Announcements

Wammu 0.28 for Windows reloaded

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:15:31 -0700

I just found out that binary of Wammu for Windows was crippled in some strange way that it was not executed by some versions of Windows. This has been now fixed and you can download fixed version from download page.

Wammu 0.28

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:58:49 -0700

I just released version 0.28 of Wammu. This release fixes various problems found by users. Full list of changes:

Fixed freeze while searching for Bluetooth devices.
Fixed guided configuration of Bluetooth devices (no more complains about not existing device).
Fixed saving of backups to folder with non ASCII names.
Validation is less strict and allows hopefully all number.

This release also comes with binary for Windows with embedded Gammu 1.20.0.

Wammu 0.27

Sun, 11 May 2008 05:16:22 -0700

I just released version 0.27 of Wammu. This release fixes various problems found by users. Full list of changes:

Do not fail if phone does not support call notifications.
Improved handling of empty config file.
Lot of translation updates.
Fix compatibility with some IMAP servers.

This release also comes with binary for Windows with embedded Gammu 1.20.0.

Wammu for Windows is back

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:51:34 -0800

This week I finally realized where problem with random crashes in Wammu and python-gammu lies - python-gammu was using two version of C library - mscvrt.dll and mscvr71.dll. First one came from Gammu and second one from Python. Starting with 1.19.0, Gammu is built with mscvr71.dll and random crashes are gone. Any tester did not report problems with Windows binary, so I decided to make it finally an official release.

So after year or more Windows users can finally use up to date Wammu version! Fortunately I can produce this version without even touching Windows. Thanks to tools such as MinGW and Wine, everything from compiling to generating installer can be scripted and done automatically on Linux!

So Windows users can now also download current version from http://wammu.eu/download/, enjoy it.

Wammu 0.26

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:47:36 -0800

I just released version 0.26 of Wammu. This release fixes various problems found by users. Full list of changes:

Various attempts to make Windows version back to usable state, but it is not ready yet as there are quite random crashes in python-gammu on Windows. Anybody with knowledge of python modules on Windows who is willing to help is welcome.
Dropped GNOME Bluetooth (btctl) support, it crashes too often.
Fix icons size to be all 16x16.
Fixed crash when D-Bus can not launch notification service.

There is still no working binary for Windows. I don't have time and environment for maintaining them. Volunteers are welcome!

Looking for Windows testers of Wammu

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:07:20 -0800

After half day of playing with Wine, MinGW and friends, I managed to be able to automatically build Windows versions of both python-gammu and Wammu. However I do not have environment to actually test these versions (except for Wine), so I would really welcome if some Windows users could do some testing. I expect some strange crashes at beginning, but hopefully we will be able fix it to produce working Wammu version for Windows in future.

You can get the installer here: http://tmp.cihar.com/wammu-0.26-setup.exe

It's NOT final or stable version, but as the only changes which happened since last release were either minor or related to cross compilation, it should be equal to combination of Gammu 1.16.0, python-gammu 0.24 and Wammu 0.25, so don't be confused by versions.

PS: Okay, when application works in Wine, it does not mean it will work in Windows, see bug report for details.

Wammu 0.25

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:11:03 -0800

I just released version 0.25 of Wammu. This release brings new icon set thatnks to David Corrales and fixes various crashes. Full list of changes:

Fall back to Add methods if Set is not supported.
Fixed phone number validation.
Fixed crash when org.freedesktop.Notifications service is not provided.
Correctly report why guided wizard can not connect to phone.
New navigation icons, thanks to David Corrales.

There is still no binary for Windows. I don't have time and environment for maintaining them. Volunteers are welcome!

Binary packages for Gammu, Wammu and python-gammu

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:33:08 -0800

When Ubuntu announced public availability of Personal Package Archives, I thought it might be good to use it to provide up to date Gammu related packages. After successful registration I uploaded Gammu package and no reaction so far, so I'll wait.

However this memorised me that I wanted to use OpenSUSE Build Service for same purpose some time ago. I filled in registration and as I didn't receive any email about being accepted, I absolutely forgot about that. Now just tried to log in and it works. So you can now have access to latest Gammu, python-gammu and Wammu packages for most recent RPM distributions (Fedora 7, Fedora 8, Mandriva 2006, Mandriva 2007, openSUSE 10.2, openSUSE 10.3, openSUSE Factory, SLES 9 and SLE 10). I could not test them so any feedback is welcome :-). You can find all packages on overview page or directly in download folders.

Playing with spec files after long time was quite painful, but I got to it after I managed the hardest thing - how to make build dependencies which will work on all these distros.

I hope I will be able to announce similar service for Ubuntu users using PPA, but now I have to wait for some reaction on my source uploads.

Wammu 0.24

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:20:47 -0800

I just released version 0.24 of Wammu. This release brings improvements in device searching, support for notification on incoming call (you need python-dbus for this) and various minor GUI improvements. Full list of changes:

Notifies user about incoming calls using D-Bus.
Remember default type of created entry (eg. phone/SIM memory).
Newly created entries contain some reasonable fields by default.
Fixed validation of editor fields.
Improvements in guided wizard to make it easier to use.
Clever searching over Bluetooth based on manufacturer.
Searching can be really limited to some connection types.

There is still no binary for Windows. I don't have time and environment for maintaining them. Volunteers are welcome!

Incoming calls notifications

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:19:54 -0700

Wammu just got one of long wanted features - notification on incoming calls. It uses D-Bus and Desktop Notifications, so you are probably lost without some modern Linux desktop. The implementation was quite easy, if I would know that using notifications is so easy, I would have written this sooner :-).

So if you have phone connected to Wammu and somebody calls you, notification pops up and allows you to accept or reject the call. I doubt anybody needs more than this :-).

The next step will be SMS notifications, but those will be a bit more complicated.

Wammu 0.23

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:08:20 -0700

I just released version 0.23 of Wammu. This is again mostly bug fix release, which fixes various bugs reported by users.

Fixed phone number prefix settings.
Customisable format for displaying name.
Fixed crash when reporting information to phone database.

There is still no binary for Windows. I don't have time and environment for debugging crashes that happen there. Volunteers are welcome!

Wammu 0.22

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:22:22 -0700

I just released version 0.22 of Wammu. This is again mostly bug fix release, which fixes various bugs reported by users.

Fixed errors in locales and applied stricter checking.
Fixed various crashes.

There is still no binary for Windows. I don't have time for debugging crashes that happen there. Volunteers are welcome!

Wammu 0.21

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 04:54:54 -0700

I just released version 0.21 of Wammu. This is again mostly bugfix release, which fixes various bugs reported by users.

Tell user if he needs to be member of some group while searching.
Avoid blocking opening of a browser.

There is still no binary for Windows. I don't have time for debugging crashes that happen there.

Update: I forgot to mention completely new Chinese translation!

No current Wammu for Windows

Wed, 16 May 2007 03:07:00 -0700

You might have noticed that current Wammu is not available for Windows. The reason is simple - I was not able to produce working binary in reasonable time. Python-gammu itself seems to work, but when I run Wammu, it crashes quite soon. I tried to debug it for few evenings, but I was not successful.

Therefore I again ask for somebody who would be willing to maintain Windows build. Somebody with Windows experiences will be probably able to resolve problems much faster and will help creating application that will behave good on Windows. I am not able to achieve this as I do not know Windows much and do not use it at all.

Wammu 0.20

Wed, 16 May 2007 01:06:21 -0700

I just released version 0.20 of Wammu. This is mostly bugfix release, which fixes various bugs reported by users.

Improve locales behaviour (and require wxPython with Unicode).
Show time in call listings.
Fixed infinite loop in searching.
Fixed displaying of messages with special chars.
Fixed locale detection on system without configured locales.
Use different approach for detecting home directory on Windows.
Now requires PyWin32 on Windows.

Why do people buy non documented phones?

Tue, 15 May 2007 03:07:14 -0700

While working on Gammu, I still wonder why people who want to connect their phone to computer buy phones from vendors who use own proprietary protocol or do not share any documentation. Then they come to Gammu mailing list and/or bug tracker and want Gammu to support their phone. Sometimes the fix is easy, but usually it is quite lot of work to debug unknown protocol.

I know this situation quite good from past. I had Alcatel phone, which was using proprietary protocol for access to in phone contacts and events. Fortunately Alcatel released synchronisation software for these phones (it of course runs only on Windows) which had enabled debugging and it was quite easy to understand protocol thanks to logs it could produce. But as newer phones with some extensions appeared, maintaining this became harder and harder.

When I looked for new phone, I decided to buy Sony-Ericcsson K750i phone. Writing support for most of functionality (well in fact all I need) was just matter of few days. The reason why it was so fast was that this phones is using open standards (e.g. OBEX, IrMC) and vendor specific AT commands are documented in freely available documents.

It's your choice how good will your phone interoperate with computer. If you buy well documented piece of hardware, chance to have it fully supported is much higher.

Mailing lists for SVN commits

Thu, 10 May 2007 05:54:45 -0700

If you want to follow SVN commits on some of my SVN repositories, you can subscribe to appropriate maling list, which gets notification on each SVN commit. I hope I set up mailman correctly and everything will work as I expect :-).

This list is also automatically forwared to packages.qa.debian.org, so you can also subscribe there for Debian package changes.

Migration to Subversion completed

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:51:22 -0700

Today last batch of Wammu and python-gammu has been converted to Subversion. It was almost painless, it only required lot of CPU time. All project pages should now link to Subversion repositories and snapshots. Also all projects now have publicly available statistics on http://www.ohloh.net and http://cia.vc.

Unfortunately for python-gammu and Wammu are statistics a bit messed up - for Wammu ohloh didn't find license header, which is in almost every file, in python-gammu, doc string comments are not counted as being comments, so without it project has obviously to low comments ratio.

Anyway I was quite impressed by code grow of Wammu in last half year, because I still thing I don't have enough time for Wammu. However if their stats are true, the code amount grows quite fast in last months.

Converting to Subversion

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:51:05 -0700

After more playing with Tailor, I managed to hack it enough to convert my Arch repositories to Subversion. Move from distributed to non distributed VCS migth look as step backwards, but I have pretty good reasons for this:

Subversion is widely used and there is big chance that potential contributor will know how to use it. This lowers barrier for contributing (especially when compared to current Arch/Bazaar).
Subversion sucks much less than CVS which is other well known VCS.
If I want to work distributed I can still use Bazaar-NG with foreign branch features.

The conversion is currently on the way and will probably need some time (about half of Gammu revisions have been converted so far).

VCS conversion troubles

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 08:16:34 -0700

It's probably time to give up. I tried to tweak tailor to make it able to convert my repositories to Subversion for several times, but without any success. It also fails to convert it to Bazaar-NG or Git. Those are list of all VCS I consider to use in future.

I'd prefer to switch to subversion, because it is widely used and most people will be willing to use it, but I have not find any way to convert current VCS data to it. Maybe I will start with empty repository and forget the history.

Wammu has own domain - wammu.eu

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 12:40:49 -0700

Yesterday I decided to register wammu.eu domain for Wammu. One of reasons was that almost all other wammu.* variants are already taken by speculants and this name sounds good enough. The other reason is to give Wammu better accessible website. The old URL was not bad, but domain name sounds better :-). Also separate domain will allow later to have different CMS and/or design of Wammu pages, what is something I'd like to see, but don't have skills for that.

So please use http://wammu.eu for linking to Wammu. The old URLs are redirected to new location and they will stay redirected for long.

If there are any problems on new website, please notify me.