Interview with Leonid Ponomarev
From gPodderWiki
Our guest today is one of the developers of the popular (GTK) podcasts aggregator gPodder (we have a little talk about the program) Leonid "PhoeniX" Ponomarev.
I do understand that you think gPodder is most convenient client:) Why?
When I just started listening to podcasts, of course I began to look for suitable software. gPodder most consistent with my expectations, how should look and behave podcast-aggregator, and absent any annoying shortcomings or religious considerations, as in other cases. More precisely harder to say - so much time has passed.
How popular is your development, if not a secret?
To avoid misunderstanding, let's clear it right now - gPodder not my development. Author of the project - Thomas Perl, a student from Vienna. I just take part in this project. What's interesting, our universities have a partner program, and we became acquainted with Thomas through his project. The popularity of such programs is difficult to judge. This is not a office package or desktop environment to ask about him in numerous preferences polls, generally speaking, a very specific program - the podcast-aggregator. Many people do not know what is a podcast at all, who knows - listening in web pages or what was promoted, that is, in his favorite player (if the latter allows it). However, if we take into account the fact that ordinary people come into the development mailing list and ask questions, suggest improvements, write documentation, paint icons and even begin to help in every way, the project has popularity.
What causes prompted to join the development gPodder?
I do not have enough support to Russian. It happens so, that I first work on one of the unsupported scripts, code was tested and later added to the basic code base gPodder. Then corrections to support non-unicode locales... So I studied more and more Python and deeper learned gPodder from the inside.
What problems arise when developing such a program?
Development language. Joke, in general, but with piece of joke. While I am studying it to take part in development, still do not like Python, like five years ago. There are things in it, which just missed the head for that cause problems in the short and clear code, forcing them to write solutions unnecessarily verbose and ugly code. Fix of one of these problems in gPodder and was one of my patches. Then the problem manifested itself in another place, I found a source in python and cut as Nodus Gordii, with rather dirty, but effective hack. But on other machines, the problem will arises again. That makes construct crutches, caused by deficiencies of language. There is a good presentation, though in German, on gPodder, which Thomas held at the recent Linuxwochen 2008 in Vienna. Thomas tells in it among other things the difficulties encountered - incorrect feeds, productivity, obsolete packages in distributions, iPod and other closed-source devices, dependencies. I can add that often arise all "life issues" - hosting, spam in wiki and fools who have not understand and not tried gPodder, but write reviews like this. Sometimes I write about news or difficulties of project in my blog.
What development tools are you using? And how is the joint development?
I always use two tools of development - Vim text editor and an interpreter / compiler language used. The rest - because of circumstances, salt and pepper to taste. All charms in IDEs does not cover one of their main shortcoming - they editor is not Vim, which means it will be inconvenient for me.
Joint development is mainly through mailinglist and bugtracker. People choose a piece of work that they can do, or implement their idea and send a patch in the list. Anyone testing. Thomas tests and maybe takes up interesting idea (as with my latest patch, he add part to support the new feature in the iPod, which I do not have) and apply to current code base.
Once a month, a week before the next release - stabilization phase. Only errors fixes and translation updates. No new functionality and new bugs;)
On which parts of the project you're working now?
Usually I simply appends what it lacks me. And now a few releases a row I complement Russian translation.
There are interesting opportunities to expect in the new versions? And how long have to wait for version 1.0? Why wait? Download source (particularly hunger fans, like me, may from svn) and only two words `make install`. No need to wait for your distribution maintainer push yesterdays bugs in the form of the package. To my taste, gPodder growing too fast to install in from distribution. Planned new opportunities as described in the roadmap, which can be found in projects wiki.
How do you feel about podcasting, have your own podcast? What do you listen / watch?
Purely positive attitude. Quite a good way to turn the time on the road into benefit. Don't have my own, blog is enough for me, though already invited in others. At the moment decline cause of lack of equipment. So who knows.
From well-known listen to Radio T and U, Gray's podcasts "IT thought", about Linux "L-talks", wish successful extensions to they, several thematic about Ruby language. Also I put into gPodder several video RSS feeds from different conferences, so it fairly easy watch they, although it's not a podcasts at all. So made, for example, here. I intend to unsubscribe from "Frames" and several non-informative. And even when the hands come closer, I'll post OPML with my subscriptions to a blog - a good way to indicate the range of interests.
