Builds Just Keep on Rolling

High above downtown Austin you would think it's easy to forget how many people depend on the timely delivery of Carbide in order to pursue their daily goals in developing Symbian programs. Let me be the first to say that is not true. We try very hard in every meeting to bring customer concerns into the discussion to ensure that we remain focused on features, improvements, and bug fixes that will help the majority of our developers.

However, while time itself is infinite, the amount of time between Carbide releases is not, and so we sometimes have to make hard choices on what goes into a release versus what can't make it into the next release. As you might imagine, this tug-of-war is in constant flux as we struggle to achieve the best balance for all. Sometimes we aren't successful and sometimes we hit it out of the ballpark, but then, that's simply the nature of software development.

So, ignoring the rambling above I really just wanted to point out to everyone that even though v2.3 was released early in December we haven't stopped development. As you can imagine, there is a lag when we finish one release and it makes its way out to the public.

However, for those of you paying attention, there is a better way of keeping up with Carbide development, and that is the Carbide.c++ Milestone Downloads pages where we post milestone releases of Carbide for you to try out before they are final.

And, for those with an even greater need for the latest builds, visit the Carbide.c++ Development Build Downloads page for more common developer builds for your enjoyment. Note that the developer builds are not fully tested, so take care when using them as some problems are sure to remain.

Right now, the Carbide.c++ v2.4 milestone build is available for downloading. Have at it and let us know what you think.

NOTE Classic image drawn and copyrighted by the incomparable R. Crumb.

Pre-Holiday Carbide News (Late Edition)

So, it's well past the last holiday and hopefully by now everyone has gotten back into the working spirit. Here in Austin its been cold and rainy and mild and cloudy and warm and dry. Pick your day and the weather's been different.

So, some late news. The Symbian Foundation updated their Application Developer Toolkit (ADT) download to v1.4 in early December. It contains the latest public release of Carbide.c++, v2.3 as part of the update. If you haven't already grabbed it then you should rush right out and do so.

Carbide.c++ 2.3 has a few small additions to it including:

- P2 update services now supported. Updating Carbide.c++ should be more flexible and easier than before.

- The official Qt code style is now included in the Code Style preference panel.

- Single file compiles on Raptor are now supported.

As well as the following v2.2 features:

- Eclipse 3.5 — The Eclipse 3.5 project (Galileo) provides the foundation, or integration platform, on which Carbide.c++ is built.

- CDT 6.0 — The final version of CDT included as part of the Galileo release.

- Java 6.0 — Due to the above changes Carbide has also updated to use the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6.0.

- SBSv2 arguments field - added a text field to the Build > SBSv2 panel to allow parameter passing to Raptor builds.

- Carbide.c++ News Reader - now uses the proxy data provided by Eclipse when creating help connections.

Going forward we are working hard on future versions of Carbide scheduled for release in late spring. More details on that as we get closer to delivery.

Bring Out Your Votes

In September we finally got around to updating the Carbide Bugzilla site to use the latest Bugzilla 3.4.2 release. I won't go into a long rant about how difficult it was, how much code re-factoring was done, nor how Perl updating is badly broken (at least on my installation).

Needless to say we are going to improve our process so as not to wait 2+ years before we perform the next update.

In the mean time you have new improved Bugzilla to submit bugs on, with improved features, more security, and the same database underneath.

With this update we also decide to activate a common Bugzilla feature, namely voting. Everyone now has 10 votes to cast towards the fixing of any bug still open. We will be watching for those bugs that naturally gravitate to the top of the voting list and acting on them as quickly as possible.

You have a total of 10 votes to cast, of which no more than 2 can go to any single bug, so spread them around. Once a bug that you voted for is fixed, the votes cast on it are returned to you for use elsewhere. Get your friends to vote with you, especially if you have something annoying everyone. We'll be sure to look at it.

Image by Gil Elvgren, one of the most important glamour artists of the twentieth century.

Carbide.c++ v2.WOW

In case you have not heard the news, Carbide just got a bit faster. And if you work with very (very) large projects, then Carbide just got a whole lot faster!

Carbide.c++ v2.1 (or 2.WOW) has several improvements and most notable are in the area of performance. We focused on improving performance in a few typical uses and we hope that you will notice the difference.

In the following case, we benchmarked a project that imports EUSER. In earlier version of Carbide it would take several minutes (8.5 minutes in our tests) to import the project. The basic problems are (a) to root directory was calculated too high which resulted in (b) bringing way too many files into Carbide which also needed indexed. Carbide now selects a better root directory – less files to import, and faster importing times. We also make some additional changes under the hood. The result – for EUSER – rather significant results:

Other improvements besides importing.

• Indexing – due to smarter placement of the project root
• Executable View – when debugging, the IDE would get sluggish because EV was refreshing frequently. IDE should be more responsive when debugging.
• Changes to project settings, bld.inf files, re-opening workspace. You should notice a snappier response when changing workspaces or re-opening your workspace. The previous versions were refreshing too frequently.

You can get Carbide.c++ v2.WOW at the following retailers:

Symbian Foundation. Download the ADT (or PDT) v 1 product which contains Carbide v2.0.4. Inside of Carbide, UPDATE your product using the Update Manager (From Carbide, click Help – Software Updates).

Nokia Internal – SymSEE 10.2 (Available Aug 27) or visit the Carbide wiki page at http://s60wiki.nokia.com/S60Wiki/Carbide_Rollout and click on Beta Tester link (This link works only inside Nokia networks)

Warm and Lazy Days of Summer

By warm I really mean hot, hot, hot here in Austin. What's that song line, "... like 7 inches from the midday sun." Yeah, that hot.

And by lazy I mean that we just finished yet another release of Carbide for your enjoyment. Carbide.c++ 2.1 is now ready with some improvements that should make many of you very happy.

The goal of this release was performance. After spending years getting the feature set into place we listened and heard from all of you that performance was your number one issue. We listened and we acted. Our developers spent a lot of time combing through bugs for performance related issues, testing various scenario profiles to determine which tweaks would make a huge difference, and then relentlessly auto-tested them to ensure the changes really did improve usability.

Importing large projects is much faster, swapping launch configurations take a second, indexing MMPs is improved, and several other areas received changes. There's also a score of small feature improvements as well, but the major focus was on performance gains.

You can go here for a list of the various tests and some graphs of the improvements or simply read all about them in the Release Notes inside the Carbide.c++ User Guide.

NOTE: This post was copied from the Carbide News blog to get this one up and running.