[Splashy-devel] getting ready for 0.3.7

[Luis Mondesi]

Hello all,

I think that we have accumulated enough changes to merit a release. The most
important feature of 0.3.7 is that it's no longer compiled statically by
default. This can make or break the day for a number of users who now depend
on Splashy for their daily boot (yes, now that Splashy makes the boot
process a fun thing to watch, people actually shutdown their systems more
often).

Here is an up-to-day list of new features:

 * all static build dropped in favor of shared libraries. If your
distribution does not support
   initramfs shared binaries, or you are using Splashy from a thin-client
server, you will need
   to re-enable static on your own. Please refer to configure.ac and
src/Makefile.am
 * scrolls text during boot (splashy_update "scroll text to display")
 * splashy_update commands print_scroll is now just scroll. Same for its
alias "TEXT_SCROLL->SCROLL)
 * splashy_update command clrprint is now just "clear"
 * adds verbose text when pressing F2 (again). This time is done using LSB
scripts not reading
   the console files (/dev/vcs*)
 * LSB script writes splashy PID to /var/run/sendsigs.omit which is used by
/etc/init.d/sendsigs to
   killall5 all processes at shutdown/reboot. This tells the system to
ignore killing splashy during
   shutdown/reboot.

If there is a feature that you feel you must absolutely have included in
0.3.7 speak now! Else, I'll do the usual "QA" testing and bless this release
as gold.

The only annoyance this release has, and there is no easy way to fix this,
is that when Splashy starts from initramfs, at some point, it looses the
keyboard. This is related to the same bug we saw for which we submitted a
patch upstream. The solution might be as simple as to reload (re-init)
Splashy as soon as the real init takes over the boot process. In other
words, as soon as we start seeing keyboard events with NULLs too rapidly
(meaning we can no longer read the device). Of course, this is NOT a problem
in Splashy, this is directfb's fault. So, we might need to submit more
patches to directfb if we get this iron out.
The other solution would of course be to avoid running programs that change
the console while Splashy is running (fgconsole and such). Which is what
other bootsplash systems do (hint: hsalpsu).

All fun and games!

Let me know if you have concerns...

Ah, and for the debian packaging people, keep in mind that disabling static
on Splashy binary also disable the part that compiles .a files for
libsplashy1. So, I had to remove that from the debian/libsplashy1.install
file.

Regards,

-- 
----)(-----
Luis Mondesi
Maestro Debiano

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