Announcing ControlPlane, a fork of MarcoPolo

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Dustin Rue

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Jul 29, 2011, 10:24:21 AM7/29/11
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Seeing that David has updated the home page and made a post that he
has no interest in continuing the project I feel a bit less awkward
announcing ControlPlane. ControlPlane is a fork of the MarcoPolo
2.5.1 codebase and its codebase hosted at GitHub -
https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane. I've been running my own
compiled copy of MarcoPolo for nearly a year now and have always been
meaning to learn Objective-C. This project gives me a solid reason to
and now seems to be the time to let others use it.

ControlPlane 1.0.0 takes the MarcoPolo 2.5.1 code and fixes the WiFi
evidence source while disabling the bluetooth source (due to stability
issues). I'm still trying to wrap my head around the bluetooth API
and much of it is now deprecated so I'm trying to avoid using
deprecated API calls. ControlPlane is 64bit, Intel only and requires
Snow Leopard or better. It still uses your existing MarcoPolo
configuration but if you had/have any WiFi evidence sources you will
need to recreate them.

Project home page for now is http://controlplane.dustinrue.com/

David Symonds

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Jul 29, 2011, 11:57:01 PM7/29/11
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Cool! Best of luck to you. I'm looking forward to seeing where you can
take this.

(I'd point out that the stagnation was due to a lack of time rather
than a lack of interest, though).


Dave.

Lance Pomerantz

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Aug 8, 2011, 11:26:19 AM8/8/11
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Dustin-

I've been running ControlPlane for the last few days and it appears to be
working fine, except that it doesn't automatically launch on startup. I
couldn't find anything in Preferences. All I did to install it was download
and stick the app in the Applications folder. Is there something else I
should be doing? Thanks.

-Izzy

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Dustin Rue

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Aug 8, 2011, 7:00:41 PM8/8/11
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Good point, expect a preference option in 1.0.3

Dustin

Lance Pomerantz

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Aug 8, 2011, 7:20:01 PM8/8/11
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Many thanks. Just FYI, I had tried creating an alias for the app, sticking
it in the dock and selecting "open at login" from the pop-up options. But it
didn't work (option was unchecked at next startup).

Dustin Rue

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Aug 8, 2011, 8:38:05 PM8/8/11
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The proper way would be through system preferences. Go into users, find you user and click login items. Click the plus and browse to find ControlPlane to add it

Dustin

Lance Pomerantz

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Aug 11, 2011, 1:39:28 AM8/11/11
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Tried that also. CP didn't launch and it was missing from the Login items
list.

Ken Simpson

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Aug 11, 2011, 1:43:08 AM8/11/11
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Works fine for me - Lion - MBP 2011.

---
Regards
Ken
k...@simpsons.id.au


Izzy Bogus

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Aug 18, 2011, 11:50:00 AM8/18/11
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Turned out that the login items prefs file was corrupt. CP appears to be
working fine.

Dustin Rue

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Aug 18, 2011, 1:29:06 PM8/18/11
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I will be launching 1.0.3 very soon, just trying to get a bit of localization done.

1.0.3 will bring back the Bluetooth evidence source, among other things.

Dustin

Byron Weber Becker

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Aug 18, 2011, 2:08:43 PM8/18/11
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Dustin --

Thanks for your work to update MarcoPolo. Much appreciated!
I like (in theory; not enough practise yet) the nested contexts.

Three suggestions:
1) Displaying the name of a nested contexts can take a lot of
space in the status bar. How 'bout an option to just display
the leaf of the tree?

2) One of my major uses of MarcoPolo was to switch time machine
disks when I moved between home and work. See
http://groups.google.com/group/marcopolo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/f59cf25fe5206cbc/978aaa9152f6e095?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=time+machine#978aaa9152f6e095
for the basic approach. I think this would be an uber-cool
action to have built-in.

Unfortunately, when upgrading to Lion, I'm running into
permissions problems. I've either forgotten what I did on Snow
Leopard or the permissions on /Library/Preferences and contents
have changed. Briefly, ControlPane triggers a script that
removes a link in /Library/Preferences and then creates another
link. But it doesn't have sufficient privileges to do so.
I'm reluctant to reduce the permissions on /Library/Preferences/.
Suggestions welcome.

3) I like the MarcoPolo name better than ControlPane. I'm wondering
if you could retain that name -- particularly if the original
author doesn't expect to do further enhancements.

Byron


Matthew Wells

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Aug 20, 2011, 1:10:11 AM8/20/11
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Dustin,

While I liked the MarcoPolo name I must say I like the name ControlPlane as it controls the "AirPort" - 

however, in Lion the "AirPort" has been named Wifi so the pun no longer really exists..

Matt


Dustin Rue

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Aug 20, 2011, 8:09:35 AM8/20/11
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If you read the about page on the ControlPlane site you'll see why I called it ControlPlane. I work in the wireless industry so for me the name actually makes just as much sense. 

Dustin


Dustin Rue

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Aug 20, 2011, 8:33:01 AM8/20/11
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I've gotten a number of requests for time machine related actions and I do plan on implementing them in the future. Right now I'm concentrating on fixing old functionality that has stopped working because of os changes.

1.0.3 should restore all of the old functionality of MarcoPolo including the Bluetooth evidence source. I made fairly significant changes to that bit of code and it seems to be stable, at least under Lion. 1.0.3 should be ready soon, I'm still learning how to handle localization which is holding it back.

As for the name, it isn't something I'm going to change back now. As I mentioned in a previous email to the list, ControlPlane refers to a location technique used in locating cell phone users. As someone who works in the wireless industry the name is just as fitting as MarcoPolo.

I changed the name because I wanted it to be clear that ControlPlane is a fork and not an official continuation of the official project. I also didn't feel it was right to take the project and claim it was "mine" without a name change. Wherever possible I make sure to mention that ControlPlane is a fork of MarcoPolo.

The original MarcoPolo source is still available and there is no reason the changes I have made couldn't be cherry picked into MarcoPolo. If someone wants to do that they can, thanks to the GPL.

Dustin

Gregg Vanderheiden

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Aug 23, 2011, 10:25:12 AM8/23/11
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On Aug 20, 2011, at 7:33 AM, Dustin Rue wrote:

I've gotten a number of requests for time machine related actions and I do plan on implementing them in the future. Right now I'm concentrating on fixing old functionality that has stopped working because of os changes.



Great to hear.

Here is one more vote in favor of that feature.   It is the key one I am looking for.

THANKS

Gregg

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