Weekly News 2002-12-08

Mnet Hack Day

I think there was a gathering of Mnet Hackers on 2002-12-08, but I was distracted by a visiting relative.

progress

Partial downloads are now cached so that when you next attempt to download the same file it starts where it left off. In addition, downloads that were in progress when the Mnet Node shut down are automatically restarted when the Node is started again. Finally, these two features made the need for a "cancel" button more urgent, so the cancel button has been implemented (but it currently has a bug).

We're working toward releasing v0.6. The currently lists three open bugs that have to be fixed before the final release of v0.6. You can help by downloading one of the v0.6 Release Candidates from the download page.

We finally got Mnet to compile and run on Mac OS X, but there are still some problems. The biggest problem is that the nice wxPython-based GUI doesn't run on Mac OS X yet (we have to figure out how to compile the various pieces -- Python, wxPython, and Mnet -- to work together on Mac OS X) so users are limited to the old and minimal HTTP GUI.

help wanted

The Mnet Hackers are always happy to have more help. Major projects currently underway include the v0.6 release (we can always use more testing and bug reporting) and the "re-organized codebase" project which could use hackers to change all the code to fit the new coding standards and to get all of the Python extension modules to build and link on all platforms using the new distutils build system.