Happy Monday's
Just a quick post today as I am off to the airport for my trip to Estonia.
My phone bill arrived just arrived. The last quarter my bill had £86 worth of phone calls. This time around it was £12.09 thanks to Skype.
That means I have £73.91 to spend at the airport 
I probably should by a fleece, as Estonia is cold.
I know a lot of people are waiting for news about SkypeWeb. I have lots of emails from people looking for an update. If you signed up to the SkypeWeb@skype.net email alias last year then we should have some news for your very shorly. We were due to put out some news just before Christmas but SkypeWeb wasn’t quite ready for release so got pulled from the 2.0 release.
But rest assured we are almost ready and news will be out very soon.
Sorry, I can’t find a developer email address, and support won’t give me one, so here’s my message I’ve been trying to get through for about a month. Can you please either give me the email address to send this, or forward it to the correct place? Thanks!
Hello,
I am a developer with the Autopackage project. Autopackage is a somewhat new packaging format for Linux designed for distributing binaries that are portable from one distribution to another. We have done a lot of research into binary compatibility and our binaries are pretty portable. Some of the things we do for binary and distro compatibility (which are really the same thing):
* Double-compile C++ apps. As you probably know, the g++ ABI is pretty unstable, and applications compiled with g++-3.2/3.3 cannot link against a library compiled with g++-3.4 or 4.0. This makes distributing distro-neutral C++ apps pretty hard, especially when using a library like Qt. We work around this problem by compiling the application twice, once with g++-3.2, and once with 3.4, and then generating a binary diff of one of the binaries. One binary, and the diff for the other one are both included in the package, and the correct binary is installed at installtime.
* Desktop Integration: We have put a lot of work into making sure that things like menu items, MIME Types, Icons, and other desktop features, appear for the user. For example, if the user is running some Debian variant or Mandriva (which use the Debian Menu System), we create a Debian Menu System file from the .desktop file. We also install into the proper file locations based on what version of the DE the user is running. For example, if the user is running KDE 3.1 or less (KDE 3.2 introduced support for .desktop files as described by FreeDeskop.org), then we install into `kdePrefix`/share/applnk//file.desktop. Gnome versions
* Search the file-system for dependencies: Unlike RPM and friends, who look in a database of file names for deciding if a package is installed, Autopackage scans the filesystem. For example, we look for libraries by parsing /etc/ld.so.conf and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and then looking for library names and versions.
* We have a wrapper around gcc, called apgcc (http://autopackage.org/apbuild-apgcc.php) that does a lot of magic to binaries when compiling. For example, forcing ld to use older GLIBC symbols, if that’s all it requires. This gets rid of the nasty “undefined symbol GLIBC_2.3″ error. We also statically link the X libraries because some distros do not provide shared copies of them, strange as it may seem. We als remove bogus dependances; Libraries that are passed to gcc with -l during linking, but that actually aren’t required. Etc.
* Relaytool: Relaytool (http://autopackage.org/apbuild-relaytool.php) makes it very easy to weak-link dependencies. It’s sort of like a –enable-option for ./configure, except it’s binary.
We’ve also put a lot of work into ease-of-installation. For example, to install an Autopackage, all you need to do is execute the file. Of course, this involves changing the executable bit of a package, which is a bit of a hack. Luckily, you only need to do this the first time you install an Autopackage. After that, MIME Types are setup, and you can install the pacakge simply by double-clicking on it!
* Install locally or system-wide: Autopackage allows you to install a program without knowing the root password. If you click “No Password” during install, then the program will be installed into your $HOME, but menu items will still appear. If you are parinoid about Autopackage or the app you are installed eating your system, don’t give it your root password, and nothing will be touched for anybody else!
* One Binary–that’s it. No confusing terms like “Statically linked”, “Qt”, “Dynamic”, “RPM”, “Public Keys”, etc. Compare the download page of Windows (http://skype.com/products/skype/windows/) vs. Linux (http://skype.com/products/skype/linux/). Windows just has a big, juicy, “Download” button. Linux, on the other hand, has 6 different links, along with scary instructions that involve the terminal and “root”, whoever *that* is.
* Thousands of users, literally! http://autopackage.sunsite.dk/stats.php shows the number of people who have installed an Autopackage for the first time. (The numbers are generated from the number of support code installs).
* Used by large, serious, projects: GAIM, Inkscape, and AbiWord all officially provide Autopackages. We are also helping get the Scribus project setup with an Autopackage. Other large projects, like Firefox, have Autopackages provided by 3rd-parties. See http://autopackage.sunsite.dk/packages/ for a list of a few Autopackages.
Yes, that sounded like a big sales pitch…I’m sorry–I guess it was. But what I really was emailing you about was offering my help in creating an Autopackage of Skype. According to the TOS, I think I’m not allowed to redistribute binaries, so I’m decided not to repackage your binary, and instead email you.
Our C++ support will not be available until 1.2 is released. We’re aiming to release it in 2 or 3 weeks. So, if we could get an Autopackage of Skype created before 1.2 is released, it would probably be a great promo for both projects.
I see that someone has already requested an Autopackage (http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=27676), but it didn’t get any response…
Anyway, are you interested in Autopackage? I am certainly very happy to help you create one, or even create it for you, if you are interested.
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Cheers,
Taj Morton
Is anyone working on video calling between mac’s and pc’s? That would really be awesome.
slm