A Pragmatic Perspective by Nino D'Aversa

0.8 Release – WiFi Scanning on Windows Mobile for Fennec

As I blogged about yesterday, I finally got my WiFi scanning stuff to work successfully on Windows Mobile for Fennec. This post serves as my official announcement of it’s release. I have cleaned up the code and updated my bug to include my latest revision. Also during my travels I discovered a minor bug in the win32 implementation of the code and filled a bug, and attached a patch to correct it (it’s very minor — a one liner). I found this release to be my most challenging yet. I’m proud that I was able to push through and get it working after getting my mind concrete on pointers.

Looking forward to my next release (only two more to go, where has the time gone) I plan to focus mainly on the Camera API implementation for Windows Mobile and to clean up any revisions necessary on my WiFi scanning code. I suspect the Camera API will be the last bug I tackle for this course, but definitely not my last contribution to Mozilla and Fennec. Also during this next release cycle I plan to blog on the state of Geolocation within Fennec at the request of Justin from the GPSObsessed.com.

0.8 Release Update – Know Thy Pointers

I want to start by saying I’m so glad to be writing this blog post. I spent the past 12 hours going through a pointer and memory shit pipe and I have come out clean on the other end. I can’t help but feel like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption.

I (re)learned some critical skills today and I’m happy I took the time to refresh. My WiFi scanning code has an abundance of memory allocations (stack vs heap) and heavy usage of pointers with a whole slew of reinterpret_cast’s. I found myself a little rusty on the topic of pointers (I blame my lazy ASP/C# thinking) and as fate would have it Academic Earth came across my feeds this morning. I was wracking my brain trying to remember all the things Chris Szalwinski taught us in those first year BTP courses and I was glad to find an excellent professor on Academic Earth. I highly recommend the lecture on pointers and the subsequent one on arrays and dynamic memory allocation. I know it’s old knowledge and stuff we should all know like the back of our hands, but the old adage if you don’t use it, you lose it applies. I have spent the last two years focusing on nice safe languages like C# and Java where pointers and memory management are all hidden away and forgotten about. This refresh has been invaluable in my days success and I thought I would make a point (no pun intended) to getting on my soap box of the importance of fundamentals </rant>.

So after all that hard work I managed to get the WiFi scanning stuff going, it’s not at the point where it’s ready for Doug to peruse but it is working and that makes me very happy. I have some cleanup work to do on this tomorrow in preparation for submission for review from Doug and as my 0.8 release for Dave. In the meantime checkout this screen shot which shows an alert dialog with my home access point’s MAC address, SSID and RSSI.

0.8 Release: WiFi Scanning Test

I’m excited to get this patch in the tree soon, this will make the geolocation request on Windows Mobile quicker by providing location data from WiFi while the GPS unit turns on.

Finally thanks to Mike for the answer to my question (use a reference to a pointer — which lead me to this excellent resource) and to Gavin who pointed out the ‘dom.max_script_run_time’ preference so I could get rid of those annoying slow running script prompts.

0.8 Release Update – WiFi Scanning on Windows Mobile for Fennec

I have spent a considerable amount of time on my 0.8 release this weekend (I really need to catch up in a few other courses :S ). I’m still trying to get the WiFi scanning stuff working for Windows Mobile. I have corrected some bugs and in the process have introduced a new one. After some code rearranging my nsStringArray no longer seems to work right, I get a null pointer now (more specifically the impl structure inside nsVoidArray is null). I have followed the same logic as Doug in his win32 implementation here. However I have this null pointer problem now, I’m going to seek some help tomorrow when more people are alive on IRC. As a result I am redrafting my release expectations for my 0.8. I am dropping the Camera API for this iteration and plan to focus on getting a working WiFi scanner for Windows Mobile. This will leave me with two release cycles to do the Camera API and clean up any issues with the WiFi scanner. I have updated my WIP bug to include the latest version of my patch. If anyone can shed some light on this problem it would be appreciated.

0.7 Release – Geolocation (WiFi Scanning and GPS) for Fennec on Windows Mobile

So I think I have finally done enough to wrap up what I’m calling my 0.7 release.

As part of this release I am including all revisions needed to get my GPS work for Fennec an r+ from Doug (and +sr from jst). The bug is now marked [checkin-needed] and Doug said he will land it when the tree opens!

Also I am including my WIP patch for WiFi Scanning for Windows Mobile on Fennec. I am currently in the process of testing it, although not 100% complete yet I have spent a lot of time hacking away at it and glad that I’m finally able to build with it. I’ll be reporting more on the testing this weekend.

With regards to my 0.8 release my current intentions are to finish up / follow up on this WiFi scanning work and to get started on my Camera API stuff. More to come on that in the coming days.

0.7 Release Update (Fennec – Geolocation)

Good news came in this evening. I got an r+ from Doug on my geolocation bug. Doug marked jst for a super-review,  hopefully an sr+ is in my future. I have begun work on the WiFi Scanning for Windows Mobile, my bug can be found here. Also Doug granted me some extra permissions on Bugzilla. I can now confirm and edit anything on a bug!