development

Dev Blog: Bugs, Boom, and Budgie

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Bugs

To start things of, Antorca 5.0 beta 2 was released a week ago. Since its release I have discovered some bugs in the custom browser and productivity apps installer. This particular bug involved the installer checking if the app has been installed while the app is being installed.

This isn’t good at all – it’ll always end up saying that the app isn’t installed (unless it has already been installed before that particular scenario). This is because the installer script ends up jumping straight to that check right after initiating an install.

Thus I’ve decided to initiate a rewrite of the installer script in C to allow for process forking (which consequently allows for parent processes to wait for child processes to finish, voilà).

Boom

UPDATE: A new batch of updates have since resolved this! But now GIMP and BleachBit have been sacrificed because of updates to Python (I choose to go with bleeding-edge upstream updates instead of holding back updates to prevent potentially larger broken packages further down the road due to mismatched dependencies).

A recent update to the Debian Sid branch have caused folders in the file system root directory to be mounted as devices. This has caused an eye-sore on the desktop (where mounted drives are displayed by default), with dozens of directories appearing as devices there. As I write this blog post, I’m still trying to sort out what’s causing this bug. This may end up delaying Beta 3, and even worse – the eventual release of version 5.0.

Budgie

With the massive stuff-up on the Xfce (i.e. default, or more realistically, the only actual) edition with the root directories, the cards are on the table again for the Budge edition. I’m considering the possibility that somewhere, somehow, a configuration fault in the Xfce edition is causing the root directory issue. So perhaps it’s worth a shot to see whether that issue could be reproducible on another desktop environment in another development virtual machine!

Antorca: Rebuilt

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TL;DR – Antorca shall now be based on Debian Sid; LXDE replaced by Xfce; VLC replaced by MPV.

Since the recent ‘stuff up’ with the development virtual machine, I’ve taken more care as to how I backup and track changes made. This mostly involves more frequent VM snapshots.

However, in the last blog post I stated that there were now two development ‘branches’ – the old branch (codenamed ”Aberfeldy”, the one that’s publicly available at the moment), and the new branch (codenamed “Crimson”).

I’ve managed to pretty much replicate the Aberfeldy experience, but with Xfce replacing LXDE, MPV replacing VLC, and added a few additional tools. Crimson is also based on Debian Sid (the experimental branch of Debian) instead of Debian testing. This was necessary in order to get access to the latest Firefox packages instead of the extended support release.

Throughout Aberfeldy’s development I made use of two remastering tools – bootcd and Refracta. Refracta had extra compression options and its own installer, but it seriously messed with menu files and a few other settings. Bootcd was far more primitive and basic compared to Refracta but it did the job when it came to making a simple ISO image of the system without modifying menu files, etc. I decided to return to the remastering tool I used during the illume OS days – Remastersys, though I’m actually using a more recent fork of it called Respin. Respin doesn’t have a GUI installer like Remastersys, but the GUI installer I’ve been working could eventually be made compatible with the Respin installer!

Crimson is surprisingly stable despite being based on Debian Sid (which has been considered stable enough for daily use by a number of Debian users). Thus, I have come to the conclusion that ‘version 1’ shall use the Crimson base instead of the Aberfeldy base.

Starting again? Maybe?

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Silly, silly me! I didn’t quite make enough snapshots of my development virtual machine in between making a great amount of changes on the upcoming preview release of Antorca. Well, actually what happened was I conducted an apt upgrade which seemed to have broken the system (i.e. black screen after trying to boot up). I ended up wiping the development virtual machine and installed the last build of Antorca from an ISO image.

Thinking that all was fine after re-installing, I deleted most of the older snapshots. Upon attempting to create a live ISO image after making the necessary changes, error upon error appeared. Mind you, this doesn’t mean whatever I’ve worked on as of late has horrifically disappeared. In fact, everything is still surprisingly intact. It’s just that I can’t make ISO images for now.

I contemplated how situations like these could be a nightmare in the future if a monumental screw up like this were to happen again. The Debian base system virtual machine which Antorca is based off doesn’t include many of the core features I eventually added to Antorca. Luckily these don’t require a desktop environment (e.g. third party repositories, Flatpak, etc), so I’ve cloned the original base system, did some updates, and added the necessary new core features.

Now what? I’m currently deciding whether to continue working off of the “Aberfeldy” branch of development (the one where the ability to make ISO images have been partially hampered) or the new “fresh start” branch (slightly less risky, I may also have a chance to reduce the bloat-creep).