Yet another blog for JBKempf - Tag - Mac OS X

Snow Leopard is out! And why you will not have VLC 64bits right now...

JBK — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:59:00 +0200

Apple OS X 10.6 is out

If you have missed the news, then you are not on the same techy blogs than I am.

So, Apple new operating system Mac OS X.6, named Snow Leopard is out, and it improves a lot the speed, and ports most of its application to 64bits, but doesn’t introduce any important new feature. Learn more about it !

VLC and 64bits

Do you really need 64bits for a video application? I seriously doubt it. But well, you might want/need it in the future.

Linux

VLC 64bits runs on 64bits linux since a long time, and I use it a lot. No majors problems since Linux is cleverly engineered.

Windows

VLC runs on Windows 64 as a Win32 application, but we haven’t finished the port to Win64, especially because of external libraries issues. It will come eventually.

Mac OS X

Since the WWDC ‘08, we know we have to remove all Carbon code, and we have mostly done it.

Leopard

VLC 64bits runs on 32bits Leopard without issues.

Snow Leopard

As one of our OSX developers says: I’ve you had asked me a month ago, I had said that everything is cool and VLC64 will be released the same day as Snow Leopard.

BUT

It doesn’t work now, because of a change in the Cocoa runtime. VLC stopped working in the last two seeds (the GM and the one prior to it).

Launching VLC results in crashes in a low level function called _NSBundleCreate, which is triggered by a whole bunch of Cocoa and IOKit methods. Basically every method of these frameworks results in a crash on Snow Leopard. This is strange, as exactly the same code runs nicely in 64bit on Leopard and prior seeds of Snow Leopard.

The problem is that VLC is not an ordinary NSApplication, but a plain C app, that loads a Cocoa plugin, which instantiates NSApp itself. Therefore, you cannot reproduce the crashes in normal Cocoa apps.

Conclusion

Apple, once again, breaks everything with a new OS, as it happens often, or when a new version of Xcode gets out. Last version of Xcode forced us to drop X.4 if we wanted to go 64bits and compatible with Snow Leopard. Seriously, I don’t get it.

I have applications that are running on the Win7 64bit setup that are Win98 games!

Anyway, to not finish on a bad note, Snow Leopard looks gorgeous!

Evaluation of Google Summer of Code 2008 for VideoLAN

JBK — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:17:00 -0800

This is a post to summarize and evaluate the work that we did this year, compared to last year too.

This was our second year of the Google Summer of Code project.

Google Summer of Code 2008

For the second time, VideoLAN was an association mentor for the Google Summer of Code project.

The 2008 edition of GSoC had a few improvements and change in the way Google and we handled it. Let's detail ours:

VideoLAN, VLC && x264

This year, we decided that VideoLAN would be a mentoring association for BOTH VLC and x264, instead of doing the same confusion as usual between VLC and VideoLAN.

This meant that we had to work with the x264 team to find ideas, mentors and define common rules. This was an extra amount of time, but for a good reason!

VideoLAN rules

After the last year Google Summer of Code summit, we learned quite a few things, and I decided to be a bit more strict during the summer of code. This is Google money, what about using it correctly? Here we go for the major changes:

More publicity,
Qualification tasks. I cannot emphasize more on the goods this brought to us,
Better reviewing from developers, with common rules to follow on how to give points,
More involvements of students in the community (presentation mail on mailing list, mandatory public wiki page),
Mandatory commit and status mail every week to mentor+admin,
A more active special mailing list!

Results

Those changes were great...

Selection

We received many candidacies, with higher quality and we had the possibility to chose 14 students!

One of them stopped before even beginning, because he had found a new job. So we started with 13 students:

9 for VLC media player
4 for x264

Detailed results on VLC:

Just going to review every students and whether their code was merged or not.

Please keep in mind that coding on VLC is not as easy as it might seem. And the code is evolving quite fast, so sometimes, it is difficult to keep stuffs up-to-date.

Lukas Durfina

Lukas was my student and was working on the Fullscreen Controller and Phonon work. The Qt fullscreen controller was in VLC release 0.9.0 and the Phonon work is almost merged in 1.0.

Geoffroy Couprie

Geoffroy had the difficult task to rework on the WinCE/Windows Mobile port of VLC. Most of the work has been merged in the upcoming VLC 1.0.

Antoine Lejeune

Antoine was working on the Maemo port of VLC. The code has been merged in VLC 1.0.

Kaarlo Henrik Räihä

Kaarlo is a very very active member of our community and was working on very difficult aspects of Vista integration, namely DXVA. The project was very difficult and successful for the most part, but it isn't merged yet in VLC.

Fabio Ritrovato

Fabio was working on MTP device integration. The code is good and the project is successful and the merge is pending (hopefully for 1.0)

Mirsal Ennaime

Mirsal is a long time coder in the community and was rewritting the UPnp client and hopefully the server for DLNA. The project was also successful, but the merge is pending because of some services discovery changes in our code. It should happen for 1.0

Dylan Yudaken

Dylan was working on PVR improvements and on timeshifting. The project was also very successful and Dylan was a delight working with. Some things have been merged, some are going to.

Eric Dudiak

Eric reworked our very bad MacOS X interface This was very difficult but the outcome was quite good. The mergins is still pending too.

Vladimir Belousov

This project was a failure.

Google Summer of Code Summit

This summer of code summit was great, because it was 2 days and we had way more time to discuss with other people.

I, however, have found it not enough focused on the GSoC, but maybe this was because I didn't choose the right discussions.

Conclusion

This Google Summer of Code was a HUGE success for VideoLAN and we had some very very good output, some of which you already have on your Computer!

Thank you Leslie!

MacBook install: triple boot: linux, windows, Mac OS

JBK — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:17:00 +0100

This details the installation of a MacBook white, shipped in the beginning of 2008.

Set up Mac OS X

Updates

First before anything, update to the latest MacOS X.5.2, and all the necessary downloads... Reboot as many times as needed

Software

Then, install VLC, Firefox 3 béta, Adium and Xcode if you need it.

Done.

Quite easy, so far, no ?

Install Windows XP

Be sure to have your Windows XP SP2 CD and a legit license number.

Bootcamp

Go to spotlight, look for Boot Camp assistant or find it from your Applications folder.

Run it.

Prepare a disk space for Windows ( 16GB is ok, I think )

Quit and re-run it.

Install Windows with your CD Rom inside.

Reboot and wait during all the Windows installation that is long and needs a couple of reboots. Mine did fail once, for no obvious reasons.

Windows XP

Once you have your complete Windows XP installation, you will see a Boot Camp icon on your task bar. Keep it.

Put the Apple OS X CD-ROM in, and let it do all the installation of the drivers. It may require some reboots, but at the end, you have a very new and completely functional Windows XP!

Reboot

Do your Windows Update and reboot and again, and reboot, and again... Until nothing appears there.

Launch the Boot Camp assistant and Default Mac OS HD

Mac OS again

Reboot to mac OS. Be pleased.

Linux

This should work with any distribution and was tested with Debian and Ubuntu

Resize

Go to Applications/Utils and launch Disk Tool

Split and resize the main partition in order to have a new partition that you name Linux and format in HFS. (16GB here)

Check everything.

Reboot on linux

Put your linux live CD and reboot

Press `C` to boot on the CD

Launch your live-CD and install linux.

Install

During the install I deleted the new partition and added two in place:

One root partition /

One swap 1GB

Finish everything, reboot

You should be careful to install your grub in your linux partition and NOT in the MBR, to let reFit do it correctly.

rEFIt

On Mac OS X, install rEFIt and configure it quite quickly.

Reboot and use rEFIt to boot on linux using the "option" key.

Configure linux

You have all you want working except the wireless... Which is a Broadcom BCM4328

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Find in your Windows partition your wireless drivers:

sudo su

cp -r /media/Windows/WINDOWS/DRVSTORE/bcmwl5_**/ /root/

mv bcmwl5_*** bcmw

cd bcmw

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

ndiswrapper -l

ndiswrapper -m

modprobe ndiswrapper

ifconfig

Updates

Uncomment what is needed in your sources.list.

Reboot.

Problems

If you have any issues, like not having the linux partition shown anymore, reinstall grub on your linux partition with a live-CD.

VLC and Mac OS X Leopard

JBK — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:24:00 +0100

Following my news on Leopard in French, and following my photos of the crowed Apple Store, this is just a small blog notice to say that VLC media player works almost correctly on OSX Leopard without any modification. Just use the 0.8.6c release.

However, the remote controller doesn't work anymore and there are corruptions in the OpenGL output when you go out of fullscreen.

The remote controller part should be fixed soon in VLC (development versions are fine) and the OpenGL bug, might be a problem from Leopard himself.

Go to our forum to know more about those issues...

Mac OS X Leopard

JBK — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:48:00 +0200

Leopard

La nouvelle version du système d’exploitation Mac OS d’Apple , sort vendredi 26 octobre 2007, demain. Sixième version majeure de Mac OS X, estampillée Mac OS X.5, de nom de code « Leopard », elle présente de très nombreuses nouveautés (plus de 300 selon Apple), dont certaines méritent d’être détaillées.

Fonctionnalités

Time Machine

« Time Machine » est sans doute la nouveauté la plus originale dans un système d’exploitation grand public. Cette fonctionnalité est un système de backup simplifié et automatisé pour les fichiers utilisateurs. Une fois activée, Time Machine sauvegarde automatiquement les entrées modifiées du système de fichier, heure par heure. Chaque jour ces modifications sont agrégées afin de sauver l’espace disque. Outre la simplicité de fonctionnement, Time Machine permet de naviguer visuellement dans les backups, et de les restaurer, sans effacer les versions plus récentes, ce qui est assez rare. En outre, ces fonctions de backups sont utilisables depuis la plupart des applications Mac, tels iPhoto, Mail ou Address Book.

Sécurité

La sécurité du système a été aussi un point d’innovation de cette version.

Tout d’abord, l’espace mémoire est rendu partiellement aléatoire, ce qui empêche certaines failles de sécurité d’être exploitées, sans pour autant les limiter. En effet, les adresses étant plus difficiles à prédire, des attaques de types « dépassement de tampons » (‘buffer overflow’), « dépassement de tas » (‘heap overflow’) ou « retour à libc » (‘return-to-libc attack’). Cette fonctionnalité, déjà présente sous Windows Vista et Linux, reste une nouveauté majeure de Leopard.

Ensuite, les applications peuvent être signées par les développeurs et les applications téléchargées sont marquées afin de détecter toutes modifications ultérieures du programme, afin d’interdire aux applications modifiées de fonctionner.

Enfin, outre un pare-feu applicatif, un chiffrement avancé (AES - 256bits) du système de fichiers, un contrôle d’accès plus restrictif et un VPN amélioré, cette version comporte une technologie de « bac à sable » (‘sandboxing’), permettant à certaines applications critiques de ne pas avoir accès à l’intégralité du système.

Look'n feel

L’aspect du système d’exploitation a été modifié de plusieurs façons notables. Tout d’abord, une innovation du monde Unix, les bureaux virtuels, est intégrée, tout en gardant la fonction Exposé de miniaturisation des applications. Ensuite, le Dock, barre de lancement d’application, le Finder, pour naviguer dans les fichiers, utilisent des effets 3D, pour améliorer le look. En outre, de nombreux effets et animations sont disponibles pour les développeurs d’applications tierces, à travers les technologies CoreAnimation. Enfin, une grande partie du système utilise un affichage vectoriel, qui permet d’être indépendant de la résolution utilisateur.

Pluuuuuuuuuuuus !

Pour finir, le passage à 64-bits de nombreuses bibliothèques systèmes, dont Cocoa, l’utilisation d’OpenGL 2.0, la certification Unix, la présence d’onglets dans le terminal ou l’intégration de Bootcamp, pour dualbooter sous Windows, du système de fichier ZFS font de cette version de Mac OS X, un étape majeure pour Apple Inc.