This is the week 04 status report for AudioMan and its subprojects.

What was done last week

The build machine Ant scripts are ready to go. They will be modified as time goes on, so it's certainly not done but it's ready for the first iteration. I'm very happy with the results after being inspired by Andrew's build ideas, thanks buddy!

The build machine is building and packaging two RCP applications: AudioMan2 and the Durham Quick Editor; for four platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux GTK and Linux motif. All of the packages are ZIP files around 5 MB each. I love being able to build native-looking applications for four(+) platforms at once with the same code! This should be awesome.

The Windows packages work, the Mac OS X ones do but with a small problem (see below). Roy is going to test my Linux builds when he gets back from Cuba. Thanks!

I'll probably wait until after the first iteration to write up how AudioMan's Ant build scripts work to make sure that they actually do work well in development and on the build machine after some inevitable tweaking. This is the fourth rewrite of the build scripts for AudioMan so I have a good amount of confidence in my Ant skillz.

So what about the monster that is PDE BUILD? I took a look at the docs and decided it wasn't worth learning how to integrate some tools (like EMMA) and partial builds (just compile code, just run tests, etc) into it. It seems like PDEBUILD would be great for a build machine, just not my build machine.

This week I also talked to my excellent web host Epicworks about hosting the AudioMan source code repository and build machine on their servers instead of a Fedora Core 3 box in my apartment under my desk. A hosted box has several advantanges over the home machine:

• Insane reliability and uptime
• Faster build times
• Better public access
• Backups!

After getting the build machine ready I dug into the AudioMan code. I took the standard RCP template application and modified the perspective, view and action names to match AudioMan. We're all ready to go now, it's off to the races.

What got bumped?

• Email results of the build to the releng mailing list -- figure out why Ant's <mail> task isn't working. I'll wait for the new build machine to be set up first.
• Publish my sequence diagrams for Durham so that people can review them. Very soon!

Unsolved problems

• The Mac OS X launcher from the Eclipse 3.0.1 RCP binary distributions that I use for the packages isn't working properly. I think it may have something to do with the way that Ant copies the launcher .app directory but I'm not sure. If I copy the launcher manually, it works! Weird.

New things to do

1. Be able to add tracks to the track list (no collection persistence).
2. Connect the metadata retrieval calls from Audible to Durham.
3. Get Durham reading ID3 and File metadata.
4. Copy (and relicense) the collection browsing models and Viewers from AudioMan1 and set up the Collection Browsing Perspective to browse artists and albums.

That's quite a bit to do -- and will keep me busy over the next two weeks or so. The long weekend this week will definitely help. If you are interested in writing some code in the next two weeks just let me know and we'll figure out a way to collaborate.