I wrote about my little Hex Editor before, but somehow this subject still comes back… It is still being downloaded several times a day (more than 2.000 downloads only this year!).

Evolution

Although I haven’t done any programming in Windows for years, and Hex-Ed has received it’s last update in 2004, I still receive requests once in a while for new features for Hex-Ed. I thought about simply transforming it in Free, Open Software, publishing the code on my site, but the code is a bit messy, since I never thought about publishing it when I originally wrote it. And the base for Hex-Ed was written decades ago…

Fresh start

So recently I started to re-write it from scratch, but using several parts of the original code (especially the “internals”, that haven’t changed for years), including comments where helpful. The difference is that this time I’ll write it as an open-source project, to be compiled with gcc. The idea is to create a portable project that can be built & run under Linux, Windows and maybe even other systems. I have lots of ideas for improvements, but too little time to realize them all.
For now I have a version in “alpha” state – here is a basic screenshot of the ncurses version:

I’ll post updates on the progress whenever I have some time

I used to use MySQL Control Center (’mysqlcc’) quite a lot until a few years ago, when I switched to phpMyAdmin.
The biggest advantage of phpMyAdmin is that it is actively maintained, while mysqlcc has not seen updates for almost three years.
mysqlcc’s interface also had a bit of an “old-fashioned” look, as it is still based on the Qt3 library (known from KDE3).

Anyway, these days I took a second look at it, because of a question about building it on Slackware 13.1 on the SlackBuilds mailing list.
My first reaction was like “Hey, try something more modern”, but on second thoughts I decided to give it a try and examine the source code and the build-time error messages from gcc.

The error messages

Without any modification, gcc throws several messages at you like this:
src/main.cpp:93: error: 'gptr' was not declared in this scope

So I took a look at main.cpp and noticed that the lines causing the error message are part of a structure of ‘my_option’ lines:

static struct my_option my_long_options[] =

The lines that give the error are:

 {"connect_timeout", OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, "", (gptr*) &opt_connect_timeout,
 (gptr*) &opt_connect_timeout, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 0, 0, 3600*12, 0,
 0, 1},
 {"select_limit", OPT_SELECT_LIMIT, "", (gptr*) &select_limit,
 (gptr*) &select_limit, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 1000L, 1, ~0L, 0, 1, 0},
 {"net_buffer_length", OPT_NET_BUFFER_LENGTH, "",
 (gptr*) &my_net_buffer_length, (gptr*) &my_net_buffer_length, 0, GET_ULONG,
 REQUIRED_ARG, 16384, 1024, 512*1024*1024L, 0, 1024, 0},
 {"max_allowed_packet", OPT_MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET, "",
 (gptr*) &my_max_allowed_packet, (gptr*) &my_max_allowed_packet, 0, GET_ULONG,
 REQUIRED_ARG, 16 *1024L*1024L, 4096, 512*1024L*1024L, 0,
 1024, 0},
 {"local-infile", OPT_LOCAL_INFILE, "Enable/disable LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE.",
 (gptr*) &opt_local_infile,
 (gptr*) &opt_local_infile, 0, GET_BOOL, OPT_ARG, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0},
 {"max_join_size", OPT_MAX_JOIN_SIZE, "", (gptr*) &max_join_size,
 (gptr*) &max_join_size, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 1000000L, 1, ~0L, 0, 1,
 0},

These errors are caused by the newer versions of MySQL, where mysql.h does not define the type of gptr any longer.

The next logical step was to check the definition of ‘my_option’ and see what types were expected here.
‘my_option’ is a structure defined in <my_getopt.h>, included in main.cpp.

In previous versions of MySQL this was defined as:

struct my_option
{
 const char *name; /* Name of the option */
 int id; /* unique id or short option */
 const char *comment; /* option comment, for autom. --help */
 gptr *value; /* The variable value */
 gptr *u_max_value; /* The user def. max variable value */
 const char **str_values; /* Pointer to possible values */
 ulong var_type;
 enum get_opt_arg_type arg_type;
 longlong def_value; /* Default value */
 longlong min_value; /* Min allowed value */
 longlong max_value; /* Max allowed value */
 longlong sub_size; /* Subtract this from given value */
 long block_size; /* Value should be a mult. of this */
 int app_type; /* To be used by an application */
};

But in newer versions of MySQL it is defined as:

struct my_option
{
 const char *name; /* Name of the option */
 int id; /* unique id or short option */
 const char *comment; /* option comment, for autom. --help */
 uchar **value; /* The variable value */
 uchar **u_max_value; /* The user def. max variable value */
 struct st_typelib *typelib; /* Pointer to possible values */
 ulong var_type;
 enum get_opt_arg_type arg_type;
 longlong def_value; /* Default value */
 longlong min_value; /* Min allowed value */
 longlong max_value; /* Max allowed value */
 longlong sub_size; /* Subtract this from given value */
 long block_size; /* Value should be a mult. of this */
 void *app_type; /* To be used by an application */
};

So we find that:

• gptr* has been replaced by uchar**

The solution was to change the (gptr*) casts in main.cpp to (uchar**).

After the change, trying to compile mysqlcc again, the next error jumped at me:
src/main.cpp:158: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to 'char*'

This one was simple and caused by the new gcc compiler… Just changed line 158 from:

add_argument(id, "");

to

add_argument(id, (char*)"");

But, trying once more to compile mysqlcc, we get one more error message:
src/main.cpp:118: error: invalid conversion from 'int' to 'void*'

Now, line 118 is actually the end of the structure of my_option lines, so the error is hidden inside.
After re-reading the new and old definitions of my_option I found that:

• app_type was defined as int and is now defined as void*

Knowing this, the error message makes sense, and there is one line (93-95) in the structure that uses a non-zero value. Changing that line from:

 {"connect_timeout", OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, "", (gptr*) &opt_connect_timeout,
 (gptr*) &opt_connect_timeout, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 0, 0, 3600*12, 0,
 0, 1},

to:

 {"connect_timeout", OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, "", (uchar**) &opt_connect_timeout,
 (uchar**) &opt_connect_timeout, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 0, 0, 3600*12, 0,
 0, (void*)1},

solved this last error and now mysqlcc built without problems

The result

And yes, the result worked fine as can be seen here:

The patches

Instead of applying all the changes manually, you can use the following file to patch your sources:

--- mysqlcc-0.9.8-src/src/main.cpp 2006-08-11 17:29:12.000000000 -0300
+++ mysqlcc-0.9.8-src_patched/src/main.cpp 2010-06-17 20:49:35.000000000 -0300
@@ -90,28 +90,28 @@
 {"version", 'V', "Print version information and exit.", 0, 0, 0, GET_NO_ARG, NO_ARG, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0},
- {"connect_timeout", OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, "", (gptr*) &opt_connect_timeout,
- (gptr*) &opt_connect_timeout, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 0, 0, 3600*12, 0,
- 0, 1},
+ {"connect_timeout", OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, "", (uchar**) &opt_connect_timeout,
+ (uchar**) &opt_connect_timeout, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 0, 0, 3600*12, 0,
+ 0, (void*)1},
- {"select_limit", OPT_SELECT_LIMIT, "", (gptr*) &select_limit,
- (gptr*) &select_limit, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 1000L, 1, ~0L, 0, 1, 0},
+ {"select_limit", OPT_SELECT_LIMIT, "", (uchar**) &select_limit,
+ (uchar**) &select_limit, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 1000L, 1, ~0L, 0, 1, 0},
 {"net_buffer_length", OPT_NET_BUFFER_LENGTH, "",
- (gptr*) &my_net_buffer_length, (gptr*) &my_net_buffer_length, 0, GET_ULONG,
+ (uchar**) &my_net_buffer_length, (uchar**) &my_net_buffer_length, 0, GET_ULONG,
 REQUIRED_ARG, 16384, 1024, 512*1024*1024L, 0, 1024, 0},
 {"max_allowed_packet", OPT_MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET, "",
- (gptr*) &my_max_allowed_packet, (gptr*) &my_max_allowed_packet, 0, GET_ULONG,
+ (uchar**) &my_max_allowed_packet, (uchar**) &my_max_allowed_packet, 0, GET_ULONG,
 REQUIRED_ARG, 16 *1024L*1024L, 4096, 512*1024L*1024L, 0,
 1024, 0},
 {"local-infile", OPT_LOCAL_INFILE, "Enable/disable LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE.",
- (gptr*) &opt_local_infile,
- (gptr*) &opt_local_infile, 0, GET_BOOL, OPT_ARG, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0},
+ (uchar**) &opt_local_infile,
+ (uchar**) &opt_local_infile, 0, GET_BOOL, OPT_ARG, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0},
- {"max_join_size", OPT_MAX_JOIN_SIZE, "", (gptr*) &max_join_size,
- (gptr*) &max_join_size, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 1000000L, 1, ~0L, 0, 1,
+ {"max_join_size", OPT_MAX_JOIN_SIZE, "", (uchar**) &max_join_size,
+ (uchar**) &max_join_size, 0, GET_ULONG, REQUIRED_ARG, 1000000L, 1, ~0L, 0, 1,
 0},
 { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, GET_NO_ARG, NO_ARG, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}
@@ -155,7 +155,7 @@
 break;
 }
 if (opt->var_type == GET_NO_ARG && opt->arg_type == NO_ARG) //Boolean options
- add_argument(id, "");
+ add_argument(id, (char*)"");
 else
 add_argument(id, argument);
 }

The patch can also be downloaded here.

On the TRS-80 mailing list I subscribe there was a discussion about an old (from 1977!) game I used to play on my TRS-80 Model I called Space Warp. This game was originally called “Time Trek”, based on the popular television series Star Trek. When Tandy/Radio Shack released this game commercially, they changed some of the terms, probably for copyright reasons.

Someone mentioned that it had been ported to X and that the sources were available. But, when I downloaded the sources from x.org and tried to build it, I noticed that this port was from 1995 and many things have changed since then… It simply threw tons of errors instead of building the program. For sentimental reasons I did not give up though, and decided to try to solve the incompatibilities with the modern Gnu C++ compiler.

What needed to be adapted

Some of the needed changes were quite obvious, others required a bit of “Googling” to discover. All in all, it was a nice exercise for me. The major items were:

• #include <iostream.h> – Modern versions of gcc expect #include <iostream> and a line defining the namespace (”using namespace std“)
• string literals needed to be defined as (char*) like: invalid((char*)"columns"); instead of invalid("columns");

Other changes were less obvious, but all in all I had to create a patch file of 999 lines

After all these patches, XSpaceWarp built fine on Slackware 13.0 and the 13.1 beta, both 32 & 64-bits. I also tested it on ARMedslack.

The result

Here are two screenshots from the game:

It’s not exactly a graphic-intensive game, but don’t forget that this was written over thirty years ago

Get it!

If you use Slackware, you can get packages from Slackware 13.0 32 & 64-bits and for ARMedslack from my site.
As soon as SlackBuilds.org opens for submissions again (after the release of Slackware 13.1), I’ll submit the SlackBuild.

If you want to build the program yourself, get the original sources from x.org or the patched version for newer compilers here.
The patch is also separately available here, so that you can study it and patch your own sources.