Sometimes it is difficult to find the location of opensource software. It is not always available where you would look for it. I have been looking for the source code location of Adept for a while now (well, I haven’t wanted it so badly that I was willing to install Ubuntu.) Currently the only source copies are in KDE svn. Get adept from anonomous KDE svn this way:
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/sysadmin/adept
I have previously discussed KDExecutor a automated unit test tool for scripted GUI application testing. Well, it seems that here is another tool that exists to do automated platform testing. Squish is a tool created by FrogLogic that supports all Qt platforms out-of-the-box. Squish seems to use Python scripts and costs betwen $150 and $800.
Couple links to Desktop Search Tools:
Shared specifications and shared standards are an admirable goal as long as the “standards” are not acting as limitations to the advancement of a given technology. This was the problem that KDE ran into with the use of Corba. It was a open and shared standard used by KDE (and Gnome) in its early development. But we quickly discovered that it became a nightmare to manage/extend to the more advanced uses that we wanted to see KDE move towards. The decision was made (and lots of “shared standard” developers SCREAMED about the change) to switch to a custom KDE specification now known as KParts. History has shown that decision to use KParts was the correct one, as KDE would NOT have progressed to the level it has using Corba.
As long as the standard is good for KDE development and advances our ability to provide application solutions to users (and developers) then I am all for shared standards. But the moment those standards hold back KDE development in the interest of some “perceived” value from shared specifications. We can all agree on standards up until those standards have the net result of holding-back all of our development efforts equally.
Think of specifications as food for software. Good standards will help you (or your software project) grow strong and healthy. Bad standards will make your application bloated, lethargic, and will eventually be the cause of most of your application “sickness.” Standards are NOT more important than the applications (arguably they are part of the application, but a part is seldom more important than the whole.) Because they are NOT more important than the applications themselves, comments like this verge on being insulting.
The fact that KDE gets appreciated this much and that KDE is the market leader in UNIX and Linux desktops today is negligible compared to the extremely important effort to create a single specification of the free desktop environment.
Also, I think too many people get shared specifications confused with open specifications. KDE (and Gnome for that matter) will ALWAYS have open specifications because of the very nature of F/OSS. Open standards are very very important, shared standards are less important. One could argue that Microsoft DOC format is a shared standard because just about every office package in existence tries to write and save to it. That doesn’t make it an open standard.
I have not been in the mood to blog lately. I am not entirely sure why, but it may have something to do with just being burnt out. In spite of how I feel I must get these links up. That said, I have been scanning news feeds for articles about Linux authentication mechanisms. Linux (via PAM) has the uncanny ability to authenticate to everything from a Windows AD network to SSL shared keys. I am fairly sure it would even be possible to get PAM to use the current state of my toaster oven to validate a user. Of greatest interest to me is, getting Linux to use use LDAP for network authentication. As such we have todays links.
Hopefully I will be back to my full blogging glory after this weekend. Lots has been happening in the world, in my life, and in my home; but until I get out of this slump my body just keeps saying “NO blogging today!”
Martijn Klingens has extended is post on KExtProcess. The new article covers API documentation and compares KExtProcess to the old KProcess. The simplicity of design should make it an easy port. Hope it makes it into kdelibs by KDE 4.0.
kconfigure, my KDE build management tool, uses KProcess for its handling of automake, qmake, and checkinstall functionality. It does this because fundamentally these tools are command-line driven tools without a library interface for C++ to work with. The problem with KProcess is that, while it is probably the most powerful command-line processing library available, it is still very limited. Evidently I am not the only one with this problem as Martijn Klingens has released his updated KProcess-like tool KExtProcess.
The beauty of KExtProcess is that it not only handles command-line communication processing (i.e. STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR, etc..) but that it is network transparent. It also supports the concept of “profiles” that allow you to string together commands into a single “profile” that is loaded before the process is started. This allows things like: ssh’ing from one machine, to another, to a third before running a command locally on that third machine; or remotely accessing a machine as a one user, and then su’ing to root before beginning your process as root. While KExtProcess is still in its early stages, it will, no doubt, quickly achieve its place alongside KIO and DCOP as one of the powerful *nix desktop technologies in existence.
unsermake is a replacement build tool for KDE. Some of unsermakes advanced features are multi system compile support, simplified makefile syntax (using KDE’s custom Makefile.am files), build progress indicators, full Qt moc file support, cleaner build output and much faster build times.
Here is an interesting tip for using Kontact, the KDE groupware/pim client (ala Outlook 2003.) If can turn an email message into a TODO by dragging the message too the “To-do List” icon. Props to Rempt for the tip.
CVS Auto-updating is a blog post on how to get CVS to manage auto updating when working with a web server or a local repository. Nothing fancy, but it works. Here is another option (releated to KDE management) for auto updating:
umask 022;
$ENV{“CVS_RSH”} = “ssh”;
# read the message to make procmail happy
while()
{
chop;
$subj = $1 if(/^Subject: (.*)/i and !defined($subj));
}
exit 0 if (!defined($subj));
exit 0 if ($subj =~ /\/\.\.\//);
$subj = $1 if ($subj =~ /^\S+: (.*)$/); # remove branches
$subj = $1 if ($subj =~ /^(\S+).*$/);
# Choose here which subjects to filter upon. Another solution is to filter
# in .procmailrc of course
if ( $subj =~ m#www/areas/koffice# || $subj =~ m#www/media# )
{
my $home = $ENV{“HOME”};
my $cvsroot = “$home/koffice.org”;
open LOG, “>>$home/cvslog”;
my $date = `date`; chop($date);
my $path = “$subj”;
if ( $subj =~ m#www/media# ) {
$path = “$cvsroot”;
} else {
$path = $subj;
$path =~ s#www/areas/koffice##;
$path = “$cvsroot/$path”;
}
print LOG “$date: subj is $subj\n”;
print LOG “$date: testing path $path\n”;
#print LOG “$date: mod is $mod\n”;
$path = “$cvsroot” if (! -d $path);
if (-d $path) {
print LOG “$date: updating $path\n”;
$SIG{ALRM} = sub { $SIG{TERM} = sub{}; kill TERM, 0; exit 0; };
alarm 600;
my $out = `cd $path; svn up 2>&1`; ## use cvs up here instead of svn up if you use CVS
print LOG “$date: output–\n” . $out . “\n”;
}
close(LOG);
}
Thanks to David Faure for the script.