The Open World Forum [1] is a yearly conference about Open Source, of which the fourth edition took place last week in Paris, France. A programming contest was organized during the first two days [2], for which a source code sample could be uploaded to win a few prizes (and exposure).

This was a great occasion to finally write a graphical user interface for the deassembly framework [3], using the library from the asm project. It was called "gdeasm" and pushed into the GEDI project, even though it is not mature yet [4]. Of course, it also allowed for a few bugfixes and improvements to the library.

The actual submission for the contest can be found here [5]. After winning the vote tally, it was awarded the second place of the contest by the jury. Besides an awesome prize from HP (a brand new laptop), I could speak about the project for a few minutes on stage, which is probably the first time this happened while being recorded.

I would therefore like to thank the organizers and sponsors of this event (Microsoft, HP, af83) and for a great conference. Looking forward to the next edition!

[1] http://www.openworldforum.org/
[2] http://www.openworldforum.org/Univers/Code/Awards
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/project/15/asm
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/project/browse/11?file=/Apps/Devel/src/GEDI/tools/gdeasm.c,v
[5] http://openworldforum.cloudapp.net/projects/graphical-cross-architecture-deassembler

A third release of the mail client [2] is now available, still logically labeled as version 0.0.3 [2]. Support for the IMAP4 protocol is slowly getting good enough for daily use, with some more bugs eliminated.

Additionally, software packages for NetBSD [3], Debian/hackable:1 [4] and Maemo [5] are available already, as referenced below.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/268/Mailer
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3548/Mailer-0.0.3.tar.gz
[3] http://cvsweb.netbsd.se/cgi-bin/bsdweb.cgi/wip/deforaos-mailer/
[4] http://build.hackable1.org/
[5] http://people.defora.org/~khorben/place/blog/123/hackable-1-builds-and-provides-a-package-repository-for-Maemo

The current status of the (de-)assembler project, asm [1], was demonstrated earlier this month during "Pas Sage en Seine 2011", a security and Open Source event held yearly in Paris [2]. The session was about disassembling Android applications in particular [3] and was even filmed [4] (in French though).

It was a good opportunity to release everything necessary to build and use asm, which means:

• libSystem 0.1.6 [5]
• cpp 0.0.1 [6]
• asm 0.2.0 [7]

Additionally, both the cpp and asm projects have already found their way into pkgsrc-wip [8] as wip/deforaos-cpp and wip/deforaos-asm, where they can be packaged for NetBSD, and hopefully most platforms supported by pkgsrc as well.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/15/asm
[2] http://www.passageenseine.org/pes-2011/
[3] http://people.defora.org/~khorben/place/blog/137/Disassembling-Android-applications-at-PSES-2011
[4] http://lacantine.ubicast.eu/videos/pses-disassembling-android-application/
[5] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3527/libSystem-0.1.6.tar.gz
[6] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3542/cpp-0.0.1.tar.gz
[7] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3545/asm-0.2.0.tar.gz
[8] http://pkgsrc-wip.sf.net/

This project [1] is among the oldest within the DeforaOS graphical applications [2], and it is finally good enough for a release: the first redistributable archive for the mail client is out! [3]

Logically labeled as 0.0.1, it already features:

• viewing local folders (via the mbox format)
• support for the POP3 protocol
• likewise for the IMAP4 protocol
• sending e-mail via the local mailer
• a user interface suitable for embedded devices [4]

Unfortunately the codebase is not entirely bug-free, with known usability issues, and some crashes while handling preferences. Still, I believe it can already be useful in a number of cases, and it is very lightweight indeed.

Packaging for various platforms will follow, of course.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/268/Mailer
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3426/Graphical-environment
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3539/Mailer-0.0.1.tar.gz
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3438/DeforaOS-Smartphone

The first modifications allowing DeforaOS to be built on Windows have been pushed in the past couple of days. Some projects can be compiled successfully with a native Windows environment already: libSystem, libApp, libParser, configure and Calendar for instance. Porting more Gtk+ applications would be interesting and should be fairly easy. This was tested with gcc, as found in the MinGW project [1].

Many more projects could be compiled with Cygwin of course [2], as it provides a complete POSIX environment. Still, it would be more interesting to be able to run the distributed framework [3] and graphical applications [4] natively on this platform as well.

[1] http://www.mingw.org/
[2] http://www.cygwin.com/
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3427/Distributed-environment
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3426/Graphical-environment

Earlier this month a new project, PDFViewer [1] was introduced by zecrazytux [2], an external contributor who also participated to the hackable:1 project [3]. It adds a simple and efficient application to the desktop environment [4], visualizing PDF files through the poppler library [5].

Of course it can already be found among the other projects developed and listed here [6]. Many thanks to zecrazytux for this contribution!

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/3530/PDFViewer
[2] http://zecrazytux.net/
[3] http://www.hackable1.org/
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3426/Graphical-environment
[5] http://poppler.freedesktop.org/
[6] http://www.defora.org/os/project/list

A lot of work has been pushed recently into the (de-)assembler project [1]. It is much more flexible, and much better at handling different architectures now. It was considered meaningful to rename the project (and main executable) to "asm", which also has the advantage to no longer conflict with GNU's own assembly program [2].

Among the most interesting additions:

• really support the sparc and sparc64 architectures;
• improved the language grammar (handling of memory locations)
• the ability to de-assemble Android's Dex executable format (and Dalvik bytecode)
• on-the-fly de-assembly from the command-line;
• simpler, more efficient API.

The relevant plug-in from the C compiler project, c99 [3], was renamed and modified as well.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/15/asm
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/project/890/c99

First, the milestone planned for Q1 2011 can be considered reached [1], with the final touches being applied to the dse2 release of hackable:1, or "DeforaOS Smartphone Environment" [2].

The next steps are not entirely clear now. The plan is still to leverage the distributed computing framework at the core of the project. Some early drafts were defined for the (re-)implementation, but the actual development process will not happen as originally planned and hoped together with researchers from the Technische-Universität of Berlin [3] (and no one but myself is really to blame for it). Nevertheless, alternative ways to achieve this same goal are being considered, still concentrating on the current state of the art of "Clean-Slate Internet design" as currently being researched by a number of universities around the world.

Meanwhile, some work has been pushed in two main areas:

• preparing the migration to Gtk+ 3.0,
• improving the assembly framework.

This first item is doing well already, although libDesktop will need a new compatibility layer (for keyboard shortcuts), and some specific parts will have to be re-implemented (X11 messaging and GDK-based picture blits).

The assembly framework is undergoing major changes, which were detailed on the development mailing-list already [5]. To put it shortly, the "as" project was renamed to "asm", and features a rewrite of the architecture plug-ins, along with improvements to the language syntax. Support for Windows (PE) and Android applications is being added as well.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/display/3324/Roadmap
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3438/DeforaOS-Smartphone
[3] http://www.net.t-labs.tu-berlin.de/teaching/thesis/#network_virtu
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/3523/Clean-Slate-Internet-design
[5] http://lists.defora.org/devel/2011/04/msg00021.html

As was just mentioned in the project's Wiki [1], there is now an official IRC channel for the project: #DeforaOS on the OFTC network [2].

Everyone is welcome to join and have a chat over there, even though of course it is primarily meant for discussions and support around the DeforaOS project.

[1] http://www.defora.org/os/wiki/1172/Support
[2] http://www.oftc.net/

Another series of releases just made it to their respective download pages, so that the RunningBear [1] project can download them directly to build images, instead of duplicating the code there.

Among them, please welcome:

• sh 0.1.1 [2]
• utils 0.0.3 [3]
• others 0.0.1 [4]

This goes without mentioning the libc, which was just released as 0.0.5 [5].

[1] http://runningbear.org/
[2] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3479/sh-0.1.1.tar.gz
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3481/utils-0.0.3.tar.gz
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3483/others-0.0.1.tar.gz
[5] http://www.defora.org/os/download/download/3477/libc-0.0.5.tar.gz