Captain's Log Supplemental

booted my test machine

set up for video taping

svn’d a copy of npm source

edited source to prepare for test

began test.

Not 100% what I wanted but this is the first live test of install and deinstall operations.

Video Sample

I tested doing a portinstall of xgalaga, confirmed it ran, and then removed it. The pkg_delete operations output left a little bit to be desired! But hey, it did work…

I want to prep a script and get the code ready for a small battery of live tests under real world conditions. Once the code is suitably able to pass an acceptible amount of the tests… Alpha release.

Before I video the next one through I want to have a properly written out and planned script to follow for the video. I also really would like to try and get my Mic working (not tested yet) so I could use voice over and some background music wouldn’t hurt if it didn’t add more then a few megabytes to the out file.

Currently tests will take the first priority and continuing feature implementation will take secondary until the Alpha release is ready op.

I want to triple check but I think I’ll be able to host the video on the website for download and I can probably upload it to YouTube. Using rapidshare for this one was just to make it available (temporarily). The final one made for the alpha release will be much better.

My main concern though is getting NPM ready hehe.

Another night spent working on NPM…

Some of the stuff done to night

begin of internal docs

prepping files for translation (wrapping more strings, now using QKeySequence e.t.c.)

trying to get set up for translations (including the beginning of the German one).

rewriting the display dialog to remove usage of Qt Designer / pyuic generated code.

To be honest, I think I could run a live fire test tomorrow with a 2 minutes worth of changes.

Oh baby has tonight been a full head of steam. I’ve been slugging through the options systems and the subroutines for actually doing the installations. A mock up of the style #2 GUI which is one of the ones I posted back in december when I did three different concept drawings. She is almost ready for a live test, I think as soon as I correct the item selection code to work properly (not tied to mouse position) it will finally be time for that Alpha Release, two weeks later then originally planned but hey it’s still is more feature complete on the inside then previously planned for it xD

Here is a screen shot of Neo running during a test run of the mock up from the trunk.

I solved most of the layout issues and I think it will probably be playing with the spacers and splitters to finish the rest of getting it to ‘look nice’. The main window is hand written but the display dialog is an extended sub-class of a prototype made in QT Designer.

What I am thinking is to have 3 drop-in modules each implementing the NPM_MainWindow class. Where each module implements one of the user interface styles and the programs init code loads the appropriate module. The advantage being the freedom to do any thing desired with the main window, while preserving the rest of things that have been done. Technically user created UI could be allowed to be loaded. I really want to play with the dock window stuff in Qt4… lol.

I need to start setting up the documentation (internal first, then the manual), ironing out the key commands, and setting up for the german translation in addition to my remaining to do’s but all of that is non-critical as far as getting an experimental release out there. I think goal for Beta time would be getting the portsnap/csup/cvsup stuff sorted out and a settings + about + help dialog in the run. A better website design would be nice too… hahaha

I know what I can’t figure out today, I can figure out in the days to come.

Hooah !

Spent most of the night working on the port searching code and options module. I think the options module is now almost like what I originally envisioned of it. Aside from being integrated into the not yet written settings dialog and no read/write accessor methods wrapping around the configuration dictionary keys.

So far across the various prototypes, tests, and mock ups I’ve written over 3,000 lines of code (wc -l *.py for each directory gives sums adding to >3700L). The way I work I guess is a bit heavy on files but it tests the hell out of things 🙂

So far the current working system is almost 700 lines of Python code. Aside from not being very feature complete yet (for my tastes) I think it is coming along quite nicely and maybe should be marked higher then the pre-alpha status I set on sourceforge… But I guess I have higher expectations of my own work then I do others lol. The > 700 lines of code in the SVN now represents the work done in R&D by the previous coding. One thing I like about SVN and CVS as opposed to manually backing things up with cp/tar is there is no fear about ‘accidentally’ deleting files permanently before they serve their use hehe.

I’m hoping to soon have enough files for a quick snapshot that can handle the basic pkg_* commands and searching the local ports tree. I have tried to keep both the quality of the code and the programs design as high as possible at every phase but I don’t really consider myself a good programmer. Just someone that knows what he wants and can wrap his head around it piece by piece until it all falls into place.

Hmm, why do I feel more like a Japanese Beaver then a Spider right now? Haha/

A quick list of standing to do’s so I can be sure I don’t miss things, I really should look at using the tracker service on Source Forge for this hehe. But I’d rather spend my time writing the solutions 😉

In no particular order:

• extend QLineEdit — done a different way (for now)
• do concept drawings of settings dialog
• integrate logger and options module
• remove dependency on psearch — it really is that simple a program!
• fill in stubs for various port actions; install/upgrade/delete and prepair for various capabilities that need further development *wink* — mostly done and evolving
• ability to select items by means not tied to the mouse pointer location
• consider a better name then port_viewer.py — renamed pkgviwer.py
• begin work on the ground work to begin the German translation
• performance tests of our background process handling
• mock up of NPM_MainWindow in style number 2 — done, minor changes to go (mostly educational advancements
• gui for cvsup/csup/portsnap operations
• replace search box and refresh button with tool bar in mock up layout
• tabbed about dialog, kde-style

S’all I can think of right now. I know I really need to look deeper into Qt’s layout handling and widget geometry related facilities not to mention the coordinate system.