Tag Archives: Mogwai

Metered data hackfest

tl;dr: Please fill out this survey about metered data connections, regardless of whether you run GNOME or often use metered data connections.

We’re now into the second day of the metered data hackfest in London. Yesterday we looked at Endless’ existing metered data implementation, which is restricted to OS and application updates, and discussed how it could be reworked to fit in with the new control centre design, and which applications would benefit from scheduling their large downloads to avoid using metered data unnecessarily (and hence costing the user money).

The conclusion was that the first step is to draw up a design for the control centre integration, which determines when to allow downloads on metered connections, and which connections are actually metered. Then to upstream the integration of metered data with gnome-software, so that app and OS updates adhere to the policy. Integration with other applications which do large downloads (such as podcasts, file syncing, etc.) can then follow.

While looking at metered data, however, we realised we don’t have much information about what types of metered data connections people have. For example, do connections commonly limit people to a certain amount of downloads per month, or per day? Do they have a free period in the middle of the night? We’ve put together a survey for anyone to take (not just those who use GNOME, or who use a metered connection regularly) to try and gather more information. Please fill it out!

Today, the hackfest is winding down a bit, with people quietly working on issues related to parental controls or metered data, or on upstream development in general. Richard and Kalev are working on gnome-software issues. Georges and Florian are working on gnome-shell issues.

GUADEC 2018 thoughts

GUADEC this year was another good one; thank you to the organisers for putting on a great and welcoming conference, and to Endless for sending me.

Unfortunately I couldn’t make the first two days due to a prior commitment, but I arrived on the Sunday in time to give my talks. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with the talks on Friday and Saturday — looking forward to seeing the recordings online!

The slides for my talk on the state of GLib are here and the notes are here (source for them is here). I think the talk went fairly well, although I imagine it was quite boring for most involved — I’m not sure how to make new APIs particularly interesting to listen to!

The slides for my talk on download management on metered connections (the ‘Mogwai’ project) are here and the notes are here (source for them is here). I think this talk also went fairly well, and I’m pleased by how many people turned up and asked insightful questions. As I said in the talk, my time to spend on this project is currently limited, but I am interested in mentoring new contributors on it. Get in touch if you’re interested.

During the birds of a feather days, I spent most of my time on GLib, clearing out old bugs. We had the GLib BoF during the GTK+ one on Monday. The notes are here. Emmanuele has already done a good writeup of the results of the BoF here; and Matthias has written up the GTK+ BoF itself here.

There were some good discussions over dinner during the BoF days about people’s niggles with GLib, which has set a few ideas in motion in my head which I will try and explore over the coming few months, once the 2.58 release is out of the way.

It was good to catch up with everyone, great to see Almería and sample its food and drink, and nice to finally meet some of my colleagues from Endless for the first time!

Going to GUADEC: talking about the state of GLib and metered data handling in downloads

I’ll be at GUADEC in Almería this year, giving two talks on Sunday:

  • GLib: What’s new and what’s next?, which will be a general overview of recent developments in the GNOME utility library, some future plans, and some stats about what happens to contribution rates when you move to GitLab and Meson.
  • Download management on metered connections, which will be an overview of the Mogwai project, which I’ve worked on in recent months at Endless. Mogwai is a download scheduler, which your code can use to determine the best time to do a big download to avoid incurring bandwidth charges from your internet provider (if you’re on a metered connection).

I won’t be arriving until Sunday morning, but will be around until Thursday (12th) morning, and will be in the GTK+/GLib BoF on Monday in room 2 to plot the next GLib release.

Shout out to my coworker Matthew Leeds’ talk, on P2P Distribution of Flatpaks and OSTrees, which comes towards the culmination of a lot of work by him (and others in Endless, and upstream OSTree and flatpak) to introduce peer to peer support in OSTree and flatpak, so you can distribute OSs and apps using USB sticks and the LAN.