Prayer Clock 1.0.0
Finally I release the Prayer Clock with version 1.0.0. For the internal engine, there is not much change. For the deployment, I tried to make several changes.
Firstly, I am using autotools (autoconf and automake) for the project, so that it is easier for me to maintain the project. Because this project targets for cross platform. Yes, I learnt quite a lot of things about autotools, really nice to use.
Secondly, I continue maintaining the Debian package. Actually, I target on Arch Linux, but I found that Debian and Arch Linux is binary compatible (for my project, I am not sure for others). So, I use Arch Linux to package it in Debian using dpkg. And I also make the PKGBUILD for Arch Linux package build. I choose Debian (not RPM), because previously I used Ubuntu. Besides that, I also follow the freedesktop.org specification for the icon and desktop entry. As a result, after installation, we can run the application from the menu item (just like Windows start menu). Because of this deployment, I change the file hierarchy based on Linux/Unix, which I am not familiar about this before.
Thirdly, since I am developing this project primarily in Linux, but yet Windows is also widely used, so I use MinGW32 cross compiling environment. Yeah, this is really a great project, because I can cross compile my project targeted on Windows using Linux. Moreover, the result is a standalone executable application without DLLs dependencies. I still using NSIS to deploy the program.
So, whoever likes the source code (I don’t think so), now can download the source code tarball which is generated by autotools.
Portable version? Yeah. the program is still portable. For Linux, download the Debian package, and extract it, it is portable. But make sure to run the application from bin/ as the working directory, else cannot read the data files. For Windows, it is also same method, running the file from bin/ directory, but I don’t provide portable installation in NSIS, (I may consider this for next release). That is why I do not provide portable version in SourceForge.net any more.
For the JPrayer Clock 1.0.0, I will not come out with it so soon since Prayer Clock (C++ version) fulfils my need. However, it is open source, anyone who likes it (but I don’t think so), just contribute.
The next plan for this project is to restructure the coding, because current one is quite messy.
Finally, I am proud of my new icon (I think so). Edited with GIMP. Great open source tool.
(Actually my next step is to continue with the game development which I am too slow.)
