Linux-Wildo! / News: Recent posts

Linux-Wildo!, a distributed client-server voice chat utility, is adding support for OpenAL. In addition to increasing the portability, this also makes it easier to add some interesting features like positional audio.

We finally finished preliminary checking of the transitional code part one.
The rest of the checking will happen in the svn, where the code has been merged to the head.

The patch was about 75355 lines long, that means many parts of the code have been taked out and in and reorganized.

Now the work has restarted to readd codec negotiation so that we can test the code at it's full potential with real audio transmission.... read more

As some of you allready know, the current delay for the code was related to the fact we were waiting for one of our developer to finish his work on the code. This event was scheduled quite past in time, but as said above there was a delay related to personal problems (and hardware ones come immediatly after.. Murphy Law is true in the end).
Currently, after solving those problems, we have set up for the merge in teh svn of the new code that restructures _completely_ the error management and some other part of the code, with the intent of makeing it easyer to mantain and extend.... read more

We have 2 updates to report :

* A new developer on the team (me)

* Changes that make linux-wildo compile with cygwin have been committed to the svn.

(Note that cygwin should only be considered to be a temporary solution for win32 support.)

The good news is that this means that both windows and linux will be supported when linux-wildo goes alpha.

The bad news is... uhm... dunno really...

Also please note that this project is not inactive, even though it may appear to be so.

As many of you have noticed, there was no alpha release as scheduled for 01-11-05, the cause of this relies in the fact that I did not wanted to provide an alpha (namely 0.2.0) that would have not contained many features that should have gone in the code shortly.
What happened is that the changes were SO big that shortly become weeks and then months.
But do not worry, soon they will be in, the changes are basically two:
1) All codec and audio supports are moving from abstract compile time plugins to real run-time plugins that can be loaded on program startup/server connection.
This gives us nearly for free the ability to run any filter in between audio acquisition and codify/decodify, so there will be a new filter API to write filters for lw.
2) I am currently writing a skinnable GUI, the screenshot will be available soon on the site. The skin format file is xml, quite easy, nearly everything of the GUI is customizable. For those reading mind that a GFX artist for drawing some images/buttons/similar would be nice to find.... read more

Today is the long awaited day to go alpha.

Alpha version means there is something working in the software that is similar or rapresentative of what the software will be.

For sure we still miss many features and the current state is just a vague rapresentant of what linux-wildo will become, but it is anyway something.

Currently lw works in loopback mode, it means you can start data and control server, then start a client and listen your voice come back, there is not much difference from loopback to multi-user mode, basically lw can already do that, but that was not what we worked on, so there are some minor conflicts when testing it with more than one user, nonetheless it "works" anyway.... read more

I provided to remove inactive members.
There was announcment of that on the ML about two weeks ago and I asked for last confirmation yesterday. Since I got no reply I removed the "ghosts"

Current project status is quite good, I think we can really respect the deadline, or maybe pass it by a few days only to fix some bugs that can jump out. Anyway now client correctly log in the data server and ticket authentication is working.... read more

Do not think this project is dead, it is only that I am the only developer again so I am coding it a bit slowly. Recently control server has been redesigned all along with server classes and is near ready to leave the test dir to become official control server.
After this redesign dataserver will start to be written allowing the first data to be sent back to a client.

I plan a working control server for release 0.1.7
And some voice loopback functions for 0.1.8... read more

I'm quite upset by the continuous degradation of sf service quality... public cvs days back... browse cvs weeks back... and developers failing to commit and check out code for many hours...
Moreover, now that I am codding/writing like hell to bring linux wildo onhaving sf reporting my project to 0% activity makes me really sick.

Nice news is that I have a test client ready and I am waiting for the server to be able to dialogate with this client correctly. WIll see of server developer come out of his slumber or some actions will be taken and I will be the new server developer too.... read more

Maybe some of you noticed that lw was a bit freezed...
It's was 2 months nothing much changed, and you aroudn got no feedback at all if somethign changed because it was me normaly providing it.
Problem is that I'm busy with my university exams... and the situation is not goign to change anythime soon...
So what that mean? EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU THINK!
NO the project is not going to freeze, nor it will and never it will be in the far future.
It mean that I will again split blood to this project, speding my free time on it.
You want proof? Eh! Cvs commit talks alone :)
Ok let's try to bring this thing to alpha, at least users have something to play with :)
Regards,
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

Actualy activity % from sf is badly broken, it report that we have 0% activity often. This is untrue. We do a commit on minimum of 1/week and laterly like 2/day (I reviewed most of the code).
Moreover the most terrible thing is that PUBLIC CVS AT TIME OF THIS NEWS IS UPDATED OF 10 DAYS!!!!
This mean that in a time of rewriting, it's crap...
It miss the test programs the new architecture of linux-wildo.cpp the nearly full autotools support.
I have no words for this disservice, sorry...
If someone is interested in the updated code leave me a mail or pass by irc.freenode.net #linux-wildo I will gladly roll a tarball for you.
Regards
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

I have commited the new basic class I was writing in the past months, actualy they are only a few lines of code, but it is supposed to replace the "old" implementation, with this new one.
For now this piece of code is just there for ideas, it's not working, it is there as placeholder so we know where to work.
Another nice news (that is the reason of why I commited immediatly the code) is that we have a new very promising developer. Hope he can bring this network part of code on.
See you all :)

For everyone that ask if the project is still active the answer is: "yes!"
The reason why there are no commits is that currently I'm the only active developer and I'm doing major changes to the program. A series of frequent commits now will only make a big attic dir full of old files or anyway maybe waste ppl time, that will look at a code that can be changed anytime soon.
I know, cvs activity make the project famous here at sf, but I don't like those dirty tricks so I will stay so until i have a stable implementation.
See you all on the project irc channel or on the mailing list.... read more

I'm too happy to annunce that we got another new developer!!
..and not a common one, this is a guru level devloper!!
He currently working at audio portability and will later help on all the portability filed. He is specialized in network too!
Look at his other projects, some of the things he done are awsome!
See you all, hope to post this messages more often :D

We have a new nice developer :))
His nickname is vsergeev.

Linux-Wildo have a new mantainer, me.
I took out the project to continue it development, the old code has been moved to a dir named olsolete, just in case you need it. Hope the development goes on decently fast to have an usable base clinet and server soon