[Xastir] boot from external drive?

[Curt, WE7U]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Jason Winningham wrote:

> I'll take this chance to lobby the developers once again to please
> target xastir 2 to some cross-platform development environment, so we
> can run native on windows.  I don't do windows, but there are just
> too blasted many people who do.

Can't answer your questions about bootable Linux distributions.

As far as the new development, I'm a proponent of cross-platform
tools as well, and did the work on the README.win32 document after a
couple of users reported that Xastir could be run on Windows.
You're speaking to the choir here.

I'm not quite in a position to start hacking on new code yet, but
it shouldn't be too many months longer.  I was mostly silent during
the last round of "wouldn't it be great if..." discussions about
Xastir-2 'cuz I just didn't have the time/energy at that time to
participate.  Or code.

Current thoughts about the matter:

*) DAEMON:  We need a daemon that handles the interfaces, does the
transmit timing, and talks to a database.  This part of it does NOT
have to have any kind of GUI interface at all, but we could create a
separate (GUI or text) program just for use in configuring it.  A
person could choose to run just the daemon and the database and
connect other clients to it, without running any Xastir GUI clients.

*) DATABASE:  The initial database is probably going to be
PostgreSQL with PostGIS extensions.  As we implement this part of
the code we should code for database independence though, including
but not limited to MySQL, SQLite, and even perhaps Berkeley DB
files.

*) GUI:  This is problematic.  Some of the handheld devices are Gtk
only.  Some are Qt only.  We currently program with Motif but that
is not in vogue anymore and lately has been problematic.  Something
like WxWidgets could also work across multiple platforms but it
looks kind of "lowest common denominator".  Duplication of the GUI
programs will probably occur as people may need a Gtk and a Qt
application for two different platforms.

*) LANGUAGE(S):  Can be different for each piece.  The daemon will
most likely be written in C or C++.  The GUI pieces may be written
in several languages as they only need to interface with the Xastir
daemon API.

I'm envisioning this as a standard setup:

- Xastir Daemon.  Because one of my buddies like's to call our
  project "Disaster", just for fun I'll call it "DXASTIR" for now.
- PostgreSQL + PostGIS extensions.
- Messaging/Bulletins GUI:  Gtk and Qt versions.
- Map GUI:  Gtk and Qt versions.
- Other GUI's for other pieces we might need:  Gtk and Qt versions.
- Dxastir Configuration GUI: Gtk and Qt versions.
- Other GUI pieces as needed (I'm sure I forgot some).
- "Make" scripts using one of the newer cross-platform build systems
  perhaps?  Looking for suggestions here:  Automake/autoconf -
  probably not!  Maven?  Ant?  Others?

While we're at it, I'd also like to import maps and store them in
our own internal format.  This would allow us to take image maps in
some other projection and/or datum and convert them to what we need
for display - ONCE!

Same for vector maps:  Convert them once and be done with it.  The
vector maps could (should?) also be stored in the database instead
of as flat files.  That's where the spatially-aware database comes
in.

Intended "Make" targets:
    Solaris
    HP-UX
    Linux (many variants)
    Windows, 98 through Vista
    Nokia N800/N810 and similar handhelds (Gtk)
    Qtopia handhelds
    Others?

Security of the daemon, database, and API is also a factor.
Discussions on this are welcome.  I'd also like to have the ability
to "remote control" the daemon, so that I could change it's
configuration and have it adopt the new configuration easily, plus
have a web-based method of showing/manipulating a map screen.

To be absolutely clear here, we're talking MULTIPLE applications
here.  A "family" of applications instead of one monolithic program
that does everything (as we have now).

--
Curt, WE7U: <www.eskimo.com/~archer/>     XASTIR: <www.xastir.org>
  "Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!