Re: [hobbit] Feasibility of Windows Client

["Etienne Grignon" <etienne.grignon (at) gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I wanted to make you the surprise but I think I have to announce it today.

I'm thinking of an open source big brother hobbit client for months and
started to code it 2 month ago.

The client is coded in C++ using the platform SDK, the visual C++ toolkit
(free edition of the compiler). I have written the program with the idea: "I
want to make it work without installing nothing more than a default Windows
2000 installation".

It will work as a native service and it will not be a monolithic program as
the actual quest bbnt.  We are in 2006, I think each program should have
been written to take part of the plug in architecture. So, the service is
actually an engine loading native agent (dll). So, the service loads the
agents and it schedules their execution.


Of course, one of my agent is called externals.dll and will be able to
execute all existing scripts that every one are using with the original
bbnt. But, for the future, every one will be able to develop native agents
(using a small C++ api that I wrote).

So, at first, I'm working on externals agent and with important agents as
cpu, disk and memory (respectively: cpu.dll, disk.dll, memory.dll). For
events, I'm waiting to be able to implement the same thing that Henrik is
making for the unix agent.

 About the configuration, it is done thanks to the registry only for paths
information, and the configuration of the service and each agent is done
with a nice XML configuration file.

 About the installer, it will be a native MSI written using the wix toolkit
to be able to deploy the package very easily. I'm working on it but for the
moment, but my concentration for the moment is really on the service and the
agents.

 Now, let's talk about the project name:

 The software is called bbwin (project already created on bbwin) I will try
to post the source soon after the preview release. (For the moment, I'm
trying to find a nice way to publish posts from my subversion repository to
the cvs sourceforge repository :)  )


There will be 2 executables:

 Bbwin.Exe : build as a native service

 Bbwincmd.exe : it is a simple command line client as bb.exe on unix, it is
compiled with my hobbit protocol C++ class implementing 95 % of the
protocol. I posted a preview on sourceforge :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=136450&package_id=149927&release_id=397674


About compatibility, it should work well on Windows XP, Windows 2000,
Windows 2003 and also on Windows NT 4.0 SP 6. For 64 bits, I have no
hardware to test for the moment.


Also, Henrik, you told us that you knew someone working on it. Would it be
possible for you to make me in contact with him ? May be we could work
together. Even, if for the moment, I don't have much of native agents, I
think working together could be cool and try to get the best of the 2
windows clients.


So please, wait some days, I'm preparing a first preview so, you will be
able to judge on it. I will post a new message on the list on March 15th .


Last thing, if you are going to renew your bbnt licence pack, I think you
should wait some time …  : )




Etienne (aka sharpyy)