The awesome Android developer Kai Wolf has been doing a great job working on an Android application that allows you to connect to your SparkleShare server. This is our first release, which focuses mainly on getting access to your files by browsing the server and downloading files. It hooks up to the SparkleShare Dashboard: the optional server side bits, that provides a web API but also folder and user management.
Once you’ve set up a Dashboard instance, linking your device is quite easy: just scan the QR code provided and you’ll be set up automatically.
The source code can be found on Github, where you can also file issues. If you’re an Android developer and would like to contribute, this would be a good place to start. If you would like to propose new features, please suggest them in SparkleShare Design Corner. For the next release we’ll be focusing on making the browsing experience a lot smoother, and on allowing uploading files too.
SparkleShare for Android can be found on the Market.
A first stable release had been in the air for a while now, but issues kept creeping up every now and then that were holding it back. The result was too much rewriting of the code and adding of features than that is good for after a release candidate, but after about two weeks of no critical bugs being reported, and the fact that it’s succesfully syncing my Linux box and Mac, after about a year since the start of the SparkleShare project, I’d like to finally announce SparkleShare 0.2!
Get the Linux an Mac versions fresh off the front page. There is a Mac binary available, but for Linux there’s still only source code. Hopefully the Linux distributions will make installable packages very soon. Please read the documentation before getting started.
Changes since 0.2 RC1
Added support for Growl to show notifications on Mac.
Removed the dependancy on GitSharp.
File rename detection support in the event logs.
Fixed all crashes reported in RC1 and improved sync algorithm.
Redid collision detection and conflict resolving (use a copy of each version).
For now, a central notification server (an irc daemon) is needed to notify clients of changes because there is no specific server side code yet. Only update infomation “Hey, there are new changes on the server!” is send. You can override this to use your own server by adding a <announcements>my-server.com</announcements> element to the appropriate folder element in ~/.config/sparkleshare/config.xml.
The Mac version doesn’t have file manager integration yet.
Resuming from suspend is a bit buggy. Restarting SparkleShare fixes it.
SparkleShare won’t yet be notified of changes made to the git repository manually by using the command line tools.
Plans for the near future
I would really like to try and get more people involved to work on the Windows version (it runs, but it’s hard to get running and it doesn’t integrate well with the system) and mobile versions for Android and iPhone (these would be simple clients, able to browse your files on the server, download and upload stuff, etc.).
Now that SparkleShare’s backend is pluggable, I’d like to implement something based on SFTP or similar. While Git is very cool, it’s not always the best solution for storing huge files in. So there are problems to be solved there. Git support will definitely always stay by default though, because it’s the most awesomest DVCS ever made. The right balance needs to be found between having a history and not using too much space.
More ideas can be found on the wiki. Join the IRC channel: #sparkleshare on irc.gnome.org, if you’re interested in helping.
Putting out a RC release to day to find out if there are any big issues before the first stable 0.2 release. The Linux version has been getting some love lately, and it’s now as pretty as its Mac brother.
Make sure to read the updated documentation for use on Github, Gitorious, or your own server.
The NEWS file: 0.2-rc1 for Linux and Mac (Sun Mar 20, 2011)
Hylke: A lot of fixes and optimisations across the backend. Less memory
usage, less crashes. Instant notifications of new changes instead of polling.
Refreshed event log HTML theme. Keeping logs in memory for faster reopening and
loads more goodness.
A more detailed list of changes, and roadmap, can be found on the wiki.
