tg

Releasing etvdb

2014-05-06T23:26:43+02:00

After having used it for quite a while, I feel it is time to announce the release of etvdb.

etvdb libary

etvdb is a high-level C library frontend to The TVDB. It is based on Eina and Ecore of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries and easy to use in EFL apps, but can just as easily be used in other programs. It does not depend on a mainloop. Additionally it uses libcurl, so the dependencies are quite small.

The current release is version 0.3.0 and you can get it from my Github Repo. The API documentation is available on my site.

Right now it only has a synchronous API, but I do plan to add a asynchronous one at some point in the future. This means, that you'll have to run it in a thread for interactive applications for now.

etvdb command line tool

In addition to the library, there is etvdb_cli, which is basically a command line frontend to The TVDB based on etvdb. It has currently 3 basic usage modes:

CSV-like output

In this mode you can get a CSV-like output that you can write to a file. This is the default mode.
query mode

In query mode you can query single properties from TV show episodes. For example:

etvdb -n Futurama -s 1 -e 1 -q ename Space Pilot 3000
rename mode

In this mode you can pass files to etvdb and they will be renamed. It supports templates so you can rename it however you'd like. It can run without user input (in scripts e.g.) or interactive.

Try it out, it is easy to use. Just run etvdb --help to see all the options. It currently only depends on libetvdb itself. You can get the current 0.1.0 release from my Github Repo.

Gentoo users can get ebuilds from my Gentoo Overlay.

Check it out and let me know what you think, patches and comments welcome!

Terminology, Enlightenments fancy new terminal emulator

2013-01-29T02:30:00+01:00

Some of you might still know or even use Eterm, a neat terminal emulator that came back when e16 was still new. A long time there has been nothing new in this area, but Raster apparently found the muse to write another one, based on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries.

Anyway, I don't need to tell you why you should use it, let me just show you :)

The first one shows a some weeks old version with the basic cool features: Your browser does not support the video tag.

The second video shows the new tcat (which within some hours has been renamed to tycat due to a naming conflict) tool to make more practical use of the features: Your browser does not support the video tag.

More cool things will certainly come (some I didn't showcase are already there).

Now for the bad news, and the actual reason I wrote this post (the videos I had lying around anyway): Only terminology 0.2 has been release so far and a lot of features are broken in this one and have been fixed since. The new versions from SVN only run on EFL 1.8 though, which will not be released for some months.

So for you to build it anyway, here's a Quick'n'Dirty patch. The tiling/split-screen feature will still be broken (it needs Elementary 1.8), however all other cool features which don't work in 0.2 work now and also on 1.7 with the patch:

http://gstaedtner.net/patches/terminology_work_on_17.patch

Moving to systemd

2011-11-10T00:30:00+01:00

I'm back from Sweden, and while I was away, ELCE was held. The nice people from Free Electrons luckily put up all the conference videos in webm format, so whoever missed it can catch up. One of the first videos I watched was Integrating systemd: Booting Userspace in Less Than 1 Second, held by Koen Kooi, who I remembered from the time I used Openembedded on Openmoko devices.

Some know that I like to show off my neat little Thinkpad x200s for its boot time; so far under 5 seconds (from bootloader to X) using Gentoo, OpenRC, and Enlightenment. I wanted to try systemd for a while but never really was in the mood to do the actual work. The video inspired me to actually give it a try now.

Installing systemd is incredibly straight-forward, just read the gentoo-wiki articles and make sure you have your "init scripts" (or .service files in systemd jargon) ready. Enough talk, just let me finish with this: I was utterly impressed how well systemd works and I'm looking forward to it replacing all other init systems currently out there (including OpenRC which I actually liked). But look for yourself:

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Some stats:

Linux version 3.1  
systemd version 37  
udev 175

Linux -> systemd: ~1s  
systemd -> e17: ~1s  
e17 -> ready: ~1.5s

If you have questions or need config files, just ping me via mail/jabber/irc.