Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[technosaurus]

For a number of reasons I wanted to go ahead and start testing some packages for the 4.4 Community Edition even before Barry releases 4.3.1.

Phase 1 testing pet packages on existing 4.3.X systems

Allowing people to test the proposed programs on their existing 4.3X system will help to identify any issues early on and reduce the number of full releases required. Once the pets have been sufficiently vetted (~1-2 weeks), I will release the first alpha.

Setting up the separate threads for side projects should help to keep the size of this thread from becoming overwhelming and allow for continuity on those projects as the alphas, betas and release candidates roll out. (I plan to start a new thread on each cycle and carry over the main pet and project posts as required)

This process will be repeated as necessary until all Milestones and Goals are sufficiently met. During the process I will consider reasonable requests, compare them against Puppy's overall goals and make my own determination as to whether it is feasible or not. Any optimizations or improvements that do not increase size are an easy decision, all others will require some reduction elsewhere that does not negatively affect usability in any way.

I already have at least 10 milestones and will post them here soon (probably in the 3rd post - "projects"), but if you want a preview of some of the pet updates, just browse puppylinux.asia/members/T/444. I haven't uploaded them all yet, but there is a good sampling so far. One thing that you will notice is that I have some development versions of some of our core apps. I think that this is appropriate at this phase and will have significant long term benefits if the developers receive our bug reports (and fixes where possible)

[technosaurus]

pets are located here
puppy:linux to login

[technosaurus]

projects

GTKDialog apps

init hacking

ffmpeg & xinelib

Pcompile

Woo-FF

Puppy Control Panel

ROX right clicks

[technosaurus]

Milestones for consideration: (aka wishlist) - taking volunteers

On the fly sfs mounting: Choicepup style or symlink style

Update the core libraries so that newer software is usable - started

Update core applications (or replace if the case warrants it) - started
abiword, gnumeric, mtpaint(now themeable) and many more - started

Update petget and corresponding software to use xz compression - NOT started

Updates to gtkdialog apps
Re-introduce and update the Puppy Control Panel - needs minor update
Finish working on Woo-FF - started
Create GTKdialog version of the Remaster script - NOT started
Create GTKdialog version of the Universal installer - NOT started
... and many more

Boot to GUI using a default keyboard, mouse, timezone and video setting and start with the Puppy Control Panel and a message telling you what the setting is and why/how to change it

Look at having an Opera or QTwebkit based browser (or version) to make installing QT based apps much easier - Planning

Our theme changer seems to copy files - maybe it would be better to simply change one symlink?

Introduce the Puppy Plus pack(s) basically the most often downloaded pets & sfs in a single sfs file - Planning

Introduction of the DOCx_XXX.sfs and NLSx_XXX.sfs - started

Move Geany (possibly others) to the devx_sfs and use Nicoedit etc.. (~500kb savings)

Package Cleanup - cutting bloat, moving common files such as fonts, pixmaps etc to common folders and using symlinks so that other programs can benefit from them as well as updating to the newer 4.3 style specs files and database entries. - ??

Include a basic howto.html in the root of the iso so that new users can learn the basics before they boot the iso. - raffy

Windows and Mac Installers - ??

Run rdfind on final build to replace duplicate files with symlinks (~500kb savings)

Last but not least - fix bugs - ongoing

[raffy]

Just FYI - the howto.html will contain essentially the manual, so I can probably help there.

[Lobster]

Using my (few days old) efforts to program in c++
created this simple 44CE development portal program


You should fill out the registration if you want to help with 4.4CE
so we can contact you
- but most contact will be done through this forum
and as usual registration is a suggestion not a compulsion for inclusion:)
However if the forum is down we still need to contact each other

There is also a link to the wiki, this thread, latest info etc
It also barks, when you need to express approval . . .


Later on we will be able to send testing info using the program (feedback)

Source code is provided of course (puppy44CE.cpp)
and so improvements from real coders welcome

[DaveS]

Do you think some thought could be given to setting things up in such a way that browser updating is easy? Not simple I know with read only file systems, but one of the most frequent requests we get.

[aragon]

Some whishes from me:
- Try to follow One Task => One Application
- Unclutter the menu
- get rid of absvolume
- newer ffmpeg
- Add much more keybindings for jwm
- don't compile with "--disable-nls"
- update some parts of devx (autocon, automake,...)
- Setup a default for $CFLAGS
- Add an alias or a wrapper-script for a default configure-pattern
- update isomaster to 1.36 (this might solve an issue with puppy-isos we had with former versions)
- update gphoto and create a gtkdialog-frontend for gphotofs to simply mount a digicam to the regular filesystem
- add ldconfig to the regular iso (now devx)
- Add 'set bell-style none' to /etc/inputrc (matter of taste - i hate this 'bing')
- Add

[NathanO]

Have not seen it on the list, but some sort of 'Pet Be Gone' would be nice.

[ttuuxxx]

[paulh177]

wish: a proper small vi and not the damnable e3

(actually i wish this for the core puppy too)

[technosaurus]

@ ttuuxxx - I am following a lot of your work with 2.X and saw that (I think with the horizontal sliders if I recall correctly). Hopefully we can work our parallel paths to Puppy's advantage. I'm glad to see you here.

@ Nathan0 - I may need to set something up for it to automatically retrieve its required dependency - If I remember it is rather large and serves no other purpose.

@ Aragon - lots of good suggestions.
I have been testing CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS etc... and plan to incorporate them into Pcompile (and remove --disable-nls from the defaults)

I would like to go with 1 app per task as well accept when two multifunction apps overlap.
Newer ffmpeg is desirable but it will affect many other things that have it as a dependency. Barry has fought this battle already, but I will give it a shot & if I am going to do that I will also look into gstreamer.

Keybindings should probably have a separate thread since many apps have nonstandard bindings - Nicoedit for example uses F5 for history rather than refresh.

I plan to compile the latest usable version of ALL of the apps - Where I will need help on this is ensuring that Puppy patches don't get missed (like programs that use bmp vs png etc...)

As for the other apps - give me the link & I will compile and package them for testing

any file that contains "config" will automatically get put on the devx by default using new2dir - does this apply for any other packages? if so should this behavior be modified?

I really liked the ROX right clicks as well.

I have set up some templates for building gtkdialog guis for command line programs. There are infinite possibilities there.

[aragon]

[ttuuxxx]

[Pizzasgood]

Regarding PET-Be-Gone, I haven't installed 4.3 yet so I'm not sure how the package database format has changed and where it is now located. I intend to look at that sometime in the next couple weeks.

Something that would be nice (if 4.3 hasn't already done so) would be to let the user optionally keep the HW clock on UTC time rather than localtime. This would have no impact on size or speed, it's just a minor change of a couple scripts.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=41680