New szarp-examples Debian package contains 2 example SZARP configurations, that can be used to test programs and learn how to set up SZARP server. First one, called just test, contains over 300 MB of historical data, suitable for extensive testing of Draw3 or Ekstaktor3 applications. Second one, called stat, contains configuration files for setting simple SZARP server, collecting data about processor, memory and disk usage.

Package szarp-examples cab be obtained using following APT repository:
deb http://szarp.org/debian stable main
or by direct download from http://szarp.org/debian/pool/main/s/szarp-examples.

During last month there were over 40 commits to SZARP code. Most important changes from version 3.1.53 to 3.1.97 include:

• Fixed presentation of 32-bits (“combined”) values in paramd/reporter program.
• Driver for Modbus TCP can ask for more then 128 registers.
• Disabled potentially harmfull SZARP Command Center option to change data directory under Linux.
• No-data string in Reporter is localized now.
• Fixes in Modbus RTU driver serial port handling, configuration parsing, time synchronization.
• User can select databases that are not shown in SZARP Command Center, Extractor and Draw programs.
• Improvements in Draw3 remarks handling – remarks server address can be resolved using DNS, default user and password is taken from SZARP Synchronizer, basic support for agregated configurations.
• Added documentation of Draw3 ‘remarks’ feature.
• Basic administration of remarks server users can now be handled with ssweb.
• Fixed permission problem with registering new users key by SZARP Synchronization Server.
• Experimental surrport for drawing using wxGraphicsContext in Draw3 program.
• Fixed dependencies of Filler program.
• SZARP Automatic Updater uses SourceForge.net RSS feeds to obtain correct version number of SZARP.
• Updated ‘eksploatacja’ documentation.

SZARP version 3.1.53 has been released. Most important changes from from version 3.1.1:

• New remarks functionality in draw3 program. Remarks are short text comments that are bound to some draws’ set (or all data) at particular time. They can describe some event (for example device failure) or contain information for operators. Remarks are stored on central server and distributed using RPC-like protocol to all users viewing installation data. Users with appropiate privilges can add and edit remarks.
• init.d scripts for terminals are now compliant with version 3 mechanism for tranmission of current parameter values.
• Fix in ekstraktor3 Open Document Spreadsheet format handling, export to ODS should work on both Linux and Windows.
• Fixes in creating user-defined reports in reporter3 program.
• Windows build uses now faster Lua version – with just-in-time compiler.
• New build system (for Linux ans Windows) using source repository from SourceForge.net, Debian repository has been moved to http://szarp.org. Stable and unstable versions of Debian packages have now binary dependencies appropiate for release.

SZARP major version number has been increased from 3.0 to 3.1. The main reason for this change is repository transfer to SourceForge.net. Versions hosted at sf.net have versions number 3.1.X, where X is Subversion revision number. Most important changes from 3.0 line include:

• New APT repository at http://szarp.org/debian, versions for Debian stable and unstable repositories are available.
• Windows installer is available directly from SourceForge project page – http://sourceforge.net/projects/szarp.
• All non-GPL code has been removed from repository, so SZARP is no more double-licenced. Some proprietary code has been moved to plugin, available as binary Debian package szarp-proprietary-daemons from non-free section of APT repository.
• Windows SZARP Automatic Updater is currently broken – it doesn’t use SourceForge to check for new version, we hope to fix it soon.
• Added support for ODF export in Ekstraktor application.
• Ubuntu compatibility – it should be possible to build Ubuntu packages from source, we plan to add APT repository for Ubuntu.
• Many fixes in applications and documentation.

SZARP is developed since 1991/1992, became Open-Source in 2007 and was then registered at the SourceForge.net – world largest site for developing free software. However, until now project was not very active at sf.net. Recently, project’s Subversion repository has been moved to SourceForge, so it started to be the main development center for project.

We also started a new home page for project – http://www.szarp.org. It’s going to be hub for projects news, downloads and documentation.