New twitter client for classic Amigas, any beta testers?

[ciVic]

Hi all,

in the past weeks I've written a new client for twitter for classic Amigas. You [strike]will be [/strike] are able to download it from aminet:

[size=+1]http://aminet.net/package/comm/misc/twittAmiga[/size]

 If you experience problems please start it from a shell  

Code: [Select]

twittamiga debug
or try the version with ixemul:
http://d-fence.cjb.net/twittAmiga.lha

Why did I do this? Well, Amiga was my main computer in the nineties, MUI has its 20th anniversary next year, and my latest amiga program is also 20 years old. Time to write a new one, this time using MUI, which I never used before. So i thought about what kind of program I could write this time and I thought a twitter client would be a cool thing.

Since twitter requires OAuth it is not easy to write a client from scratch. Therefore I used some libs like libcurl and libxml2 to get it working. This makes the exe quite large, sorry for that. And since I wanted to have a working client first there are only a few features. But when I'm in the mood to make updates I will make a poll which new featuers would be interesting. E.g. the streaming API (something like push mail) or a user timeline in a threaded view known from forums.

If you find bugs (and I think there will be some) you can post them here. I also do not know what exactly are the minimum requirements. Some MUI classes for sure, and some MB of RAM, but which OS version I'm not sure. Remember to set your username and password in the tooltypes before the first start.

Happy testing :-)

Edit: Version 1.35 is out. Changes:
- Changed from libxml2 to xml2.library, no more ixemul!
- Less RAM needed
- Debug output optional

[ciVic]

Screenshots :-)

[ciVic]

Here's a screenshot of twittAmiga running on my 030 A1200. I was able to send a "tweet" but it failed and gave me this error message when attempting to load the feed...

Since you already said, that you only have 8 MB RAM I think that it is not enough to load the timeline. I think this needs a lot of RAM since I use the libxml2 to parse the whole thing.
That's too bad, I hoped 8 MB is enough. I will see if I can reduce the memory usage. If you think there must an other reason for this error you could start it from a shell:

twittamiga >debug.log

Then I can see at which state it crashes. But before sending the log to me check if there isn't anything private inside (I hope I do not log passwords ;-) ).

And yes, it would be very nice if you could create some icons for it. I also see on your screenshot, that the icon I made for the exe does not work (oh I think now I know what the switch OS 3.9 icon is for *lol*). I'm a programmer, not an icon expert. So I think you can make much nicer icons.

[ciVic]

Edit: Here's the log file from the results, the program failed again after trying to load the feed: http://pastebin.com/VTmiKTue

It really looks like a problem with the libxml2. Page loading was successful, but when the xml file is passed to the libxml2 it crashes before anything can be found in the file. Ok many thanx, I will try to find a setup where I have the same problem, maybe I should try OS 3.1.

[ciVic]

Version of my ixemul.library  is 63.1. Maybe your ixemul is too old, Rebel-CD32?

[ciVic]

I tried it here on OS4, not expecting it to work due to the ixemul dependency.  After a couple of Grim Reaper alerts (one from bsdsocket, one for HTMLview) which I ignored past, it actually logged me in successfully. I proceeded to load my timeline, which got partway through, and then ixemul threw up an "Abort Trap" error.

Any way you can get rid of the dependency on ixemul?

I'm using libxml2 for parsing the timeline. And libxml2 needs ixemul. So to get rid of ixemul means that libmxl2 must be compiled without.
But these days I'm trying to install OS 4 on my classic Amiga. When it was successful i will try to make a native OS 4 version. As far as I know OS 4 has also a libxml2?

Edit: I've found the xml2.library, seems to be a newer and native version of libxml2. Should try it out.

[ciVic]

I developed it on an emulated Amiga with Amikit, but also tested it many times on my real A4000D with OS 3.9. As I can see in the log, it started normally, you pressed home, the timeline was loaded and it crashed again when it was passed to libxml2. What about the others here? Same problems with libxml2?

Edit: Seems to be an old log. It is 18 h old.

[ciVic]

Yes that's really short and strange. In line 8 you can see the time twittAmiga retrieved from the OS. It is needed for the signature sent with each twitter request. In line 16 a line of such a request is printed. The line is the string within the brackets. I can see the opening bracket, but it seems that twittAmiga crashed during printing this string on the screen as there is no closing bracket and the time stamp is too short. It should be printed completely on the screen since, as far as I know, the \n at the end of the line causes a flush. So the function that crashed here is the printf. This can happend if there is code that overwrites memory at wrong addresses, like uninitialized pointers.

I will set up an emulated :biglaugh: Amiga with OS 3.1 now and see what happens.

Edit: Blank 3.1 installed (including MUI and ixemul 63.1). Everything works. I admit that an emulated Amiga is not a good test, since some things cannot be tested, e.g. there is no real Amiga TCP/IP stack. Even though I can say the stack of OS 3.9 does not make any problems on my A4000.
Maybe I should take time to set up a real Amiga with 3.1. Which stack do you use?

[ciVic]

New version is out. This new one no more needs the ixemul.library, since I switched from libxml2 to xml2.library (Version 4.0, you can find it on amiga.sf). It also need less RAM and should be faster, because the debug output is now optional.

So maybe it runs now also on OS4, but not sure, will test it.

[ciVic]

Can you send me an error log when this happends? Or maybe when it locks up in different situations? You can do it by typing
twittamiga debug >debug.log

Thank you!

[ciVic]

Yesterday I was able to test it for myself on my new OS 4 installation, and I have exactly the same problems. I found on the sourceforge page of HTMLView bug reports for the OS 4 Version. It seems, that the parser thread of the HTMLView does not work in the OS 4 Version.

But I do not know why the bsdsocket.library crashed. I'm using libcurl, and libcurl uses the bsdsocket.library. So two possibilities, bsdsocket has a bug, or libcurl, I would say libcurl. Would be no problem to use the OS4 native curl, but I do not know how to fix the HTMLView problems. Maybe it was not a good idea to use HTMLView or maybe a simple recompile on OS4 solves it. Currently I'm installing the OS4 SDK.

[ciVic]

Will be a good idea as soon as my SDK is installed On the other hand, debugging HTMLView or curl/bsdsocket.library is not my intention.

[ciVic]

I'm currently porting it to OS4. Don't know how long it takes, there are some small differences in using libraries. But I know that I love CodeBench
Hopefully HTMLView works in a native version, is there any OS4 software using it?

[ciVic]

While programming for a new version, I recently got this returned by twitter:

Code: [Select]


<?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;utf-8&quot;?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC &quot;-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN&quot;
 &quot;http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd&quot;>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>503 Service Unavailable</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Error 503 Service Unavailable</h1>
    <p>Service Unavailable</p>
    <h3>Guru Meditation:</h3>
    <p>XID: 888401680</p>
    <address>
       <a href=&quot;http://www.varnish-cache.org/&quot;>Varnish</a>
    </address>
  </body>
</html>


I like twitter and varnish cache :biglaugh: Feels like home

[ciVic]

This might be a problem. AFAIK the current (last) version of HTMLview.os4 doesn't run and seems to be severe broken. The 68k (OS3.x) version doesn't behave really better. I tried to test your 68k (OS3.x) build with OS4.1 - no way, it crashes unrecoverable while trying to start/use HTMLview...

Yes, the OS 4 native version is really a problem. But I was able to start an OS 4 native twittAmiga with the OS 3 HTMLView (the OS 3 libcurl also causes crashes, therefore twittAmiga must be native).