Indicator-jenkins is now even more awesome

My latest hobby project, indicator-jenkins is now even better (I wrote about this previously, in case you missed it).

New features since my last blog post:

• The code is now much nicer, and will be much easier to extend. My long-term goal is to support other types of CI servers (I'll probably have to change the project name I guess).
• Desktop notifications are generated for each new build of a monitored project. The notification includes the status and health report of the last build.
• LOTS of bug-fixes, especially around the settings UI. I'm still not happy with the settings dialog UI, but it's at least usable now.

To get it installed, do the following:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomir/indicator-jenkins

$ sudo apt-get install indicator-jenkins

Then launch indicator-jenkins from the unity dash or command line (Note: Launching it from the command line generates a LOT of debug output - I will turn this off in future releases).

Game update

A few things I should clarify about my earlier post:

I'm writing this for fun. I don't expect this game will come to anything much at all. If it's fun and playable, I might release it and try and get it packaged for a few different distros. My main motivation in writing the game is for me to improve my own programming skills.

I'm using Qt4 and qDevelop, nothing else. Qt4 is simply the best cross-platform C++ library I've ever seen, and qDevelop is a nice cross platform IDE that does everything I want it to.

Right now I have collision detection going, although it needs a few tweaks for fast-moving objects (like bullets). My next step is to investigate The QtScript module. Basically I want to be able to write the AI routines for the game in ECMAScript, so I can change them without having to recompile the game. This should also make the game easily extensible, possibly by people who aren't hard-core programmers.


Will post another video when I get something worth showing!

Maintaining Binary Compatability

It seems to be common practice for software development companies to patch individual parts of a released product. Usually this means distributing a second installer that creates new shared object (.so or .dll) files, so the next time the application in question runs it loads the new object files, and thus runs the new code.

In practice this is a great idea - it means that companies don't need to re-release and re-ship the entire product. Unfortunately, it's not always that easy. The biggest problem is that the new libraries must be binary compatible with the old ones. Essentially this means making sure that all objects within the library are the same size as they were, and that things like vtables haven't changed.

For a while now I've been looking around for a definitive list of guidelines to help me maintain binary compatible libraries. I finally found it on the KDE website.

Behold: Binary Compatible Issues with C++

Anyway, I thought that might be useful to some of you. Enjoy!