For writing the inotify version of my XPCOM file system observer service, my linux flavor of choice has been Ubuntu. So I had bootcamp set me up a good slice of my mac books HD and installed 7.10. It was working fairly well, especially after following this guide. However, there is an issue with the kernel version that shipped with 7.10 that makes resuming from a suspend work like 20% of the time. This hold up got pretty annoying considering I like to just put my mac book to sleep and carry it to a local cafe, so I started to look into options. It looked like my options were to downgrade the OS or the kernel, or try the new ubuntu 8.04 beta.

Well I like fancy new things, so I decided to switch and use the beta. So after some quick hiccups, the system is running fairly smooth (and suspend works). I'm really starting to like Ubuntu, and if I could fix up a few things, I'd probably use it on a day-to-day basis. For instance, the alleged new auto-screen detection thing doesn't work on my third gen macbook. I like to hook up to my big screen at home so I don't have to hunch over. If anyone has had any success with getting this feature to work, please contact me (nick at nkreeger dot com).

Well, this weekend was pretty busy thanks to an awesome trip out to Tahoe to ride the wall at Kirkwood! The conditions were pretty sweet even for April!

However, I did manage to find a few cycles this weekend to take out the security prompts out of Correo - and start the new auto-login prompts! I'll try and put some more time in this weekend (outlook good so far) so that I can get a test-build out to the community. While I'm at it - I'm thinking of ways to bundle up a pre-build version of the 1.8 branch. I think this will help get the source in other devs hands much much easier. I need to set up some scripts to build Correo against XULRunner anways, so now is as good as a time as ever to start a custom build setup!!!

I've been fairly busy at the new day job, but I've been compiling a list of things that I would love to work on. Hopefully I'll have a free weekend or some slower evenings to punch these out:

Correo:

• Get rid of the annoying security prompts. These got carried over from Camino and suck now that I have to work with a mail server that uses SSL.
• Automatic log-in of folders at startup. I have three accounts that I have to manually go through and "get-mail" for when I launch the app.
• Mailbox searching - the only real reason I ever pop back to Thunderbird for a few minutes

Camino:

• Wouldn't it be cool to have a browser sync like Google's Sync extension for Firefox? I know it would help me out since I have a bad ass Mac Pro at work that I can't take home everynight....
• Pickup and finish off the embedding cleanup work that I started.

Songbird:

• Prototype and attempt to build a native media-list CD-burner using the existing Cocoa framework provides ripping and burning functionality.

Mailnews:

• Get the module to compile under XULRunner. This way I can move Correo to embed on XULRunner and take advantage of the great stuff that is on the 1.9 branch.

Other:

• Create a server-side proxy to bluetooth robot controller for the Lego NXT kit. This would be freaking cool. We'd totally use it to drive it around the office!
  

My side project that I've been working on lately has been a XPCOM native file-system observer service. So far I have the Mac (kqueue) and the Linux (inotify) almost done. We shall see how windows goes.

Side Sports Notes:

• It's nice to see the Royals dealing! How does that feel Detroit? If the starting pitching can stay consistent through out the year, I expect the Royals to make a run at the American Central (not joking).
• I'm stoked for the final 4 this weekend, the first time ever that the number one seeds all made it. The matchup I'm looking forward to the most - Kansas vs. North Carolina!
  

Last week I started working on prototyping a plan to pull the Camino rug out from under Correo and build a fresh framework based on XULRunner. As I mentioned before - this will make it easier for others to get the source and build it - plus may help set the path for Camino to eventually move to XULRunner in the future.

Setting up a project in Xcode took some time, but once I had all the required dependencies (you have to copy most of the dylibs into the Application.app/Contents/MacOS/ folder - or point to the /Frameworks/XULRunner.framework...) and the necessary headers added to the search path things came together pretty fast.

Download the Example Here

In this example, it's a no-thrills-barebones demo. There is no embedded view, just a class that starts up XULRunner and XPCOM and another class that demonstrates that XPCOM is running. The test class (in XRTestClass.mm) simply inherits from the nsIObserverService class and gets registered for a dummy event and is "notified" by the containing Obj-C class (XRTestClass). See the code for details.

When I get more settled in here in SF - I will probably start cutting up an embedded view and start moving the Correo code to this type of platform. However - I noticed that trying to build the mailnews component (this was probably on branch - can't remember if I tried trunk) with XULRunner didn't work because of some older auto-complete interface that isn't used by XULRunner. Anyways - that's a problem for a later time ;-)

As of late last week - I am really excited to announce that I have accepted an engineering position at Songbird!

Part of the transition involves a move west to San Francisco, which has consumed much of my time over the past week or so. I'm excited to find a position that allows me to work on a great project and team, not to mention the fact that it's a Mozilla based app!

What does this mean for Correo? Nothing different, it will still be a free time project like it always has. Since Songbird is a XULRunner based app, I'm thinking that I will get some more exposure to that stand alone setup and build process so that I can attempt to clone something similar for Correo (in the future sometime of course!).

In the meantime - my IRC lurk time will be off and on and limited during the move.

I've been thinking alot about a migration strategy for Correo to the 1.9 branch lately. Currently - the source code is only compatible to the 1.8 branch -> and for good reasons. The 1.8 branch is what the latest Thunderbird releases are cut off of, and the 1.9 mailnews component is still pretty rough (as to be expected).

However, after looking at the way Songbird does XULRunner bundling and building, I think that is the path that I will take when I start to cut Correo over to the 1.9 branch. The current Correo build system is basically a mix of the current Camino setup and my home-brew patch that adds a "macmail" build option to the Mozilla setup. Songbird stashes some of their dependencies library and components in the source tree, including XULRunner. This obviously has some disadvantages, but has some very appealing pluses. First off, the build only needs to focus on building just the Correo source code, and not the entire Mozilla tree. This will also make it much easier for other dev's to get the source and build it themselves (rather than the build-patch that is used right now). Any additional Mozilla components can be "cherry-picked" and added to the dependencies folder. Thanks to the great improvement in Apple cross-architecture build systems, I can distribute a PPC and Intel binaries in both 32 and 64 bit flavors.

Part of the Camino roadmap (as I understand it) is to eventually move to XULRunner, and I don't see why Correo can't be a good test case for the move.

As I make progress on this front - I'll keep updates posted here.

Thanks to Gualtiero Catrame, Correo now has a Italian localization distribution available!

You can download the Italian version here.

Many thanks to Gualtiero!!!