DMDircthe intelligent IRC client

With the upcoming version 0.6 of DMDirc (we know that it’s been a while since the last big release, we’ll blog about that soon) we have added support for even more operating systems.

As you probably know, DMDirc is written in Java which gives us a huge advantage as far as cross-platform compatibility is concerned. Java runs on all the major operating systems so most of the hard work has been done for us.

Up to DMDirc 0.5.6 we only supported Windows and Linux and provided a separate jar-only download for other platforms. For 0.6 the supported list of operating systems has more than doubled; we now package DMDirc for:

1. Linux
2. Windows
3. OS X
4. Open Solaris (and normal Solaris)
5. BSD (tested on PC-BSD, which is FreeBSD at the core)

This pretty much covers all major non-server operating systems, which we are quite pleased about.

The Installer for DMDirc runs on all of the above systems (apart from OS X, which has its own installation method) and where possible can download and install Java automatically. Currently the only exception to this is BSD, where users will need to compile the jdk16 port manually — unfortunately Sun’s licensing prevents redistribution of the modified JRE used on BSD.

The nightly builds have been working on all of the above operating systems for a while now, and you can browse and download the installers from our nightly builds page.

Since DMDirc 0.5.1, the Linux and Windows installers have received several major updates.

Firstly, the Linux installer was overhauled to show all of its messages in GUI dialog boxes where possible (using kdialog under KDE or zenity under gnome). This means that users don’t need to be running the installer from a console to see what went wrong. (The messages are still also relayed to the console). This update is part of the DMDirc 0.5.5 release, which should be available soon.

The next major change is that both the Windows and Linux installers are now capable of installing Java, either by using a JRE bundled with the installer or by downloading one from java.com. This is a major positive step as it means that it is possible for people who don’t have Java (or have an outdated version) to use DMDirc.

This new functionality is in all the nightly installers from December 24th onwards, comments/bug reports etc are welcome here and on the issue tracker.

DMDirc has now entered Feature Freeze for the 0.5 release (for more information about our release cycle, see this blog post).

New for this release we have decided to build Release Candidate builds approximately every day.
Release Candidate builds are just like the final release: they are installed using the new installer, and they are feature complete for 0.5. Their purpose is help discover/iron out any last bugs before we tag and release 0.5 into the wild and begin on 0.6.

RC1 was released yesterday (Downloads: Linux and Windows) with RC2 hopefully being ready tonight.

Once we get an RC build with no apparent bugs, we will release 0.5 :)

As part of our aim to make DMDirc into a good, cross-platform IRC Client, it was decided early on that it required an actual installer to make packaging/distributing/installing the client much easier.

Originally this was scheduled for 0.7, but just prior to the release of DMDirc 0.4 we rescheduled it to 0.5 and it was assigned to me (as I had the least other tasks to do - the main bulk of the parser is complete).

So since we released 0.4, I have been working almost entirely on this, and can happily say the first revision of the installer is completed.

One of the key requirements for the installer is that it should run on all the (desktop) platforms that DMDirc runs on, which right now are Windows (2000, XP, 2003, Vista) and Linux.

Below are a few screen shots showing the installer running on XP (using both Classic and Normal themes), and Windows Vista:

Linux screenshots coming soon.

Mac users may note that there is no Mac Version of the installer. This is due to the lack of availability of a Mac to test on, and the lack of a proper release of Java 6 for OS X. I am hoping to have the installer running on the Mac for the first release after Java 6 becomes available properly (although the lack of a Mac for testing could make this awkward - donations welcome!)

At the moment the installer requires Java 6 to be installed on the machine already. If the installer is ran on a machine without Java, or with a version that is too old, it will notify (via console in Linux, or a dialog box on Windows) the user that they need to install or update Java first. One of our goals for DMDirc 0.6 is to produce a version of the installer that bundles Java 6, or can download it for the user.

To allow for pre-release testing of the installer, you will find here two copies of the installer (one for Linux, one for Windows), and their MD5 hashes. These are pre-release, possibly unstable and/or broken versions of DMDirc, compiled against SVN revision 2030, and as such the installers or the client they install may not function, suddenly burst into flames, or sacrifice your first born child. These should, therefore, be used at your own risk. However, if the installers (or the client) actually do something they shouldn’t, or don’t do something they should please feel free to submit an issue report or reply to this post.

Now the files:

• Windows Pre-Release Installer (SVN Revision: 2030)
• Windows Pre-Release Installer MD5 checksum (SVN Revision: 2030)
• Linux Pre-Release Installer (SVN Revision: 2030)
• Linux Pre-Release Installer MD5 checksum (SVN Revision: 2030)

Clicking on “more” will go into more depth on how the installer(s) work.
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