An ongoing problem with the Eee is that it's Flash based. That means two things: disk writes take forever, and disk writes are murder. Despite the idiotic and braindead ramblings of people on the EeeUser forums and Wiki, a write filter of some kind is absolutely necessary to ensure that the Flash lasts as long as the rest of the computer. When a cell dies, the whole array tends to die...
So I was originally using EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) from XP Embedded on this computer. Now I'm using FBWF (File Based Write Filter), which uses memory much more efficiently and tends to do a better job at managing files. It also doesn't require me to reboot each time I commit changes, in order to re-enable the filter. It can commit one file at a time!
Sounds like a neat idea until you find that FBWF is the polar opposite of EWF in terms of 'committing'. The command line tool provided with FBWF doesn't allow people to commit the whole drive's changes! It can only be done one file at a time. GUH!
Enter the FBWF API. The API can tell FBWF what to do, as far as committing a file or getting the file list. What's that mean? A program can be written to retrieve all changed files, then commit them one by one automatically! I have found at least two (maybe three) FBWF GUIs that have been created, but none of them do the very basic function that they should have been written to perform - retrieve the file listing and commit it. Ugh.
So that's where I come in. I want to actually get myself into desktop programming (since I already do PHP/HTML/MySQL web programming) with this as my excuse. Whatever I do, I tend to do well, so I want to make this the end-all, be-all FBWF manager to help people interested in making it work!
Where you (may) come in is in one of the following ways:
- Encouragement. It hurts me to no end to see one of my topics fall off the face of the planet, and I just give up on it. Reply to this thread, even if just to say "what's FBWF and why?". That's how everyone can help
- A good place to start. Linking me to a forum probably won't help, because I don't have a particular problem to solve (or search for), I need advice and there's generally not a readily apparent thread that provides that. Maybe you can link me to a "how to get started" post.
- A good IDE. I'm installing MS Visual C++ 2008 Express right now on the Eee. I hope it doesn't require that .NET Framework crap in order to run. I want this program to be actually usable, and not dependent on a massive 300+MB runtime to be installed. It's almost as bad as Java - at least every incremental update doesn't end up with a full new installation along side the old one! And since I'm the only person working on it, I would really like something not bloated up with "collaboration" options like project management and versioning. Just straightforward text (and form?) editing is what I need.
- Maybe in the near future, beta testers. Since I hate developers that withhold their golden product from people under the guise of "I don't feel comfortable releasing it yet", I'm going to post each little improvement here for people to try, and try to correct some of the common errors that developers make in releasing that p*** me off (making it hard to find the latest version, hard to find the download, using a crappy host, etc).
It should be a simple enough project, right?
