Enlightenment News

Several core EFL libraries have now been released as alpha. This means the API is "good to go", but there may be bugs. The focus is on fixing bugs now and keeping API stable for a full release once bugs are gone. You can get the alpha releases of Eina, Eet, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, Efreet, E_Dbus and Eeze here.

You can also get the above libraries in their alpha state if you check out SVN revision 51480. The following libraries are in alpha state for the following versions:

• Eina - 1.0.0 ALPHA
• Eet - 1.4.0 ALPHA
• Evas - 1.0.0 ALPHA
• Ecore - 1.0.0 ALPHA
• Embryo - 1.0.0 ALPHA
• Edje - 1.0.0 ALPHA
• E_Dbus - 1.0.0 ALPHA
• Efreet - 1.0.0 ALPHA
• Eeze - 1.0.0 ALPHA

Eet 1.3.2 has been released with several bugfixes and improvements. It is considered stable. It is available from here.

Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet, Elementary and Enlightenment have had a snapshot release (snapshot 49898), and can be downloaded from here. If you are taking source from SVN, then use SVN revision 49898.

Eet 1.3.0 has been released with several bugfixes and improvements. It is considered stable. It is available from here.

Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet, Elementary and Enlightenment have had a snapshot release (snapshot 49539), and can be downloaded from here. If you are taking source from SVN, then use SVN revision 49539.

Eet 1.3.0 was released, with the following changes:

• Make all operations on an Eet_File thread safe
• Fix error when retrieving a different float type than the stored one
• Reduce conversion with a little memory overhead
• Include winsock2.h in eet_image.c for htonl definition on Windows
• Fix Visual Studio project files
• Make eet_data_descriptor_free safe to call on NULL pointer
• More work on eet_node dump code
• Add fully functional eet_node dump code
• Don't mess up when memory realloc failed during data descriptor creation
• Fix another thread deadlock in mutex handling even in a single-threaded app
• Rewrite Eet_Data. Now you can do list/hash/array of strings and all the test suite is passing
• Add eet_data_node_decode_cipher and eet_data_node_read_cipher
• Fix amalgamation
• eet_cipher.c: Fix arithmetic pointer on void *
• Add a mempool for Eet_Node
• Add experimental API to walk Eet_Node tree
• Add VAR_ARRAY tests
• Improve security by zeroying cipher material as soon as possible
• Fix override of global symbols
• Fix clearcache race condition
• Fix eet_data_node_read_cipher return type
• Add Eet_Connection
• Improve eet_eina_file_data_descriptor_class_set by using eina_hash_direct_add to avoid duplication hash key string
• Fix file corruption reported by Tiago Falcao - tiago@profusion.mobi
• Add eet_sync
• Only delete the file at the last possible moment
• Reduce opening file descriptor
• Handle fixed point in data stream
• Add EET_G_UNION and EET_G_VARIANT
• Add EET_VERSION_MAJOR, EET_VERSION_MINOR
• Add Eet_Version, eet_version
• Make configure.ac use m4 defines for version
• Support SVN revision in version check

The snapshot release of Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet, Enlightenment and Elementary includes lots of improvements and fixes. Too many to put here, but these are not considered stable yet, and thus we don't track changelogs. They do impose soname changes and module versioning now to make packaging cleaner alongside SVN source installs. Please download, try and test these.

Canonical developer Jamie Bennett announced in his blog post The New UI for ARM Based Ubuntu Devices how Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) enabled rich graphical user interfaces even on non-3D-accelerated ARM devices.

Enlightenment Foundation Libraries were conceived and developed with performance in mind. Started in 2000, the current incarnation was designed based on previous experience with Imlib and Imlib2, libraries known to be quite fast. Over the past 10 years, the API changed a lot to be easier to use, but the performance impact of each and every change was carefully considered and benchmarked using the Expedite tool.

The most performance-critical part of EFL is definitely Evas, the canvas (drawing) library. Fast in both software- and hardware-accelerated environments, it always shipped with lots of engines such as buffer, X11 (Xlib/Xcb) and XRender, but it recently gained more interesting engines due to companies that contributed back their work:

• 16 bit-per-pixel-optimized engine, contributed by INdT.
• SDL, contributed by Free.fr.
• DirectFB, contributed by ProFUSION.
• OpenGL-ES, contributed by Samsung.

However, Evas is not the only optimized piece of EFL. Eet, used for binary, read-efficient configuration and resources file, boosted Canonical's Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) startup time. The initial version using GConf was quite slow to provide information, so these were cached with Eet for immediate access to background images, display modes, and font configuration.

Aside from being used for configuration files, Eet is also the base of Edje, the theme system used by UNR, Enlightenment DR17, Elementary, Canola2 and others. Edje manages a state machine of Evas objects' states, described in a JSON/C-like language, later compiled into an access- and space-efficient binary format. Its power and flexibility continually amaze its users, as said by Jamie in his post:

Another of the great things about this launcher, as opposed to the 3D launcher shipped with Karmic, is that it's extremely theme-able.

Last but not least, the new kid on the block, Elementary, boosted development time with its canned ready-to-use widgets. Like all the previously-presented libraries, Elementary is very fast and customizable. It is quite unnoticeable in UNR, but it is the base of lists and some error dialogs.

The Enlightenment team is proud its products are being used more and more on embedded systems, be they e-book readers, phones, or TV's; x86, ARM, or MIPS; accelerated or non-accelerated hardware.

Eet 1.2.3 has been released with several bugfixes and improvements. It is considered stable. It is available from here.

Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet, Elementary and Enlightenment have had a snapshot release (snapshot 063), and can be downloaded from here. If you are taking source from SVN, then use SVN revision 44144.

Eet 1.2.3 was released, with the following changes:

• Deprecating eet_data_descriptor*_new
• Add eet_data_descriptor_stream_new and eet_data_descriptor_file_new
• Add eina helper
• Cleanup Eet_Data_Descriptor code
• Fix eet data encode to encode empty structs etc. so save saves something as opposed to nothing
• Fix documentation of eet_data_write() and eet_write() for return value to return # of bytes written, not 1 or 0
• Fix build with suncc (missing alloca() declaration in eet_cipher.c)
• Use new Eina_Log infrastructure to report error
• Remove apparently useless eet_freeleak_* from eet_data
• Add Fixed Point support and make it possible to switch from float and double to any fixed point variant supported by eina
• Remove useless Eina_Log macros
• Check the returned value of eet_init() in the binary
• Use binary mode of fopen() in eet_main() for Windows compatibility
• Initialize eina first in eet_init()
• Allow generation of one single file with all source code in it. See configure help to enable it (--enable-amalgamation)
• Add check on libgcrypt library in configure. Needed when GNUtls support is enabled

The snapshot release of Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet, Enlightenment and Elementary includes lots of improvements and fixes. Too many to put here, but these are not considered stable yet, and thus we don't track changelogs. They do impose soname changes and module versioning now to make packaging cleaner alongside SVN source installs. Please download, try and test these.

Since now a few days, the Enlightenment Foundation Library are running on around 2 or 3 millions French set top box. Free.fr is openning the development on the Freebox HD by using a combination of the EFL and Mozilla JavaScript library. This open with a relatively old hardware some great graphical possibility. Free.fr is planning to open some kind of store for this JavaScript apps during the beginning of 2010.

So what does this mean for you as users and developers? It means that the EFL are able to provide some eye candy with limited hardware and this target is here to stay for some time. In the past, Freebox S.A.S as provided code that improve some specific bottleneck of the EFL, and will continue in the futur. We focus on 720p output, 1080p is also supported. Finally we are also working on keyboard issue and some library will see improvement in a near futur, so stay tunned on this too !

Of course, we are staying close to Enlightenment SVN and we are continuously integrating our work in current SVN, so people can watch and help to see what they want in it.

We are working with a top-5 electronics producer (one of the largest in the world, who produces millions of mobile phones, televisions, sound systems and more per year) to bring Enlightenment and especially it's deep technology to their products. In fact not just working with this manufacturer, but they are actively sponsoring development on Enlightenment and EFL to ensure it does what is needed for their products (beyond what it already does).

What does this mean for you as users and developers? It means that you are likely to see top-quality electronic devices running the same things you use on your desktop. This means as a developer the same libraries and API's will be there, ready to use, out of the box. You can even start your development now in anticipation. Use Elementary, Evas, Edje, Ecore, Eet, Eina, and so on and design for a small screen with a "finger" and minimal keyboard (by small screen i mean in the range of 240x320, 320x480 and so on up to 480x800 for portrait, and similar for landscape (320x240, 480x320, 800x480).

Do it now so you have code that already works. you can develop on the desktop no problems and it ports with a simple "make" to the devices in question.

That's about all the information we have for now. Expect something in the future with more details, such as what products and roughly when.

Eet 1.2.2 has been released with several bugfixes and improvements. It is considered stable. It is available from here.

Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet and Enlightenment have had a snapshot release (snapshot 062), Elementary 0.5.1.0, and can be downloaded from here. If you are taking source from SVN, then use SVN revision 41533.

Eet 1.2.2 was released, with the following changes:

• Reorder gcry init to be used during gnutls init
• Improve docs/examples in Eet.h
• Fix init on system without SECMEM

The snapshot release of Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet, Enlightenment and Elementary includes lots of improvements and fixes. Too many to put here, but these are not considered stable yet, and thus we don't track changelogs. They do impose soname changes and module versioning now to make packaging cleaner alongside SVN source installs. Please download, try and test these.

Eet 1.2.1 has been released with several bugfixes and improvements. It is considered stable. It is available from here.

Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet and Enlightenment have had a snapshot release (snapshot 061), Elementary 0.5.0, and can be downloaded from here. If you are taking source from SVN, then use SVN revision 41040.

Eet 1.2.1 was released, with the following changes:

• Cleanup Eet_Data code
• Make eet_node API usable

The snapshot release of Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet, Enlightenment and Elementary includes lots of improvements and fixes. Too many to put here, but these are not considered stable yet, and thus we don't track changelogs. They do impose soname changes and module versioning now to make packaging cleaner alongside svn source installs. Please download, try and test these.

Eet 1.2.0 has been released with several bugfixes and improvements. It is considered stable. It is available from here.

Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet and Enlightenment have had a snapshot release (snapshot 060) and can be downloaded from here. If you are taking source from SVN, then use SVN revision 40284.

Eet 1.2.0 was released, with the following changes:

• Make use of eina
• Fix string in list and hash
• Fix array in eet_data
• Add crypto support to eet with OpenSSL
• Add GNUtls support to eet
• Make password callback work with GNUtls
• Add a function to retrieve raw signature
• Fix a corrupted pointer use in eet_cipher.c
• Add some missing __UNUSED__ flags
• Fix problem reported by llvm
• Add sha1 retrieval for an Eet_File
• Make eet_data thread safe
• Fix eet pkg-config dependencies
• Fix double init of gcry

The snapshot release of Eina, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, E_Dbus, Efreet and Enlightenment includes lots of improvements and fixes. Too many to put here, but these are not considered stable yet, and thus we don't track changelogs. They do impose soname changes and module versioning now to make packaging cleaner alongside svn source installs. Please download, try and test these.