Pysmssend-1.40 is out!

February 17, 2009 · Posted in Projects · Comment

Due to limited free time it took me a while to release a new version of pysmsend . This is a critical bugfix version since it solves many connectivity issues . Furthermore, due to betamax site changes, the previous version is not so cooperative with them anymore. So I would strongly suggest to update to 1.40 version. Gentoo users should be able to install this package directly from portage tree ( app-misc/pysmssend ).

Pysmssend homepage

Tags: Projects, pysmssend

Qt-4.5.0_rc1 hit the tree. Should you upgrade?

February 13, 2009 · Posted in Gentoo · 28 Comments

..or not? Let me do a quick summary first. Qt-4.5.0_rc1 has been on qting-edge[1] overlay for up to two weeks now. We fixed as many bugs and building problems as possible. This version of Qt seems to be way too better than _beta1. From my part I would say yes upgrade. In case you are a kde4 user you might encounter several bugs. I ll come to this a bit later. So I d like to give you some directions on serveral problems that hit users the first hours of qt-4.5.0_rc1 release.

How to ugrade? I have tones of blockages!

In case portage complains about a hell of blockages the solution is quite simple. Obviously you were using the qt metapackage ( x11-libs/qt:4 ). If this is the case, you need to un emerge it:

emerge -C x11-libs/qt:4

Then you need to edit /var/lib/portage/world. Find x11-libs/qt entry and modify it like this:

x11-libs/qt:3

Now you are done. Run emerge -uDNav world and everything should be fine. If you still have questions about this , please drop by Gentoo forums[2]. We have a dedicated thread for this situation[3].

Ok I upgraded. Now kde4 looks ugly/crashing/etc

A known issue is a kdm crash. You wont have it if you are using the latest kdm in the tree. If you dont, please upgrade.

As the ewarn message suggest, you should re-build PyQt4, qscintilla, kdelibs. Our Gentoo KDE Devs suggest to rebuild libplasma and plasma-workspace. The fact that most of our users dont have such crashes make me think that you should rebuild everything that fails. But thats quite abstract.
If you still have issues after rebuilding please follow the below steps to fill a bug:

1) Open a bug on kde bugzilla[4]
2) Open a bug on our bugzilla[5]and assign it to kde_AT_gentoo.org
3) Paste the link from upstream bug on the bug you opened on Gentoo bugzilla
4) We ll take it from there. Just be around in case we need you to provide more info to us

This might sound too much but it will really help us track all the problems and poke upstream about that. So it is just a 5′ work that might help hundreds of other users

You can always not open a bug on our bugzilla and monitor it yourself but I would prefer to know all the problems and the possible patches that fix them in order to apply them on portage.

Conclusion:

People keep complaining that we should remove Qt-4.5 or mask it from tree. I will provide you two links[6][7] why I think we should have it or what problems you might encounter . After all is ~arch so it is normal to expect some mulfunctions for those who use KDE4. But please remember that not everybody is using KDE4. There are other people with xfce,fluxbox and other DE that want a shiny new Qt for their Qt4 applications. Should we dissapoint them in favor of KDE4? I dont think so

Links:

[1] http://github.com/gentoo-qt/qting-edge/tree/master

[2] http://forums.gentoo.org

[3] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-736457.html

[4] http://bugs.kde.org

[5] http://bugs.gentoo.org

[6] http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/02/10/why-kde-42-should-use-qt-45/

[7] http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/12/04/how-kde-4-is-blocking-qt-45/

Tags: Gentoo, qt

Join the Gentoo Development team – Part ΙΙ

February 7, 2009 · Posted in Gentoo · 10 Comments

…or jumping the gap. A couple of days ago I joined the Gentoo Development Team :). I will be on KDE/Qt Herds. However, there are many things to be done on Qt eclasses ( qt4.eclass and qt4-build.eclass ) so I will focus on them for now. The responsibilities suddenly grow but I guess thats normal. After all, that was my decision. Not much else to say. I guess I should start messing with portage tree now :) .

Being a gentoo user for 3 years and now serving it , is a weird feeling. I would encourage people to join development team. You can deal with anything you like. KDE, Gnome, alsa, kernel. There are so many projects to participate :).

On the other hand , if you dont have much time you can join Arch teams and test packages for your arch and mark them stable or something. This is quite important if you want more and more packages to be on the tree :)

For those who really dont have time at all, filling a bug is more than appreciated. If you fill a bug , we will be able to fix it. Dont keep bugs for yourself, and dont accept bugs as normal behavior. It will cost you 5′ to fill a bug, but those 5′ will be beneficial for the rest of Gentoo users.

So, about Qt, two days ago Qt-4.5.0_rc1 was released. As a result we bumped Qt-4.50_beta1 to Qt-4.5.0_rc1. qt-copy has been also moved towards 4.5.0_rc1 hence we dropped 4.4.9999 packages and bring the shiny new 4.5.9999. Futhermore there first Qt-creator release candidate version is on our overlay too.

Feel free to try them and report any issues you find either to me or #gentoo-kde on freenode servers.

There is also a topic on Gentoo forums about our overlay.

Finally , I would like to thank Alex (wired) for testing and giving feedback for Qt-live packages.

Hope to see you around :)

Tags: core, development, Gentoo, qt

Qt on embedded Linux

February 2, 2009 · Posted in Gentoo · 3 Comments

Embedded Linux has become a great part of my life lately. I have to develop some applications using RTAI and RTNET . Since I am a Qt junkie I decided to bring the power of Qt on my embedded systems :) ( Note that all of them run Gentoo since I need to change the kernel configuration all the time , and because I love Gentoo anyway :P ). So , I brought qt-embedded-4.4.3 package on qting-edge overlay. I am aware that there is qt-embedded-3.3.8 on portage but who uses Qt3 anyway? :P

Of course it’s hard to cover every embedded linux configuration, so I would advise you ( as the ewarn message states ) to modify the configure options inside the ebuild to fit your system configuration.

Enjoy :)

Tags: embedded-linux, qt-embedded, qting-edge