Distractions

I've been distracted away form porthole code lately. Well not completely, I do have an ulterior motive. I am working on gentoolkit code again. Namely a modular rewrite of eclean.

eclean was an all in one python script that contained a number of unwieldy methods and functions which made it difficult to modify and nearly impossible to create test functions for. One of the primary reasons I started on it was to split the back-end functioning code from the output printing code similar to most of the newly redone equery modules. That way the code can be used by other applications. So, I began by separating the script into a python package containing 5 files and a nearly empty script that just loads and calls the main() .

Those 5 files being:

1. cli.py to handle all command line interface argument parsing and start the requested action.
2. search.py with all the search related methods and functions which determine the files to be cleaned.
3. exclude.py containing the exclusion file parsing and handling code.
4. output.py for the screen output and user interaction.
5. clean.py to handle the actual cleaning process.

The end result should be one that has a number of automatic tests run on it to check that any code modifications are performing correctly as well as code that will be easier to maintain.

It will also then be possible for the code to be used in other apps such as a planned plug-in module for porthole. :)

Translators Needed

I have porthole pretty much ready for another release. I have the translation files updated with any string changes and ready for a final edit.

1. Polish language is fully updated (just need to commit it). Thank you, Arkadiusz Kowalski.
2. German is nearly up to date, a few minor strings to check, Thank you, Timo Gurr.
3. French, is in need of checking and/or fixing.
4. Italian, is in need of updates.
5. Russian, is in need of updates.
6. Vietnamese, is in need of updates.

If you would like to see porthole translated into your language please leave a comment or email me. It is quite simple to do, just takes some time and knowledge of both English and the target language. There are tools like poedit to help.

And so Christmas came and the New Year begins

It's been the usual busy time of the year, with all the extra running around, preparing things. Getting the gifts for the people close to you. Trying to keep my wife from going overboard with the giving (again). It has been a good Christmas overall, lots of new toys, kids got some too (he he).

I had been hoping to get a release out for Christmas, but got a little too busy and lost concentration on what I was doing, so had a little break. The coding I was doing was centered more on su'ing porthole's processes that require root access while the majority of the code still runs as the user. I made a lot of progress, but came across a blocker in that gtk refused to do some things because of the detected su. It would run as all user or all root but not a mix. So I reverted most of the changes, (some were better even without su'ing). I believe I've come up with a better way without having to use policykit and the only python interface to it being through d-bus. Also due to the migration in python towards py-3k means using features of python-2.6 and greater. I am not about to do that for this release, but probably for the next major release of -0.7.0.

Porthole-0.7.0 I am hoping to have made all the changes needed to have multiple options for the backend package manager code it uses for data gathering as well as installing/syncing, etc..

So, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and are starting the new year out right and happily so far.