Author Topic: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?  (Read 8533 times)

RickCHodgin

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Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« on: May 29, 2017, 10:29:38 pm »
Are there any open source projects that are underway that could use some additional help?  I'd like to work with someone on an existing project to learn how to use these tools (Visual Age 4, OpenWatcom, and GCC for OS/2) in an OS/2 developer environment.

If anyone has a project that would benefit from someone with strong assembly/C/C++ skills, please let me know.

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin
« Last Edit: May 30, 2017, 12:13:13 am by Rick C. Hodgin »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #1 on: May 29, 2017, 11:29:02 pm »
Hi

I don't lead any development project and maybe someone needs your help, but if you let me suggest something maybe it will be interesting to know where do you want to start.

For example:
1) Drivers? : Drivers are (maybe) the most appreciated required software for the OS/2 community.  This kind of development will require you to check and learn more about the "IBM Driver Development Toolkit" and also know some kernel things.
http://www.edm2.com/index.php/List_of_Driver_Articles

2) Presentation Manager?: If you want to help on graphics applications, on OS/2 you need to work under the Presentation Manager API.
http://www.edm2.com/index.php/List_of_Presentation_Manager_Articles

3)Workplace Shell apps?: If you want to develop some Workplace Shell based application for the OS/2 desktop is also interesting, but maybe it will be better to first learn Presentation Manager and SOM before going into this area.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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Neil Waldhauer

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Re: OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2017, 12:06:21 am »
VOICE needs help with its PMMail/2 project. PMMail uses a GCC environment to build the product. PMMail is closed source. Contact me if you are interested.
Expert consulting for ArcaOS, OS/2 and eComStation
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RickCHodgin

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Re: OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2017, 12:12:49 am »
VOICE needs help with its PMMail/2 project. PMMail uses a GCC environment to build the product. PMMail is closed source. Contact me if you are interested.

Thank you.  I should've said I'm looking for open source projects.  I'll update the original post.

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin

RickCHodgin

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Re: OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #4 on: May 30, 2017, 05:09:51 pm »
VOICE needs help with its PMMail/2 project. PMMail uses a GCC environment to build the product. PMMail is closed source. Contact me if you are interested.

If nobody else replies this week, I'll be happy to help you with PMMail/2.

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin

Dave Yeo

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #5 on: May 30, 2017, 05:22:00 pm »
There's libmtp, http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/ IIRC. MTP is the protocol used by phones, tablets etc to exchange files. Depends on libusb of which we have a port{s} that seems to need more work.

RickCHodgin

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2017, 05:34:47 pm »
There's libmtp, http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/ IIRC. MTP is the protocol used by phones, tablets etc to exchange files. Depends on libusb of which we have a port{s} that seems to need more work.

Are others working on it right now?  I'm kind of hoping to work alongside someone for a spell, to give me pointers when I get to a place I don't now how to recover from in an OS/2 developer environment.

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin

Dave Yeo

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2017, 05:53:25 pm »
I've played with it a bit (and so has Paul) and can transfer one file (usually the ArcaOS ISO) successfully excepting filename problems, it really wants a UTF8 locale. Unluckily libusb probably needs fixing/updating/better porting which is beyond me

RickCHodgin

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2017, 05:58:35 pm »
I've played with it a bit (and so has Paul) and can transfer one file (usually the ArcaOS ISO) successfully excepting filename problems, it really wants a UTF8 locale. Unluckily libusb probably needs fixing/updating/better porting which is beyond me

Okay, if I start on it and need help will you be there with a safety net to catch me when I fall? :-)

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #9 on: May 31, 2017, 03:49:25 am »
Rick,

Great question...the lack of developers is always spoken about, but maybe this thread will help with bringing some understanding to what individual projects, or even what types of projects need help, ie device driver mention for example.

From a personal perspective I have a fairly large library of MJPEG video files that I badly need to convert to something like MP4. To do this I am using AVxCAT (awesome app) and Dave's drop of ffmepg (3.0.1). However, the ffmepg release is showing some problems with memory consumption. Subsequently Dave has exchanged a couple of emails with me on the subject of building a working compile environment. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks I will be able to provide some updates on this.

I would love to become a maintainer of the OS/2 port of FFMPEG...can I do it??? Not sure yet, but worth a try. It would be great for this thread to continue and maybe even build out to a general Wiki like documentation of what "standard" baseline development environments are out there, what is needed, etc, etc...

Dave Yeo

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #10 on: May 31, 2017, 05:15:16 pm »
I've played with it a bit (and so has Paul) and can transfer one file (usually the ArcaOS ISO) successfully excepting filename problems, it really wants a UTF8 locale. Unluckily libusb probably needs fixing/updating/better porting which is beyond me

Okay, if I start on it and need help will you be there with a safety net to catch me when I fall? :-)

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin

I'd give whatever help I can, but I'm far from an expert

Dave Yeo

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #11 on: June 03, 2017, 05:51:09 am »
Rick,

Great question...the lack of developers is always spoken about, but maybe this thread will help with bringing some understanding to what individual projects, or even what types of projects need help, ie device driver mention for example.

From a personal perspective I have a fairly large library of MJPEG video files that I badly need to convert to something like MP4. To do this I am using AVxCAT (awesome app) and Dave's drop of ffmepg (3.0.1). However, the ffmepg release is showing some problems with memory consumption. Subsequently Dave has exchanged a couple of emails with me on the subject of building a working compile environment. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks I will be able to provide some updates on this.

I would love to become a maintainer of the OS/2 port of FFMPEG...can I do it??? Not sure yet, but worth a try. It would be great for this thread to continue and maybe even build out to a general Wiki like documentation of what "standard" baseline development environments are out there, what is needed, etc, etc...

If you look at the FFmpeg maintainers file, you'll see
Quote
OS/2                                    KO Myung-Hun
I've been slow to update http://www.edm2.com/index.php/FFmpeg but you're welcome to edit the page.
Current status of my FFmpeg builds are on this page, http://fate.ffmpeg.org/, scroll down to find OS/2. Note that there are currently 76 failing tests out of 3421. The problem is that most of these failures are failures in the tool chain. I believe some are simply bashisms that have snuck in and screw up when run under our various sh ports, be nice to have a good bash port. Others that I've watched show up are deficiencies in our GCC, eg at one time we were passing all tests with an early release of GCC 4.4.6, libc065 and Warp v4. Later GCC's broke AAC IRCC, updating to libc066 broke mp2 encoding of all things while fixing the FPU control word bug on Warp v4.52. These errors are really non-trivial to fix, eg why did updating to libc066 break MP2? Wasn't a change in the headers and I never did get around to bisecting the code to find the commit that broke it.
Maintaining FFmpeg is harder then you'd think as ideally you need to fix the compiler, the shell and libc.
I'll try to upload a build of FFmpeg 3.3.1 in the next couple of days.

xynixme

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Re: Open source OS/2 projects that need help?
« Reply #12 on: June 03, 2017, 06:01:33 pm »
Beginners can always try to compile updated software which was ported earlier, as a starting point. A random example is OptiPNG 0.7.6. It looks like we've got 2005's version 0.7.5. New versions of existing ports, or perhaps an update of old versions compiled with an old version of GCC. Next you can start looking for useful software which you can compile, typically text-mode apps without too many required changes. Sometimes you may have to change a few things. Sometimes even compiling it with another compiler isn't that hard.

Without significant programming skills you can sometimes OS/2'ify or improve existing packages, for example by adding an existing icon to a package or by following the expert's instructions to compile, test and upload the large SM/TB files. Writing INSTALL.CMDs or WPI files may be helpful.

I don't need OptiPNG 0.7.6 myself, so it's an honest example. Other old apps may be easier to update.