ubuntu-hams team mailing list archive

[Nate Bargmann <n0nb@xxxxxxx>]

Hi All.

Okay, here goes.  Last night during the net with Steve and Kamal as the
band was folding I tried to tell them about a contest logger I had done 
some hacking on late last year and early this year.  So far it only
exists in a local Git repository on my hard drive and has not seen the
light of day.  After thinking about it overnight I have decided to
invite the Ubuntu Hams list to the discussion.

This program is originally based on YFKtest by Fabian, DJ1YFK:

http://fkurz.net/ham/yfktest.html

It is written in Perl and uses the Curses module for its UI.  At the
moment, the only other module used is IO::Socket::INET (for rigctld and
cwdaemon) so it is quite generic and may run on older Perl versions even
though I have been working with it in Perl 5.10.x on Debian Sid.

I started with the SVN checkout of YFKtest as of 30 October 2009 and
imported it into my Git repository so all of the prior change record is
intact that I could get from SVN.  My changes are minor, mostly reworking 
the Curses UI more to my liking although the experimental branch holds work
for converting to the new Extended Response Protocol of rigctld in
Hamlib 1.2.11.  Also, since many of the pending changes have reworked
much of Fabian's and his contributors' code, I chose to rename it CTest
which pays homage to its intended familiar look of CT and its ancestor, 
YFKtest.

Why am I stating all of this?  Because, the project will go nowhere with
just me doing it!  ;-)  Here is what I am thinking of doing.  

1. Import the Git repo into Bazaar.
2. Setup my Launchpad account to host the CTest project.
3. Let Ubuntu Hams at it as a team project.
4. Hack away!
5. ?????
6. Profit!  (how'd that Slashdot meme sneak in here?)

Some things to consider before I start, is this worthwhile?  Is Perl a
proper language to do this in (besides the fact that I feel quite
comfortable in Perl, is it really the way forward for something that
will become complex, multi-threaded, etc.?)?  Besides YFKtest, does this
duplicate any effort currently in *active* development that I am unaware
of?

There will likely be plenty of questions to be answered, but if the team
is willing, I'll get my part done as quickly as I can.  At this point it
is somewhat usable, but not my experimental branch ATM (but that's all 
the fun, right?).

Please, let me know if this is wanted by the Ubuntu Hams team!  Maybe we
could hack up something usable by Field Day.  ;-)

73, de Nate >>

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

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