I have created a branch for the 1.3.6 release today. This is a bugfix release that fixes the bugs introduced with 1.3.4/1.3.5, plus some other open issues. 1.3.6 will be released in the coming weeks.

If you like POCO, nominate it for the 2009 Community Choice Award.

Version 1.3.5 of the POCO C++ Libraries has been released today. This is mostly a bugfix release, fixing some bugs in the NetSSL, Crypto and Zip libraries, plus a few minor enchancements. Upgrading from 1.3.4 is optional.

Here is the CHANGELOG.

I am happy to announce that release 1.3.4 is finally out! Apart from the usual bugfixes, this release contains significant performance improvements as well as some nice new features, such as a writable XMLConfiguration, a refactored NetSSL_OpenSSL library, support for case-insensitive globs, a new Poco::Util::Timer class, new PriorityNotificationQueue and TimedNotificationQueue classes in Foundation, and much more. See the CHANGELOG for a complete list of changes.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release. And thanks for your patience waiting so long for it.

Happy Easter to everyone! I’ll take off until Tuesday, then finish the 1.3.4 release so that it goes out next week. A few last-minute additions have unfortunately delayed the release quite a bit. But it’s worth the wait. Some of the new goodies in 1.3.4 include a fully writable XMLConfiguration, a new Poco::Util::Timer class that allows for multiple timers handled by one thread, automatic retry in Poco::Data::SQLite if the database is locked, and lots of bug fixes and other enchancements.

An interesting idea: the Programmer Competency Matrix

I have just added Sockets library with local (aka UNIX) sockets support to SVN sandbox. The code was extracted from Net library and slightly modified to accommodate for UNIX sockets. For the time being, tested only on Linux. I’ll do Solaris testing as well, whoever can run it on other platforms, please do and report back any modifications. As for the final destiny of this code, the jury (aka Günter) is still out, but the idea behind this madness is to provide a contribution to IPC and IO efforts. Comments welcome.

I have just added a build configuration for the iPhone (using the Apple SDK) to the SVN Repository (will also be part of 1.3.4). So, now it’s possible to use POCO in iPhone applications with ease. Simply build the POCO libs for the iPhone, add the necessary library and header file search paths to your iPhone project in Xcode and set the “Compile Sources As” setting to Objective-C++ (and don’t forget to enable C++ exception and RTTI support). Then you can freely use POCO from your Objective-C++ code (which, somehow, looks strange). The build configuration builds static libraries, which makes sense for a typical iPhone application as it simplifies deployment.

In the upcoming 1.3.4 release there will be a new sample application for the Net library that implements a simple Twitter client that can be used to send status updates to Twitter.

Apart from being fun to implement and providing useful Twitter client functionality, this sample also shows how to combine Poco::Net::HTTPClientSession, Poco::Net::HTMLForm, Poco::Net::HTTPBasicCredentials and the XML library to build a REST client with POCO.

You can find the source code in the Subversion trunk.

In related news, we now have a Twitter account for the POCO project. Follow us for news and announcements.

We recently got our hands on a Digi Connect ME 9210, one of the smallest Linux-capable embedded computers in the world. The system, which is just a bit larger than an Ethernet RJ-45 socket, is based on an ARM9 CPU running at 75 MHz. With 4 MB of Flash and 8 MB or DRAM, the system is powerful enough to run POCO-based applications. For example, we ported the Mindstorms/iPhone controller application from the demo we showed at Embedded World in Nuremberg to the Connect ME, and it runs great. Well, porting is a bit overstating, as we merely had to build a new Flash image for the Connect ME, and update the application’s config file. Well, a 75 MHz ARM9 CPU provides enough power to run an application with a built-in web server powering an Ajax-enabled website. Also, the performance improvements for the 1.3.4 release help a lot to make the application work great. Additionally, the 1.3.4 release will introduce some minor changes to help reduce the executable size of statically linked applications. For example, it is possible to build the Util library without XMLConfiguration support, which prevents the XML library from being linked in, cutting about 500K from the executable size.

Working with this little device has been a lot of fun, and we are looking forward doing some cool projects with it.