only the Mac one will be created).

MyWishlist

This project is mostly complete. A few interfaces need to be updated and created, but on the whole this is largely done. I haven’t actively worked on this in a few months, and I consider it to be one of my lower priorities.

NEW PROJECTS:

iD3

I realized the other day that the Mac lacks a good, free ID3 tag editor. I quickly found id3lib and wrote a simple Mac interface for it. Version 1.0 will be released in a few days, but will be very minimal. I intend to add more features (and more tags to edit) in the future, but the necessary fields will all be present in v1.0.

“Commander”

This is the project I’m most excited about. It’ll be a unique take on launchers (e.g. QuickSilver, Butler, LaunchBar) that is for pro-users only. I won’t be going into the details until I have something to show, but this will be one awesome app!

On Pipelines, Expansive

It’s time to talk pipelines. Initially, I was going to talk timelines. But timelines have the problem of addressing time, which is very difficult when you have 40+ hours of activities and school to do during the week. So, pipelines.

I’d like to start by announcing the completion of ISSO3. I’ll go into the details of why it took so incredibly long to finish in a future post, but you should know that it is finally done. What does the completion of ISSO3 mean? It means that all PHP projects can now resume development and use this framework. ISSO3 also requires PHP 5.2, which means that any future major releases of PHP projects will require PHP5.

That’s one less thing in the pipeline!

But what else is in this (expansive) pipeline? (Note: This is roughly in order of when the items will be finished. I very may well skip around and work on various projects when I feel like it, but this order is based on how much work is done versus how much has to be done).

mkrcpt

I compile a lot of open source projects myself rather than using ports or fink. Many people are familiar with the make; make install process. One of the problems with make, though, is that there’s no uninstaller. This to me is a problem. So I decided to solve said problem. Enter two very small C programs: mkrcpt and unrcpt. Instead of typing make install, you would invoke mkrcpt. What mkrcpt does is it index all of the items in the installation path by last modified date, then runs make install for you, and reruns the index algorithm. It then stores all the changed files in a receipt file. If you ever want to uninstall a program, just run unrcpt.

What’s left: Testing and a few fixes to the receipt file format.

MacGDBp

PHP developers have access to a really cool extension called Xdebug that has remote debugging functionality via a protocol called GDBp. Both Windows and Linux have GUI clients for this protocol, but the Mac does not. The lack of a client irked me because the functionality is quite helpful.

What’s left : The basic functionality is all done, but there’s still a bit left to do to make it useable. Those items are: adding line numbers to source views, adding breakpoints (currently you use the xdebug_break() function in your code), and making an icon.

CMS

No, I’m not writing another CMS solution to compete with Joomla, ExpressionEngine, etc.. This is a private project for my university’s TV station. The website is going to be completely redone to allow for modular content blocks and dynamic templates. The project looks fairly straightforward, so it shouldn’t block things in the pipeline.

What’s left: I haven’t started writing a single line of code yet, but it’s completely planned out.

Bugdar 2

I am very excited about working on Bugdar 2, but as you can see, there are a lot of things in the pipeline. I’ll post more about this as the pipeline start’s clearing up and work begins.

What’s left: Everything.

NewzGrab

This is another Mac app that will take in Newzbin (.nzb) files and download them from your favorite NNTP server. I’ve only mapped out the classes and hand-drawn a mockup interface. More on this will be posted as work commences.

What’s left: Everything.

MyWishlist

A while ago I had a project called MyWishlist that allowed you to setup a wishlist site for you and your friends/family. I won’t go into the details here, but I’m rewriting it to be a hosted application as opposed to a downloaded one. Don’t expect it anytime soon because it’s a very low-priority item.

What’s left: Deciding what language to write it in. Ruby? PHP? Python? Who knows?!

WebFreeChart

This is a PHP5 OOP charting library. It’s boring to work on. But I need it. It’ll happen… eventually.

What’s left: Almost everything.

So, the above is a list of all the projects I’m juggling. It’s a lot. There is no timeline as to when things will be done. I wish I could give one, but with the amount of Real Life ™ things I have to do, I just work when I’m not tired, I’m in the mood, and I have free time. If those three stars align, progress gets made. I’ll keep you guys updated on any major developments. Your patience is appreciated.