Niels Horn's Blog » FBReader

Packages for ARMedslack

Niels Horn — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 01:50:58 +0000

No, I did not abandon ARMedslack, the official port of Slackware to the ARM architecture… It was simply a matter of lack of time (or a question of priorities, depending of your point of view).
But this weekend I finally found some time to setup a clean build environment based on the stable ARMedslack 13.1 version.

The build environment

I build all my packages for Slackware in Virtual Machines, using QEMU. I use the snapshot feature to guarantee that I always use the same, stable version without leftovers from previous builds. So for my ARMedslack packages I set up a new VM in Qemu, using the emulation of the ARM Versatile board. ARMedslack runs fine on this, but it is quite slow compared to a “real” system with an ARM processor, like the SheevaPlug I have.
I set up a distributed compiler “farm”, using spare processor time of some other desktops / servers I have in my network, so that compile-time gets a lot friendlier.
Whenever I find some time I’ll write a post about distcc and how to set it up to compile for the ARM architecture on x86 boxes.

What to build for ARMedslack

Not all packages I maintain are useful on ARMedslack.
Most ARMedslack systems (SheevaPlug, GuruPlug, etc.) don’t use any graphical interface, or are slow if using them, so it does not make sense to prepare any heavy graphics-dependent packages like FreeCAD or BRLCAD. I also don’t think anyone will use ARMedslack to construct Lego models, so these were out as well.
On the other hand, the plug computers are ideal for monitoring your network, so the Nagios, rrdtool, ntop and Zabbix are all on the list.
Hercules has been one of my favorites on the SheevaPlug, to show off my “portable mainframe”. I also put a few benchmark programs in the mix and fbreader and QComicBook to test simple graphics applications.
After all, I still hope to have a ARM-based net/note-book one day.

What is ready *now*

Building and testing these packages takes some time if done with care, but I started with the following packages that can already be downloaded from my site:

QComicBook – A Comic Book reader
liblinebreak – a library needed by fbreader
fbreader – An e-book reader
rrdtool – a library to store and display time-series data, used by many monitoring programs

Next…

Other packages will follow and I’ll announce them here as soon as they become available (after some basic testing).

New(er) version of FBReader released

Niels Horn — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 21:22:05 +0000

The guys that are developing FBReader are releasing so many updates that it is difficult to keep my SlackBuild and packages up-to-date!

Only a few days ago I mentioned the new 0.12.7 version and they’re already at 0.12.9
The new version resolves some bugs and improves the Smashwords library support. The code is also compatible with the newest gcc compilers now.

As always, the updated SlackBuild is in the pending queue on SlackBuilds.org and the new packages for Slackware (32 & 64-bits) and ARMedslack can be downloaded from my site.

New version of FBReader released

Niels Horn — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:48:01 +0000

A new version of FBReader, an e-book reader with functions to download books from some popular sites, has been released.
Version 0.12.7 is mainly a bug-fix release, but it also add some extra support for ePub files.

The new SlackBuild script is in the pending queue on SlackBuilds.org and pre-built packages for Slackware 32-bits, 64-bits and ARMedslack can be downloaded from my site.

FBReader

Niels Horn — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:56:35 +0000

Some days ago I read some messages on the SlackBuilds mailing list about problems with building FBReader on 64-bits Slackware and the right location of the libraries. At first, I had no clue what FBReader was, I was just interested in the technical problem and how it was solved.

I decided to build the program and found out it was a nice e-book reader, with some extra features that caught my attention. The nicest was that it can automatically search and download books by author from some on-line “libraries”, which makes it quite simple for the non-technical user to get & read some of the classics.

Here are some screenshots of the program, opening the on-line library and getting a famous book by Arthur Conan Doyle:

Since the Slackbuild was unmaintained, I resubmitted it for the newest version, together with the needed liblinebreak library.
Both will be available on SlackBuilds.org soon, but if you can’t wait, you can download packages for Slackware from my site.