Re: Archos Player taken out?
Linus wrote: Linus I guess I can answer both questions at once: the idea that I Linus and Daniel had was to stop the Player development. Therefore we Linus wouldn't need a daily build for it anymore. OK. I thought there could be parts of the Player that for instance could be shared with the Recorder even though the GUI is taken out. People like me could probably play around with the GUI code, menus, key bindings etc but would not easily, on our own, change things in the core part of the system. It would need to much knowledge. If those parts would be shared bug fixes there would also benefit the few Player users. But maybe the Player shares very little code with the other units through out the whole system? When I hacked on the system last there was only two units supported. I know lots have happened since then. And as was suggested by someone, back porting could be feasible, and maybe easier for all parties. And of course everything above is quite hypothetical unless the Rockbox Archos Player Maintainer enters the scene. (Don't take my questions as I'm opposed to the thing. Count me in as one in favor of a split.) Yours -- %% Mats
Re: Archos Player taken out?
Linus and I have come to the conclusion that the time has come to pull out Archos Player support from the main Rockbox sources. Sniff... I don't like to drop a platform. What exacly is the current/upcoming pain with it? The charcell ifdefs are already in. I wonder about the timing, we're not close to a release, or? Jörg -- Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer
Re: Archos Player taken out?
Linus Nielsen Feltzing wrote: [IDC]Dragon wrote: Sniff... I don't like to drop a platform. What exacly is the current/upcoming pain with it? The charcell ifdefs are already in. Yes, they are in, but we have to add new ifdefs for every new or changed feature. For example, if we change the settings menu to show the settings inline (http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/5833), it would be a lot easier to not have to support the player. Dropping the only charcell target would make it easier for us to make a more attractive UI in general for the bitmap targets without having duplicate code to support the charcell LCD. My concern is that 95% of the currently active developer community don't have players, and it has become a burden for all of us to adapt their I have 5-10 players, does that make you change your mind? :-) Vladimir
Re: Archos Player taken out?
Vladimir Pantelic wrote: I have 5-10 players, does that make you change your mind? :-) Hehe, no, but it makes you a good candidate for the Player branch maintainer. :-) Linus
Archos Player taken out?
Hi friends Linus and I have come to the conclusion that the time has come to pull out Archos Player support from the main Rockbox sources. Removing this from the sources will of course not remove the existing download packages or whatever we have today that works fine for the Player. It will just make development from now on very restricted for that device. Reasons for doing this: o The Archos Players are very limited HW-wise and hardly anything added to Rockbox these days benefit Player owners. So there's not much of a point for Player owners to keep up with and use the latest. Most Player owners simply use one of the older releases and are fine with that. o Hardly any devs have Players these days or at least hardly ever use them. There's even hardly any users tracking the bleeding edge and thus we often don't even notice when we break functionality! o The Archos Player's very limited LCD and buttons are a burden in lots of GUI-oriented code. Ripping out the need for support charcells will simplify lots of code. How We Propose to Proceed o We set a CVS tag and create a CVS branch of the current code, the last combined Rockbox version with support for Archos Player. The name of the branch will be 'player'. o In the CVS HEAD (main development branch) we rip out Archos Player specific code, we stop doing daily builds etc covering the device. o We call out and urge a Rockbox Archos Player Maintainer to step forward to nurse the Rockbox player branch (as important bug fixes etc could go in) but perhaps most importantly to make a last full release of Rockbox for the Archos Player, including docs, voice files etc.
Re: Archos Player taken out?
Long has there been talk of compiling the MAS WAV CODEC into Rockbox for Archos owners. If there are still plans to include this CODEC into Rockbox (for all MAS based units), then I offer as food-for-thought, that the Player freeze happens _after_ the MAS WAV CODEC is implemented, for (what I hope are) obvious reasons. BC At 15:05 21/08/2006, you wrote: Hi friends Linus and I have come to the conclusion that the time has come to pull out Archos Player support from the main Rockbox sources. Removing this from the sources will of course not remove the existing download packages or whatever we have today that works fine for the Player. It will just make development from now on very restricted for that device. Reasons for doing this: o The Archos Players are very limited HW-wise and hardly anything added to Rockbox these days benefit Player owners. So there's not much of a point for Player owners to keep up with and use the latest. Most Player owners simply use one of the older releases and are fine with that. o Hardly any devs have Players these days or at least hardly ever use them. There's even hardly any users tracking the bleeding edge and thus we often don't even notice when we break functionality! o The Archos Player's very limited LCD and buttons are a burden in lots of GUI-oriented code. Ripping out the need for support charcells will simplify lots of code. How We Propose to Proceed o We set a CVS tag and create a CVS branch of the current code, the last combined Rockbox version with support for Archos Player. The name of the branch will be 'player'. o In the CVS HEAD (main development branch) we rip out Archos Player specific code, we stop doing daily builds etc covering the device. o We call out and urge a Rockbox Archos Player Maintainer to step forward to nurse the Rockbox player branch (as important bug fixes etc could go in) but perhaps most importantly to make a last full release of Rockbox for the Archos Player, including docs, voice files etc.
