[Box Backup] Boxi with 0.10 server?

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Paul,

> I'm trying to get boxi working on M$ Windoze, talking to the latest 
> (0.10) bbstored on FreeBSD.  The binary distribution is compiled against 
> the 0.09 protocol, and the only source that I can find has the 0.09 
> libraries firmly embedded.

Yes, Boxi work has been on hold for a while, since I've been helping to 
get 0.10 released with the native win32 port.

As far as I know, Box Backup 0.10 does NOT work on Cygwin. The errors seem 
to be down to internal data corruption, but at least the unit tests will 
detect it and help you to reproduce them.

> I've started to do the port.  The eay part is hacking "configure" to drop
> in the 0.10 libraries.  The hard part is getting it to compile under
> Cygwin.  I took a brief look at using VC++, but decided that it would be
> quicker and easier with Cygwin (less cross-platform cruft, plus I'm more at
> home in a Unix environment).

You may have problems with the CVS version of Boxi - it's nowhere near 
stable yet, with many half-implemented features. On the other hand, it 
does have some of the major changes that were required to make Boxi work 
with Box Backup 0.10 (or rather with intermediate trunk versions).

If you'd rather use Cygwin than native, then you might want to consider 
running a 0.09 server for the time being, since Boxi 0.0.7 should work 
"out of the box" with it (I think 0.1.0 will too, but you'll have to 
compile it at least).

If you haven't tried 0.0.7 + Box Backup 0.09 yet, then I'd strongly 
suggest that you do so before investing any time in porting Boxi to use 
Box Backup 0.10. In particular, look out for whether you actually need any 
features which were added in 0.10.

> Before I get too carried away, has anyone done this, or started with it? 
> Or started and given up?  I need a GUI client pretty soon, and the 
> options that I can see are to port boxi to 0.10 (preferred, but a fair 
> amount of work) or to write a VB/VC++ wrapper for 
> bbackupquery/bbackupctl and use that instead (quick and nasty).

I will have to get back into Boxi soon, and I may as well start with 
wrapping up the work I've started in CVS, porting forward to 0.10, 
porting to MSVC, and preparing for another release.

This process will probably take a couple of months, although any help you 
can give me would be greatly appreciated and probably speed things up.

Unfortunately I'm about to go to Ghana for three months (leaving tomorrow) 
and I don't know how good my internet access there will be, so it might 
make collaboration difficult. I will at least try to upload any changes to 
CVS every few days.

How soon is "soon" for you? Do you mind having a GUI client with the basic 
functionality but some features missing? What are important features for 
you?

Cheers, Chris.
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