Coder's Log

I have a talk where I'll attempt to brain-wash educate the masses about the awesomeness of Vala language. If you are even slightly interested, please do attend. I also have arranged a BoF together with KDE's Friedrich Kossebau to discuss about the possibility of SSDP (discovery protocol used by UPnP) as a system service. See you in Berlin soon!

Ever since I blogged about me looking for opportunities outside Nokia , I was contacted by quite some companies. Some of them ended-up giving me nice offers but in the end the offer that stood out amongst all was from Red Hat . So last evening, I accepted their offer to join the awesome Spice team. The reasons I chose Red Hat over others were: Red Hat being undoubtedly the leader in Open Source technologies for more than a decade has always been on my 'awesome places to work at some day' list. The Spice project that I'm being hired to work on is simply awesome. They offer good working conditions. I'll be staying in Finland and most likely working from home (unless I'm asked to work at the Espoo office). I will be officially joining Red Hat on May 2 and my last day at Nokia will be on April 21. Before you ask, nothing disastrous is going to happen to GUPnP and Rygel . Of course I won't be spending as many hours on these projects as now but keeping in m

Here is yet another version thats twice slower (and therefore longer), has the gloom off and filenames disabled and is in H264+AVI format. Oh and this time I managed to use GStreamer to record the video, rather than ffmpeg. In case anyone is interested, I used this commandline to create it: gource -1280x720 -s 0.1 --stop-at-end --hide filenames \ --highlight-all-users --file-filter po -a 5 --camera-mode track \ --user-image-dir ~/hackergotchies --disable-progress \ --disable-bloom --output-ppm-stream - |gst-launch-0.10 fdsrc fd=0 \ ! 'image/ppm,width=1280,height=720,framerate=(fraction)60/1' ! \ ffdec_ppm ! ffmpegcolorspace ! x264enc speed-preset=10 ! \ avimux ! filesink location=rygel-dev-history.avi

I recently discovered this awesome tool called, gource . Using that I created a visualization of rygel 's development history and uploaded here . Note that translation commits are missing. That doesn't mean I do not acknowledge or value those contributions but I had to exclude them because otherwise the screen was too crowded for viewer to actually see anything at all.

While it is a well known fact that Rygel is as awesome as this new Intrepid class ship of mine in Star Trek Online unfortunately its preferences UI looks as ugly as this Apart from being ugly, it also doesn't really integrate well in GNOME as there is already a UI that lets you easily specify your file sharing preferences: gnome-user-share. I had some discussions with Bastien on how to fix this and we had agreed on a plan to kill this UI while merging the relevant parts of it into gnome-user-share in July 2010: Rygel: always starts as part of the session. times-out and exits if there is nothing to share. (MediaExport backend) doesn't share anything by default. gnome-user-share uses the MediaExport's DBus API to add/remove folders. While the Rygel parts are mostly in place, Bastien (being a very busy developer) didn't manage to get any time to do the gnome-user-share part and neither did I. :( GNOME 3.0 is happening very soon and Rygel might not get i

Rygel 0.7.6 (A Kiss is But a Kiss) is out! Another micro release to fix the critical regression in 'Year' hierarchy of Tracker plugin. All contributors to this release: Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) Download source tarball from here

Rygel 0.7.4 (Look at the Princess) released! A new release in the current unstable 0.7.x series for upcoming GNOME 2.32.0 release. - Fix wildcard handling in search request. - Distribute correct copy of scallable icons. - Provide icons in DLNA standard sizes. - Provide icons in JPEG format as well. - Don't offer transcoding from video to audio and viceversa. This makes sense anyway and reduces network traffic. - Only offer time seeking if duration is known. - Report correct DLNA profile for MPEG-TS HD and WMV transcoder. - List DLNA formats first in the list of supported formats. - Provide correct values for out parameters of GetCurrentConnectionInfo action. - Correctly handle HTTP 'POST' requests. - Correct checks for vala bindings. - Use new 64-bit size property in GUPnP resource API so that we can deal with resources bigger than 2GB. - Fix some (potential) crashes. - Correctly handle a translated string involving plurals. - Don't use deprecated libsoup API. -

GUPnP DLNA 0.3.0 released! Changes since 0.2.1: - New API and tool (gupnp-dlna-ls-profiles) to list all supported profiles - Move API to get a profile to the DLNADiscoverer namespace - Make GUPnPDLNAProfile opaque, add to API documentation - Add support for several AVC_MP4_MP profiles - Print stream topology instead of a simple list in gupnp-dlna-info - Add debug output controlled by an environment variable for eaesier debugging - Beginnings of an automated testing infrastructure - Add relaxed/extended mode properties (more details in the next release) - Use 'bitrate' instead of 'maximum-bitrate' while matching streams - Various bug fixes All contributors to this release: Arun Raghavan Parthasarathi Susarla Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) GUPnP Vala 0.6.11 released! Changes since 0.6.10: - Require and adapt to gupnp-av 0.3.0. All contributors: Arun Raghavan Parthasarathi Susarla Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) Download source tarballs from here

Rygel 0.7.3 (Out of Their Minds) is out! A new release in the current unstable 0.7.x series for upcoming GNOME 2.31.6 release. - Add Album-art support. - Add support for sorted Browse/Search. - Don't push data after HTTP response is cancelled. - Advertise support for search by "createClass". - Revive accidently removed XBox hacks. - Fix icon export for uninstalled case. - Simplify plugin APIs to further abstract plugin developers from UPnP details. - Add convenient MediaRenderer APIs for plugins. This involved moving most of the GstRenderer code to core. - Fix seeking once again. - Improve error handling in HTTP request handling code. - Port to new DIDL-Lite contributor APIs. - Port to Vala 0.9.3 and 0.9.4. - Clean-up README and specify build and run-time dependencies. - More debug output. - MediaExport: - Make use of gupnp-dlna for faster, more complete and reliable metadata extraction. - Print a debug message if extraction fails for a file. - Add windows f

Changes since 0.5.7: - Fix crashes in DIDLLiteContributor API. - Remove incomplete and broken DLNA guessing code. Applications should use gupnp-dlna now for all their DLNA needs. - Do set the 'dlna:profileID' property of 'albumArtURI' node and treat it as mandatory as per DLNA guidelines (7.3.61.3). - Prefer non-transcoded resources over transcoded ones when choosing compatible resources for a particular MediaRenderer. - Minor correction to DIDL filtering code. - Some other minor improvements/fixes. Bug fixed in this release: 2187 - GUPnPDIDLLiteContributor class doesn't work All contributors to this release: Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) Download source tarball from here

Rygel 0.7.2 (Dream A Little Dream) is out! A new release in the current unstable 0.7.x series for upcoming GNOME 2.31.5 release. * MediaExport: * Support DLNA's 'AnyContainer' upload extenstion. * Only harvest media files. We use a positive list for file extensions to include in the metadata extraction. * Implement fallback to the default (slow) search implementation. * Lower severity for some of the console messages. * Update code according to latest GStreamer Vala API fixes. * Tracker: * Improve Sparql query builder to achieve much better performance and reduced D-Bus traffic. * GstRenderer: * Relicense from GPL to LGPL. * More descriptive default title. - Localization: - Add Simplified Chinese translation. - Add Traditional Chinese translation (Hong Kong and Taiwan). - Updated Spanish translation. - Various non-functional improvements to core and plugins. All contributors to this release: Aron Xu Chao-Hsiung Liao Jens Georg Jorge Go

Rygel 0.7.1 (Home on the Remains) is out! A new release in the current unstable 0.7.x series for upcoming GNOME 2.31.4 release. - Implement DLNA's 'AnyContainer' upload extenstion. This allows clients to upload items without having to specify target container. Currently it only works for the Tracker backend. - Report types of items that could be created/uploaded in a container and allow clients to search containers by this property. - Port last bits of C code to Vala. Now Rygel is completely written in Vala. - Make Rygel build/work against both current stable and unstable Vala releases. - Offer SD transcoding in EU profile. Seems certain Sony Bravia TVs only support EU profiles. With this change, they should at least be able to use the SD transcoding. - Two more unit tests. - Provide default configuration for WMV transcoding. - Correctly handle boolean commandline option for disabling WMV transcoder. - External: - Port the external plugin to use the new D-Bu

As part of this years Google Summer of Code, Sunil Ghai (a student from India) has taken-up the task of securely bridging multiple UPnP networks across the internet. You can follow the progress of the project through Sunil's blog . Before you say it, yes! I did get the idea from my "competitors" but unlike them, we are going to do it the (UPnP) standard and efficient (as usual) way.

GUPnP 0.13.4 released! Changes since 0.13.3: - GUPnPService should remove all handlers installed on the shared SoupServer instance when it is disposed. - Fixate subscription timeout to be 300s as per DLNA requirement (7.2.22.1). - Correct type of action argument of GUPnPService::action-invoked. - Remove redundant copying of GValue content in a few places. - Handle multiple variables inside property node in event notifications to be compatible with server-side implementations using older GUPnP - Fix syntax of event notifications with multiple properties. - Add/fix gobject-introspection annotations for various functions. - Some non-functional improvements. Bugs fixed in this release: 2084 - Add scope annotations to various functions 2131 - GUPnPServiceAction is a boxed, not a pointer 2086 - Fix gtk-doc format on all functions in public GUPnP API All contributors: Sven Neumann Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) Zach Goldberg Download source tarball from here ----------- GUPnP AV 0.5.6

Rygel 0.7.0 (Picture if You Will) is out! This release marks the start of the new unstable release-cycle. This is also the release cycle that will be integrated into GNOME 2.31 (and 3.0 eventually). Changes since 0.6.0: - Exit on failure to load any plugins in 5 seconds. - Add icon to preferences UI's desktop file. - Correct error on missing 'Elements' node in 'CreateObject' action from client. - Advertize upload features in 'X_DLNACAP' in device description. - Remove comments from description files as per DLNA requirement (7.2.30.1). - Don't allow comments in DIDL-Lite from client either. This is to satisfy the DLNA Confirmation Test Tool rather than DLNA itself. - Don't advertize unimplemented actions. - autogen.sh should create m4 directory if it doesn't exist already. - Correct Icon path in preferences UI for uninstalled case. - Specify on debug log where rygel is currently looking for plugins. - Localization: - Don't translate al

Rygel 0.6.0 (The Way We Weren't) is out! This release marks the start of the new stable release-cycle. Changes since 0.5.2: - Localization: - Fix translation framework. - Mark all (possibly) user-visible string for translation. - Use more translator-friendly language. - Provide comments for translators. - Correctly case abbreviations. - Translations: - German (de) 100% - Slovenian (sl): 100% - Spanish (es): 57% - Fix time-seeking. - Fix a potential race-condition in aborted HTTP requests. - Don't stream if request is for subtitles. - Use bigger (64Ki) buffers when streaming from gstreamer source element. - Remux only if transcoding is not needed. - Configuration option for specifying plugin load path. - Add configuration from Environment. - Fix port specification through commandline. - Add and expose Rygel logo. - Pause streaming pipeline when/if client isn't reading fast enough. - Add more unit tests. - Use gnome-autogen.sh. - Add missing libuui

So based on comments received on the Rygel logo in the last blog entry , Klaus did some adjustments and came-up with even more improved version: 256x256: 32x32:

While you can follow the progress of Rygel through the release announcements on my blog, mailing-lists and even git log, I feel that I am not providing enough information about the future plans. Also there are some things that are not (or so far have not been) in a shape to be part of a release so here is some of what is coming: Logo I've been looking for an artist to make me a nice logo ever since the start of the project. A few artists gave it a try but they didn't succeed in creating anything worth showing to anyone. I couldn't possibly blame them since: Its not very clear to everyone what Rygel is and I suck at explaining things. Its hard to represent it even when you learn what it is. So what happened was that I told Sebastian that I was so jealous of his new logo , he asked Klaus to attempt to do the same for Rygel. He did and after a bit of talking and him trying different ideas, we finally agreed on this: 64x64: 32x32: 16x16: Some people like it, s

Rygel 0.5.2 (Crackers Don't Matter) is out! Another release in the unstable 0.5.x series. Changes since 0.5.0: - Add support for Xbox 360 and Window Media Player 11. - Add support for subtitles. Currently only useful for certain Samsung DLNA TVs. - Add Windows Media Video (WMV) transcoder. - Add unit tests for a few modules. - Fix some (potential) crashes. - Make database operations cancellable. - Throw error on database creation failure. - Simpler (hopefully) build rules. - Fix race-condition in streaming code so we don't terminate the connection before all the bytes are sent to the client. - Fix leaking of HTTP messages of live streams on termination. - Fix 'Content-Length' header values for partial requests. - Fix parsing of search expression containing characters not within the original latin1 range. - Use bigger (64Ki) buffers when streaming media to reduce cpu usage and therefore improve battery life. - Include spec version in description document. - Remo

GSSDP 0.7.2 released! Changes since 0.7.1: - Provide gobject-introspection GIR and typelib. - Use silent build rules. - Fix issues with version-independence magic in SSDP code. - Fix build issues in jhbuild environment. Bugs fixed in this release: 2025 - autogen.sh fails to find autoconf macros when they're installed in a non-standard location 1927 - gssdp fails to answer M-SEARCH sometimes 1921 - GObject Introspection Makefile for GSSDP All Contributors: Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) Zach Goldberg Jens Georg Neil Roberts Ross Burton Download source tarball from here GUPnP 0.13.3 released! Changes since 0.13.2: - Include the Content-Type header in the HTTP messages. This satisfies DLNA CTT test cases 7.2.5.9 and 7.2.29.1. - Use g_message instead of g_warning if we can't connect to DBus. - Make the HTTP server listen on the context's interface only. - Fix some potential crashes in GUPnPServiceProxy and GUPnPContextManager code. - Fix build issues in jhbuil