iBackup Now Supports OpenOffice.org 2

The easy to use and free for personal use backup program called iBackup now has a plugin, written by me, to allow the easy backup of your OpenOffice.org 2 preferences. I have also included the preferences for the upcoming native version of OpenOffice.org. They are in a separate location compared to the preferences for the X11 to prevent the Aqua development versions of OpenOffice.org corrupting your X11 OpenOffice.org preferences.

OpenOffice.org now works again with X11 1.1.3

With the newly released X11 update from Apple, which fixes the font problems, OpenOffice.org no longer has an issue with starting. All OpenOffice.org users on the Mac should update to the latest version of X11, to fix any issues that they have with X11.

Support for Mac OS X 10.3 to be dropped after OpenOffice.org 2.1

As was discussed in tonight's Mac Port Meeting for OpenOffice.org, the Mac Porting Team will be dropping support for Mac OS X 10.3.x after the release of OpenOffice.org 2.1.
The reasons for the dropping of support of Mac OS X 10.3 include:

• Around the time OpenOffice.org 2.2 is due out, Mac OS X 10.5 will be released some time in "Spring 2007"[1]. Trying to support 3 Major versions of Mac OS X is difficult with our small team.
• The current Aqua development versions of OpenOffice.org require the use of Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
• The Mac Porting Team has limited resources and very few developers currently have access to a machine that has Mac OS X 10.3 on it. This means that developing and testing on Mac OS X 10.3 is difficult.
• [Only for the technical minded] The compiler (gcc3) that is used for producing builds for Mac OS X 10.3 isn't good enough any more. Examples for problems include: It claims valid code isn't valid; doesn't give useful error or warning messages; and some warning messages are not available. The gcc4 (the compiler in Mac OS X 10.4), is much better as it doesn't have the aforementioned problems.

If it is shown that there is a large requirement for continuing future support for Mac OS X 10.3, then this decision may be reversed.
The log of the meeting is available to read.

[1]: Source Mac OS X Leopard Sneak Peek Page

Workaround for X11 not launching posted on Mac Porting Web Site

With the deluge of people complaining about the X11 update and OpenOffice.org not starting, I posted a news article detailing a quick workaround to get OpenOffice.org running again. It should be noted that the next release of (and current development builds) are not affected by the problematic fonts as there has been a change in the logic which safe guards against the the divide by zero that was happening when the new fonts supplied by Apple were being loaded in. Hopefully Apple are going to re-release the X11 update soon.

Apple's X11 update

Apple released an X11 update on 1 November 2006. It fixes a but that I commented about, regarding the cmd+tab and the X11 windows not coming forward.

On the other hand there appears to be an issue with the fonts in that build. This seems to affect the current official release of OpenOffice.org on the Mac. I didn't notice it at first because I have been using builds made by my ooobuilbot MacPort1.

The current workaround is to remove the Vera fonts from /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF. For more information please see issue 71096.

First Priority 1 bug fixed

Opened and closed as being fixed in 3 day, now that is what I call quick. I must thank hr for his quick response and pjanik for helping to find the error. Mind you it can be quite nice sitting on the cutting edge of technology. Unfortunately you end up forgetting what is in the latest official release!

My first Priority 1 OOo Bug

The great thing about having a oobuildbot is that you end up living on the edge.

Today I came across a bug that means that HEAD of CVS does not build on the Mac platform. With the help of Pavel, we found the issue and filed the issue. You can track it's progress in issue 70965.

Scottish Graduate Fair

Yesterday I was away through in Glasgow for the Scottish Graduate Fair at the SECC. The event is aimed at final year student at university who are looking at what to be doing next. This generally come in anything from postgraduate education to graduate training, or volunteering to a plain ordinary job that utilises their skills. There were a variety of universities, companies and other training organisation there.

It was a case of finding the right booths with the people who are looking for what your current discipline is. The typical initial response was either, "sorry we don't have any jobs in our business that you would be looking for", or "great, your just the kind of person that we are looking for, here's some more information". You just have to keep hunting and you should find 4-12 different organisations with graduate schemes, or job opportunities that are suitable to you.

I'll give a few examples of things that I found out:

• According to recruiters, the careers service up here in Scotland is excellent, and you should make use of it!


• Bloomberg take on Computer Science graduates who are strong in Java and (C or C++), for their programming departments. You need to have the C background so that you know about pointers and the way that memory works. Only 5-10% of their network is based on Java, the rest is some variation of C for speed.


• You should tailor your CV for every company, just only give each company one CV. This is advice from several recruiters, and the careers service. You should target the CV/application for the specific skill set that the employer will be wanting.


• If you want to go into an IT related business, participating voluntarily in an Open Source project such as OpenOffice.org can give you a large number of transferable skills and knowledge of project structures. Some organisations are already working to spread the word of Open Source software, and thus if you already know about that sort of stuff, will mean that you will be more likely to get a job through having greater experience.


• Applying early could mean that you are more likely to get through.


• It is better to do a good application for a few opportunities than a very poor job at hundreds of vacancies.


• Be positive confident and give as much relevant information as possible.

Overall, I enjoyed the event, and would recommend any final year student to go along in the future.

Hopefully I will be able to remember to follow all the advice and get a job or graduate placement.

Buildbot now seems to be predicting ETA

To my surprise, the build master is now estimating the time till the current build completes, and it is updating throughout the build too. Unfortunately it gives the time as the time zone PDT, thus you have to do some awkward calculation it get it to your local time zone.

When building the CWSs, it is taking about 7 hours to do a complete build and upload of the install set. This is a bit of a speed up over the 8 or nine hours to do everything except the upload of the install set. Therefore it is a good idea to have ccache installed if you are recompiling the same large project repeatedly.

Mac buildbot setup

I now have a working buildbot that takes about 8 hours to do a full compile. Of course I forgot to check the option to upload the install set to the build master, so here I go and run the build again. Hopefully future compiles will take less time since I have installed ccache prior to this build. For those that are interested in file space, the whole buildbot and ooo sources take up just under 8GB.

The instruction given in the wiki a great as they pretty much work, as long as the build master has proper cross-platform code. Which was a bit of an issue for me sometimes, but was easily fixed over e-mail and IRC. (Thanks mikeleib and cloph). The main problem was finding a form of find that would work. In fact we ended up using find and piping the output to some other commands, which will hopefully work.

I have spoke to a few folk about the buildbot, and some of them were surprised that I was able to keep a steady internet connection for 9 hours on the trot, especially when part of it is wireless. The joys of cable and Apple's wifi products.