Omnimaga

General Discussion => Technology and Development => Computer Projects and Ideas => Topic started by: alberthrocks on September 22, 2012, 03:30:32 pm

Title: Project Adoption/Assistance
Post by: alberthrocks on September 22, 2012, 03:30:32 pm
This seems like a good idea, so I'm starting the project adoption thread!

I am currently cleaning up my FOSS (free and open source) projects. That said, I've already deleted a few projects that have no code (or are useless). However, there are a few left that have solid code, and instead of throwing them away (and wasting code), they might enjoy another project admin. :)

Here are the projects that I'm giving away:

LockerzBot: remember when Lockerz used to be that "big thing"? This helped power it! It used to be able to automatically fetch PTZ for you. It's likely that this might still work, with some modifications. (Python, moderate completion, https://code.google.com/p/lockerzbot/)

gWabbitemu: your favorite TI-8x emulator, ported to GTK+ for Linux! If you're looking for a native, GTK+ port of Wabbitemu, this is it! It needs some a LOT of love and caring, but it can be done! (C, little progress, https://code.google.com/p/gwabbitemu/) Adopted by AaroneusTheGreat! Thanks!
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1016340/PublicPictures/AdoptedProjects/AdoptedGWabbitemu.png)

These projects will be executed in 2 days, so please, save them from the Project Shelter's wrath!

There is also a special project: This is a project that I am keeping, but I would like some assistance with it! Requirements are that you should be familiar with BASH scripting, love Debian/Ubuntu/Mint, and have lots of time to learn and do things! It's undisclosed, but you will be benefiting the TI calculator Linux community with your work! :)

Let me know if you're interested in adopting one of these adorable little projects! :) As always, please demonstrate proof of adopter interest and skill! ;) First come first adopt!
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: jacobly on September 22, 2012, 03:44:33 pm
I love Ubuntu, am familiar with bash, and love learning new things :D (I can only guarantee having time to do stuff if it's more interesting than all my other projects though :P).
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on September 22, 2012, 04:07:31 pm
I think i'd like to play around with the gWabbitemu. It'd be a good linux programming learning tool for me. Please don't kill it!

[edit]
 
Ok so downloaded Mercurial and cloned the source repository to my laptop.  I started poking around in the code to make sure it wasn't too foreign to me to be able to work on it. I think I can do it, but I am going to need some help learning some stuff about how the emulator works on the inside, it makes sense mostly, but some things could use some more comments. I would really appreciate any time you take commenting the code for me. :D
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: alberthrocks on September 22, 2012, 05:01:50 pm
I love Ubuntu, am familiar with bash, and love learning new things :D (I can only guarantee having time to do stuff if it's more interesting than all my other projects though :P).
I've PMed you the project details, and am awaiting your response! :)

I think i'd like to play around with the gWabbitemu. It'd be a good linux programming learning tool for me. Please don't kill it!

[edit]
 
Ok so downloaded Mercurial and cloned the source repository to my laptop.  I started poking around in the code to make sure it wasn't too foreign to me to be able to work on it. I think I can do it, but I am going to need some help learning some stuff about how the emulator works on the inside, it makes sense mostly, but some things could use some more comments. I would really appreciate any time you take commenting the code for me. :D
Ahh... that could be an issue :P The reason I'm giving these projects away is because I have little to no time (at least until mid November). Sorry! :( You can consult with Buckeye about the emulator internals, but you don't have to go that deep into the emulator. :) interface/ is the folder to take a peek at.

If you want a solid reference, take a look at wxWabbitemu (http://code.google.com/p/wxwabbitemu/) (probably the reason why gWabbitemu never really got much work). The code in gui/* should give you an idea of where to head. :)

EDIT: Please tell me whether you are committing to work on the project! :)
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on September 22, 2012, 05:19:15 pm
That's fine, I'll talk to Buckeye if i have any questions then. Thanks. I can't promise I'll be able to devote a lot of time to this either due to my other research and projects, but i don't want it to die so I'll do what I can. Expect a slow trickle of progress at best. I need to focus on completing DOA a bit more than on this.
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: alberthrocks on September 22, 2012, 09:34:25 pm
That's fine, I'll talk to Buckeye if i have any questions then. Thanks. I can't promise I'll be able to devote a lot of time to this either due to my other research and projects, but i don't want it to die so I'll do what I can. Expect a slow trickle of progress at best. I need to focus on completing DOA a bit more than on this.
No that's fine! :) Besides, it is kinda your project now (and I'll transfer the project to you shortly). (I have wxWabbitemu to manage, anyway! :))

I need an email with Google Account enabled so I can transfer ownership to you.
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 23, 2012, 01:06:50 am
If no one picks one project in particular, could you still host the source code somewhere in case someone decides to take over it much later? That way it won't be lost forever like many other TI projects.
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: Juju on September 23, 2012, 02:03:53 am
Yeah, well, you can always leave them on Google Code forever until someone decides to take over. And feel free to leave me in the team of gwabbitemu ^_^

Also your other undisclosed project looks interesting. Is it Debian-specific? (If it is, is it related to APT or something?)
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: Lionel Debroux on September 23, 2012, 02:16:50 am
Could you enlighten me about the advantages - if any - of gWabbitEmu (which is not quite a finished project, according to the first post) over TilEm-NG (TilEm 2.00+), which is a release-quality program with support for Linux, MacOS X and Windows ? :)

I can fully understand that making gWabbitEmu can be a learning exercise; but maybe, for furthering the goal of great, portable emulators for the TI-Z80 series, it would be better to concentrate on TilEm 2 and later ?
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: shmibs on September 23, 2012, 06:18:42 am
well, there's no reason to not have multiple, if there are enough people excited about both to maintain them. even something like a calculator emulator is something worth having multiple projects if each one goes about it in a different way that appeals to a slightly different crowd. even though it's still very much unfinished, i prefer wxWabbitemu to TilEm 2 still, for example; not because of any lack of functionality in TilEm, but rather because i prefer the stylistic approach (the interface layout, the way the screen is emulated, the keyboard controls, etcetera). i also know that there are multiple people who prefer TilEm, and that it's a great boost to the community.
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: TIfanx1999 on September 23, 2012, 07:58:25 am
Not to mention that Wabbit emu has a huge following, and is pretty much the go-to emulator for Z80. ;)
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: alberthrocks on September 23, 2012, 10:00:30 am
If no one picks one project in particular, could you still host the source code somewhere in case someone decides to take over it much later? That way it won't be lost forever like many other TI projects.
Maybe. Though the only project left is something I really don't want :P (It's basically a cheating bot :P)
Yeah, well, you can always leave them on Google Code forever until someone decides to take over. And feel free to leave me in the team of gwabbitemu ^_^

Also your other undisclosed project looks interesting. Is it Debian-specific? (If it is, is it related to APT or something?)
Nah... the point of me giving it away is to solidify my programming portfolio, and later use it for my college apps. (I just realized I could do that yesterday :P) I don't want to be associated with projects that are not even close to complete, hence my giving them away. I also don't have much time these days to work on projects, so I give them away in hopes of finding someone who might put some work into it! :)

My undisclosed project... you're very very close. I can't tell you though unless you're actually interested in working on it with me. :P (Along with jacobly!) Wanna join? :D

well, there's no reason to not have multiple, if there are enough people excited about both to maintain them. even something like a calculator emulator is something worth having multiple projects if each one goes about it in a different way that appeals to a slightly different crowd. even though it's still very much unfinished, i prefer wxWabbitemu to TilEm 2 still, for example; not because of any lack of functionality in TilEm, but rather because i prefer the stylistic approach (the interface layout, the way the screen is emulated, the keyboard controls, etcetera). i also know that there are multiple people who prefer TilEm, and that it's a great boost to the community.
Not to mention that Wabbit emu has a huge following, and is pretty much the go-to emulator for Z80. ;)
Those are pretty much the reasons why I started wxWabbitemu.

In the past, TilEM v1.x existed, which was great, but lacked a lot of features, such as GIF recording. In addition, the speed of the emulator was horrendous - it would take up all of your CPU, causing the laptop to heat up. Wabbitemu, on the other hand, took very little CPU, and was filled with features!

Wabbitemu was popular back then, so I decided to port it. I thought about making wxWidgets the toolkit, since it was cross-platform and all, plus I fell in love with it. The other reason was that I figured Buckeye would be able to help me port it easier, since wxWidgets is rather similar to the Windows MFC API. However, we later discovered that wxWidgets was not exactly the Windows API... more of an odd mix. :P And I later realized that no one would really use the Windows or Mac OS X port of this, making the cross-platform part of wxWidgets pointless. Furthermore, TilEM v2.0 was released - a stable release that fixed its shortcomings.

Now, we have wxWabbitemu. Do I regret not choosing GTK+? A little, to be honest. It would have been more straightforward (and "native") to use GTK+ instead of a big wrapper around it. It might be even faster, now that I think about it. But I don't regret it that much to stop work on such a project. Besides, the project is going on quite well, and it still is a very nice solution for Linux users! (Plus, it is still cross-platform, so in the future this might be a emulator for Windows users who find that the regular Wabbitemu doesn't work - like an "unstable" vs "stable" release, you might say!)

As for gWabbitemu - that project should've taken the place of wxWabbitemu. If ATG is able to make that work out (which, I have to say, is pretty hard, seeing that it took years for wxWabbitemu to gain some progress), I would not be surprised if gWabbitemu gets more users than wxWabbitemu, since there's no need to install an extra wxWidgets dependency to get it to run. Nevertheless, I'll continue my days with wxWabbitemu, hoping to finish it as soon as possible so that something fun and awesome can finally make its way into Linux! :D
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: Lionel Debroux on September 23, 2012, 10:14:47 am
Quote
hoping to finish it as soon as possible so that something fun and awesome can finally make its way into Linux! :P
That could be read as rude towards TilEm ;)
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: alberthrocks on September 23, 2012, 10:26:00 am
Quote
hoping to finish it as soon as possible so that something fun and awesome can finally make its way into Linux! :P
That could be read as rude towards TilEm ;)
I sure that the ending smiley was a ":D", but... no insults intended for TilEm :)
I've used their emulator, and believe me, it is pretty solid work! :D
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 23, 2012, 01:58:49 pm
Could you enlighten me about the advantages - if any - of gWabbitEmu (which is not quite a finished project, according to the first post) over TilEm-NG (TilEm 2.00+), which is a release-quality program with support for Linux, MacOS X and Windows ? :)

I can fully understand that making gWabbitEmu can be a learning exercise; but maybe, for furthering the goal of great, portable emulators for the TI-Z80 series, it would be better to concentrate on TilEm 2 and later ?
TilEm grayscale was an absolute abomination coming directly from hell that rivaled Flash Debugger/83+ SDK. That was of course a few years ago before the project went on a huge hiatus. Has the grayscale been improved in recent versions? (by improved, I mean that the user must be able to change the LCD refresh rate, frame rate, switch between perfect gray and real gray as he wishes, like we can do in WabbitEmu). I can't blame the original authors, though, because back in the days, there was only one grayscale game available for the TI-83 series: Desolate. The grayscale must have been based solely on Durk's grayscale package and Desolate, so as a result, anything else looks terrible.

Also there's the fact that TilEm went dormant for nearly a decade while WabbitEmu emerged from Revsoft team, so we have to face the fact that maybe newer community members got used to Wabbit series and decided to continue on its legacy when it comes to new emulator ports.
Title: Re: Project Adoption
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on September 25, 2012, 09:31:27 pm
I haven't gotten much done but I have read through a fairly large amount of source code, I'm trying to familiarize myself with the project before delving in and randomly breaking stuff. I don't remember if we put the account in my name yet or not, but I'll chat with you about it if it hasn't been done yet. It's official now i suppose!
Title: Re: Project Adoption/Assistance
Post by: alberthrocks on October 19, 2012, 05:52:49 pm
A project needs help again! This time, however, they need assistance - that is, they're not being given away, but they would appreciate some much needed work! :) (Note the topic title change!)

AtomBot: this is a little, speedy IRC bot I wrote in Python! I need some help with fixing a few bugs, tightening up code, and adding a few features! Your work WILL help Omnimaga, since this bot's core is part of the "New" post notification bot for Omnimaga! :) You should have a good knowledge of Python and IRC protocol. (Python, moderate progress, https://code.google.com/p/atombot/)

(By the way, this topic is for everyone - if you need to give away a project, or some assistance, feel free to post here!)