Every Flavour Beans

The reason for not updating the old post that explained how to install C#/Mono/MonoDevelop/XSP packages in Ubuntu Dapper Drake is that the procedure remains pretty much the same for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn as well as the recently released Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon distributions(but now you get the newer versions of those packages installed, of course). You can just go through that longer post and probably make one or two changes here and there to get everything running under Feisty/Gutsy too.

Do note that Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon supports installing the more recent stable versions of Mono(1.2.4) and MonoDevelop(1.4) right from its package manager than any other distribution(AFAIK). Mono 1.2.5 is released but it is not available even in Gutsy. All other distribution either install the older versions of Mono and MonoDevelop or make you compile these packages from the sources(which is a good idea even on Gutsy if you want Mono 1.2.5 or some bleeding-edge version of MonoDevelop).

Below is a command running which will get most of the packages related to Mono and MonoDevelop installed on your Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon(7.10) operating system. The only changes you can notice here are the missing mono-gac package(as it comes installed by default in Gutsy) and the addition of monodevelop-query and libnunit-doc packages. Drop the packages that you don’t want from the command line, and remember that dependencies will be automatically pulled by apt if you accidentally drop any needed packages, so don’t worry too much about it.

A lot has changed in the Mono world in the past year but I will leave it up to you to explore the changes according to what version you are interested in. Here are some links to get you started:

What’s new in MonoDevelop 0.14 (stable version available for Gutsy)
What’s new in MonoDevelop 0.15 (stable version but not available for Gutsy, need to compile from sources)
What’s new in MonoDevelop 1.0 Beta 1 (0.16) (unstable version, need to compile from sources)
What’s new in Mono 2.1.4 (stable version available for Gutsy)
What’s new in Mono 2.1.5 (stable version but not available for Gutsy, need to compile from sources)

Keep track of Mono development(RSS)

Yesterday’s sad revelation : VMWare Guest Tools don’t work with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. And I was thinking earlier that it might be one of the quirks of the RC version of Gutsy and was hoping that it will all work well when the final version gets released but no such luck.

So I decided to install it on the real hardware. To get something more out of my efforts, I decided to also try out Gutsy’s support for the Compiz desktop effects. The installation itself went smoothly in typical Ubuntu installation method.

As soon as Ubuntu gutsy was installed, it prompted me if I want the restricted drivers to be installed. I graciously accepted the offer but received an error in response saying “xorg-driver-glrx is not enabled.”

When I had installed Ubuntu Gutsy RC1, it had automatically prompted me to enable certain repositories, took me to “Software Sources” dialog box, and after I had enabled the repositories(and refreshed the package list), it had continued installing the restricted drivers. It was a seamless process - everything was handled automatically and I only had to just keep clicking the “OK” buttons.

I don’t know what has changed between RC1 and the final release but I had to dismiss the above mentioned error window, manually go to Administration -> Software Sources and enable the repositories listed there.

It failed to refresh the packages and I realised that Internet is actually not working on the Gutsy yet. So I looked around a bit, changed Password Type in Network Settings from “WEP Text” to “WEP Personal” and felt relieved to finally be able to load the Google in the web browser. After successfully refreshing the package contents this time, the restricted drivers got installed without giving me any more errors.

The desktop effects were still absent though. I checked System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects and tried to select something like “Normal” or “Extra” effects there, but got the error “The composite extension is not available” on both the occasions. I then checked the output of ‘compiz ––replace’ which indicated to me that I probably need to install the xserver-xgl drivers, so went ahead and installed it from the command line:

And while I was at it, installed the compiz configuration tools too:

In summary, the following command now informs me that everything is already there and nothing needs to be installed:

As you can see, everything is already installed. Now I went to System -> Preferences -> Appearance and selected the “Normal” radio button. Success! So I went ahead and selected “Custom” radio button this time and started playing with different settings by going to System -> Preferences -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.

Where to go from here? If you get lucky like me with your ATI hardware(my graphics card is ATI Mobility Radeon X300), you can learn more about Compiz by going to Desktop Effects with Compiz

If you are unable to get the 3D effects enabled even after installing the xserver-sgl driver, first try this ATI thread on Ubuntu forums, and in case you don’t find any success there, you can search the web for your ATI card or try asking for help on Launchpad Answers, Ubuntu Forums or Ubuntu IRC channel(#ubuntu at irc.freenode.net). I recommend you keep the output of the following commands handy with you when asking for help:

lspci | grep VGA
compiz ––replace
glxinfo | grep direct
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep Composite

Update: Here is a nice how-to by Ubuntu Forums member michael37 on how to get 3D Desktop effects for ATI cards for fresh Gutsy installation or an upgrade from Feisty to Gutsy.

Another ATI success story I came across: Compiz for ATI X1950XT

There are different ways in which your computer can be accessed from Nokia N800 tablet, such as ssh, VNC, Remote Desktop Protocol(RDP). If you want to access the desktop of your Windows machine(XP or Vista) from N800, the best option would be to use RDP and rDesktop for N800 is an application that lets you do exactly that.

We need to do some preparation first. You need to have a user account in Windows operating system that uses a non-blank password. If your user account doesn’t use a password or if you want to create a separate user account for remote access anyhow, follow the steps below. If you do have a password-enabled user account that you want to use for remote access, jump directly to the next section.

The screenshots shown in this post were taken on Windows Vista but the procedure is described for both Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Creating a New User Account in Windows XP/Vista

1. Create a new user account in Windows Vista by going to:
   Vista: Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Manage other accounts -> Create a new account
   XP: Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Create a new account
   
2. Now create a password for this account by clicking the “Create a password” link on the user’s account page.
   

Enabling Remote Desktop Access in Windows XP/Vista

Before we can connect to the Windows desktop remotely from N800, we need to first enable remote access in Windows. To do so, go to Control Panel -> System -> Remote Settings and select the second or the third radio button in the “Remote Desktop” section according to your security requirements. In XP, select the “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer” checkbox and add the user account created above by clicking the “Select Remote Users…” button.

NOTE: Going to Control Panel -> Control Panel Home and entering “Remote” in the search box(top-right corner) will also take you to the same properties dialog page when you click the link “Allow remote access to your computer.”

You can access most of the features in Vista this way.

Note Domain/Workgroup name and IP address of Windows Machine

Now we need to collect some information about our Windows system - the Domain/Workgroup name and the IP address of the computer.

1. Control Panel -> System will show you the Workgroup name. In XP, go to Control Panel -> System -> Computer Name to find the same information.
   
2. Running the command ipconfig on the command prompt(All Programs/Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt) will display the IP address:
   
   Control Panel -> Network and Sharing -> View Status -> Details will also show you the IP address.

Connecting to Windows Desktop from Nokia N800 using rDesktop

We are now done setting up the Windows machine for remote access and collecting the necessary information.

1. Run rDesktop from the Extras menu in your N800.
   
2. Enter the connection details as shown in the screenshot below:
   
3. Click OK and you will be greeted with the welcome screen of XP/Vista:
   
4. Full Vista desktop as visible on the Nokia N800:
   

Unless you use a wireless keyboard with your Windows machine, you have the choice of using only the stylus/finger as the mouse to browse through the Windows desktop as you get no keyboard access to it from N800/rDesktop. Use ssh for keyboard intensive work. Use TightVNC for raw/direct access to the Windows screen(unlike RDP where a login session is required).

It was exciting to read about the new feature of Wordpress 2.3 where it gives notifications as soon as the updated versions of Wordpress core and the plugins are released. When I logged into my Wordpress 2.3 administration dashboard today, I got my first notification of an updated core version released! (Not news to me though, as the wp-testers list keeps me updated.)

At the top:

In the footer:

Wordpress 2.3.1 was released a few hours ago and some of the bugs that it fixes are:

• ‘Blogroll -> Import Links’ bug - #5107.
• Faster tag intersection search queries - #5137. Ryan Boren has written a good article on tag intersections.
• Manifest file for WLW to enable tag support in it - #5023.
• Incorrect behaviour when posting via email that contains hyphen(s) - #5169

Other bugs fixed.
Also read westi’s post.

Fixes the security issue related to “an XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled.”

A quick upgrade guide is available on the Wordpress Codex. Detailed instructions are also available, in case you have never upgraded Wordpress before.

If you, like me, had installed Wordpress 2.3 by directly checking out from the Subversion repository, you can upgrade by simply running this from the console:

Substitute the path to your Wordpress installation path in place of <your-blog-directory>. Then run http://<your-blog-address>/wp-admin/upgrade.php as usual.
More information on Subversion upgrade.

By the end of this post, you will be able to create C++ projects in the Eclipse IDE and build them using the SCons build tool. SCons is an alternative build tool to GNU make/Makefiles. You can read more about SCons on its website(and ask yourself why are you reading this post in the first place!).

Install MinGW, Eclipse CDT, Python and SCons on Windows

1. Skip this step if you have a working Eclipse for C++ installation.

   If the MinGW toolchain is not already installed on your Windows system, download and install MinGW, MSYS and gdb debugger from MinGW’s download page. Similarly download and install the latest version of Eclipse for C++(Europa) if it’s not already installed. If you are willing to take my recommendation, I suggest you start with EasyEclipse for C++ IDE which comes with many useful C++ plugins pre-installed. When you install EasyEclipse/Eclipse Europa for C++, it will automatically detect the MinGW installation and will configure all paths properly, but if for some reason you come across any problem(or if you are using an older version of Eclipse), take a look at my earlier post on how to configure MinGW with Eclipse IDE.

   Alternatively you can download and install the Wascana Desktop Developer which comes with Eclipse Europa, CDT plugin, MinGW toolchain (among other things) all integrated together as one piece. Read my post about the Wascana IDE for more information.

2. Skip the step if you already have a working Python installation.

   I am assuming that Eclipse CDT and C++ development toolchain(MinGW) are properly setup on your system. Before we can go ahead and install the SCons build tool, we need to install Python first, as SCons depends on a working Python installation. Download your favourite Python distribution for Windows and install it. I use Python from the python.org website but feel free to use any implementation that you like, such as ActivePython.

   

   Download Python binaries for Windows.
   Run the installer to install it. I will assume that we have installed it in C:\Python25 directory.

3. Now we are ready to install the SCons build tool. Download the windows installer from SCons website and run the installer to install it.

   

   SCons installer will automatically detect the location where Python is installed during installation. After the installer is finished, you can start building C++ programs using SCons from the command-line. In fact, it would be a good idea to do a few checks to make sure that everything we have done until now is setup properly. On the windows command prompt, run the following:

   C:\> python -V
   C:\> scons -v

   (note the uppercase V for the python command)

   

   You can further create a sample C++ program along with an SConstruct build file and try building from the command-line using the scons tool. Proceed to the next step if everything works out as expected.

Installing and Configuring SConsBuilder plugin in Eclipse

1. We need to install the SCons plugin in Eclipse now. The installation procedure is explained on the SConsBuilder web page but I will repeat those instructions here for convenience:
   1. Go to Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install..
   2. Choose “Search for new features to install”.. and click “Next”
   3. Click the “New Remote Site..” button
   4. Enter “SCons Build” or something like that in the “Name” field and enter http://nic-nac-project.de/~lothar/eclipse/update/ in the “URL” field

   

   You may be interested in having a look at the documented feature list of this plugin. You can confirm the installation of SConsBuilder plugin from Help -> About -> Plug-in Details.

2. Next we need to configure the SCons plugin in Eclipse. To do so, go to Window -> Preferences -> C++ -> SCons.

   

   Enter the values as you see in the above screenshot. No other field matters to us right now except for the first one(‘SCons executable’) but you need to give valid values in all of them; which means that even if you have no intention of using CppUnit, you still need to make sure that the text fields in its section(CppUnit include and library directories) have valid values(any valid path will do). Of course, when using CppUnit, you need to check the “Use CppUnit” checkbox and enter the correct include and library paths in its fields.

   Restart Eclipse if you are prompted to.

3. We are almost done here! Now create a C++ project from File -> New Project and select one of the templates from the New Project window, say “Empty Project”. Try not to select any Makefile related project templates though, as we will be using SCons as our build tool. After the project is created we can convert it to an SCons project by going to File -> Other -> C++ -> Convert to SCons Project(search around if it’s not there, it may be present in a different category in your Eclipse distribution).

   

   Note: To remove the SCons nature from the project, follow the same menus: File -> Other -> Convert to SCons Project.

   You will see a new file created in your Project view called SContruct which you might identify as the SCons build script.

   

   I remove the default generated code in the SConstruct file and type my own build instructions in it. The other thing you can notice are the new build command menu items in the project context menu(I couldn’t find any other way to access these build commands). Right-click on the project to see it.

   

   Select “SCons Build” from the available build commands in the context menu and your C++ project should be built using the SCons build tool using the instructions provided in the SConstruct file. You can now continue adding more C++ source files, more directories and SConscript build files.

Troubleshooting?

• Verify if you can compile C++ programs in Eclipse before starting with any SCons stuff. This would help find out if MinGW is properly configured with Eclipse. See this post for help. (You may be using Cygwin toolchain, I am just taking MinGW as an example.)
• Make sure that you install Python and SCons at locations that do not contain space(s) in their paths. This is not always required but it is a good rule to follow anyway.
• Make sure that running ‘python -V’ and ’scons -v’ on the command-line returns some output and not an error.
• Make sure that all the fileds on SCons preference page have valid values. Use the screenshot shown above for guidance.

SConsBuilder plugin for Eclipse is not the perfect solution for working with SCons; instead it only barely gets the job done. In the absence of any other better alternatives, all we can do is to hope and pray that the plugin gets more love from its developers and improves with the time.