Coder's Log

- Add tool for generating convenience C wrappers for GUPnP service definitions. [Ross Burton] - Remove xmlDoc argument from gupnp_root_device_new() for simplicity. (xmlDocs can still be passed to gupnp_root_device_new_full()) [Jorn Baayen] - Better documentation, new tutorials and sample code. [Ross Burton] - Improved support for Accept-Language header. [Jorn Baayen] - Various internal improvements. [Zeeshan Ali, Jorn Baayen]

I finally managed to port all the existing C code to Vala. What did i achieve from this exercise? For one thing, the code got much simpler, with LOCs being reduced from 2101 to 1117 (46.8 %). Also this proves that (at least the server-side) GUPnP's Vala bindings are already in a stable/usable state. Special thanks to Jürg Billeter , Ali Sabil and Jussi Kukkonen for their continuous support during this exercise and for quickly fixing bugs that I reported.

So yet once again Mr python decide to tease me when i do `apt-get dist-upgrade`: Setting up python-lxml (2.0.5-1) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-lxml.postinst: /usr/bin/pycentral: /usr/bin/python: bad interpreter: No such file or directory dpkg: error processing python-lxml (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 126 ... Errors were encountered while processing: epiphany-extensions bzr gnome-media-common libgnome-media0 gnome-media pidgin python-lxml E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Meet my new personal hero, Jussi Kukkonen . The only o-hand employee in Finland who almost single-handedly created the Vala bindings of the whole GUPnP stack and ported all our test apps to Vala in a very short amount of time despite the fact that he was completely unfamiliar to Vala and GUPnP (and UPnP itself) when he started working on this task and the fact that the Vala documentation is hardly any complete (especially binding-generation).

When I told some people that I will write (which involves re-writing existing code first) the gupnp-media-server in Vala, their question was "Why Vala? Why not Python, Java or C#?". So here are the strong points of Vala, not all of which are found in these languages: Statically-typed Back in the days, when I was hacking on Gazpacho I found the lack of types on variables and function/method parameters really annoying in Python. This can become quite a pain when you are reading other's code and that is exactly what I was doing most of the time. The fact that Johan and Kalle wrote very nice and readable code, helped a lot though. No runtime dependency/overhead This might seem like a small point to many developers but as an embedded-systems developer, this is a big plus for me and I am sure to many (if not most) of the embedded-systems developers out there. Easy integration with C/GObject A big plus for all the GObject/C developers out there. Besides, there are situations

- Use libsoup 2.4. [Jorn Baayen, Zeeshan Ali Khattak] - Incremental browsing of containers. [Zeeshan Ali Khattak]

- Use libsoup 2.4. [Jorn Baayen] - Add DLNA support to DIDL writer. [Jorn Baayen] - Some small fixes. [Jorn Baayen]

Ever since Jorn and Matthew mentioned the idea of Vala bindings for GUPnP, I have been eager to learn Vala and so this weekend I finally got around to introduce myself to it. It's really cool. To express my admiration, I have already created a "Vala programming language fan club" group on facebook. :) A few minutes after I mentioned to Emmanuele on IRC about my intention of binding GUPnP for Vala, Ali Sabil had already done the basic work and we already have bindings that work for such basic example application at least: using GLib; using GUPnP; public class Browser: ControlPoint { public MainLoop main_loop { get; private set; } private void on_device_proxy_available(ControlPoint cp, DeviceProxy proxy) { stdout.printf("device %s found\n", proxy.get_friendly_name()); } private bool on_timeout () { this.main_loop.quit(); return false; } public Browser() {

I am finally moving in with my girlfriend, Ansku. It's been 1.5 years we have been together and now we are moving in. The place we are moving into is in Helsinki and very near to the Helsinki center. A nice apartment very near to the railway station of Huopalahti . The good thing about this train station is that a lot of trains go through it so if you miss a train, there is another one to catch after 5 minutes and the slowest train takes 15 minutes to reach the Helsinki center. We are supposed to move on 1st of june and some nice dedicated friends have already promised to help us carry stuff.

- Use libsoup 2.4. [Zeeshan Ali Khattak, Jorn Baayen] - Use g_timeout_add_seconds(). [Jorn Baayen] - Use GIO instead of xdgmime. [Jorn Baayen] - Support HTTP Range header in the HTTP server. [Jorn Baayen] - Use GMappedFile to mmap served files of read()ing them. [Jorn Baayen] - Improved documentation. [Ross Burton] - Spew HTTP messages to console when GUPNP_DEBUG is set. [Ross Burton] - Various other fixes. [Ross Burton, Zeeshan Ali Khattak, Jorn Baayen] download: http://gupnp.org/sources/gupnp/gupnp-0.10.tar.gz

- Use libsoup 2.4. [Zeeshan Ali Khattak, Jorn Baayen] - Use g_timeout_add_seconds(). [Jorn Baayen] download: http://gupnp.org/sources/gssdp/gssdp-0.6.tar.gz

While my MediaServer implementation is still in it's very infancy, I was already asked by more than two people if it will work with Xbox. I didn't have a clue since I don't have an Xbox so I asked Naba if i can visit him on some weekend to find some clues but he was kind enough to lend it for a week instead. For the past one week I had been having lots of fun with it. This nice page by Frank Scholz gave me headstart and I was able to get Xbox see my MediaServer rather sooner. The only other achievement I had in the whole week is that Xbox is able to see the videos but can't play it (most probably because I don't give it all the metadata it requests). The good thing is that now i have a very good idea of what Xbox expects from my MediaServer and I am very hopeful on getting my MediaServer working with Xbox at some point. Here is the log of all the SOAP messages I get from Xbox for anyone interested.

I just can't help but appreciate how this dude comes to my desk and solves my complicated problem within minutes. My python problems were all solved when he removed the link (/usr/bin/python) to absolute path (/usr/bin/python2.5) and recreated it, only this time using relative path. Either he is too smart or I am too stupid. :)

The joy of getting my python problems fixed on my debian testing were short lived. This time when i ran `apt-get dist-upgrade`, apt failed saying: ValueError: /usr/bin/python does not match the python default version. It must be reset to point to python2.4 dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 ... Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/python-uno_1%3a2.4.0-5_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/deskbar-applet_2.22.1-1_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/python-ctypes_1.0.2-4_i386.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) So removed the link to python2.5 and recreated it but this time pointing to pythong2.4. It should fix the problem, right? No! here is what apt says now: ValueError: /usr/bin/python does not match the python default version. It must be reset to point to python2.5 ...

So my GUPnP presentation for GUADEC has been accepted and scheduled for 14:30 on 11 Jul 2008. It will be essentially the same talk I delivered at FOSDEM but this time I'll try to make sure the demos really do work. :) If you missed it at FOSDEM, don't commit the same mistake at GUADEC. :)

Can any python guru out there explain whats going on here: $ /usr/bin/gnome-about Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/gnome-about", line 35, in ? import gtk ImportError: No module named gtk $ head -n 1 /usr/bin/gnome-about #!/usr/bin/python $ head -n 36 /usr/bin/gnome-about|tail -n +29 import pygtk pygtk.require ('2.0') import gobject from gobject.option import OptionParser, make_option import gtk $ /usr/bin/python Python 2.4.5 (#2, Mar 12 2008, 00:15:51) [GCC 4.2.3 (Debian 4.2.3-2)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import pygtk >>> import gtk >>> $ /usr/bin/python Python 2.4.5 (#2, Mar 12 2008, 00:15:51) [GCC 4.2.3 (Debian 4.2.3-2)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import pygtk >>> pygtk.require ('2.0') >>>

Next on my TODO is a desktop-wide UPnP MediaServer based on tracker . Basically, it will make all of your media availabe to other UPnP devices that is tagged as "shared via UPnP". I already have a working dummy implementation, based on code from Jorn's rhythmbox plugin. I call it "dummy" because ATM it only exports a hardcoded list of media files. Here is a screenshot of Windows Media Player playing music from it using on2share plugin:

I don't know what the hell is this all about but seems like a cool thing to do and in-fashion these days so here I go: $ history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head 100 cd 78 make 58 ls 36 vim 22 ldd 21 ssh 12 git-diff 11 src/av-cp/gupnp-av-cp 10 git-log 10 ./autogen.sh

My last blog entry reminds me of what my bank (Sampo bank) recently did. They were recently bought by a Danish bank and as part of the integration process, the e-banking system of Sampo was replaced by a stupid system that Danish bank had been using. The biggest problem with it is that it doesn't work on every machine, not even all i386 running windows. The result was that a large number of customers moved there money to other banks. Fortunately for me their system do work on this Linux laptop I am using to write this blog entry but my 64-bit desktop is another story. :( According to Riku Voipio, the problem is that they are using some 'native code' in their JAVA applet, now how pathetic is that. These kinds of things happen when a bunch of no good managers with no (or not enough) technical knowledge make decisions about technology behind closed doors. To add to my agony, their cross-border money transfer has some problems too and if I knew that I would never have used ban