Bits on Wheels

Bits on Wheels Release Notes

19/11/2005 Version 1.0.6

New :

You can now click and rotate/move/zoom the 3D Swarm view ! Use the command/option/control keys while dragging to move/zoom/rotate the view.
new 3D Swarm representation : Vertical Race ! Peers start at the bottom and raise up as they complete a torrent.
new 3D tools palette lets you rotate and zoom the 3D view. 3D Options have been moved there.
Peers can now be sorted by the amount they have available.
IP addresses can now be selected and copied to the clipboard, inside the Peers view.

Fixes :

endgame was so-so in 105 and seems to be real nice now.
when rechecking hash, the available pieces weren't re-sorted resulting in 0 piece being downloaded.
crash when updating the validated graph.
removed a couple deadlocks.
crash in race condition.
visual artefacts while checking hash in 3D swarm view.
tidying up multi-threading.
Memory leak when stopping torrents. Another leak with outgoing connexions.
Better Peer handshaking when peer has 0 piece available.
Most Panther crashes.
Many fixes here and there.

Mods :

modified the pieces ring in the 3d view to be more accurate.
changed the amount of requested pieces to avoid stalling.

Known Problems :

Panther only : BoW seems to be incompatible with some APE modules.

04/11/2005 Version 1.0.5 (and 1.0.4)

Version 1.0.5 fixes an important data loss bug.

New :

General download speed should be much increased, and start faster.
3D Swarm View : the list of Validated pieces is back, and is shown as a ring around the Peers. The ring oscillates when a new Piece has come in.
File writes are now done after each new piece. Reduces overall CPU usage, and removes CPU peaks.
A new German translation is now available for download.
A Dutch translation will be available very soon.
New preference flags to switch from normal 3d (20fps) to highest 3d (40fps).

Fixes :

On rare occasions some torrents could be erased from your disks. FIXED. (1.0.5) Please re-download BoW if you can't open single file torrents.
BoW was launching only ONE outgoing connexion after each tracker announce ! This corrects the slow start problems lots of people noticed.
Cleared a rare deadlock with tracker replies. A couple other deadlocks too.
Fixed memory leaks here and there.
0 piece were requested in some cases. Improved piece selection.
Better parsing of the announce URL. Was sending '?' twice in some cases.
Incoming connexions could remain up when incoming peers arrived on closed torrents.
Some (rare) connexions were dropped inadvertly.
Deadlock when switching really fast between torrents or tabs (think space-invaders).
Seeders weren't encouraged to give us pieces that no other god-fearing peers had. Darn.
Fixed a potential problem when trying to sort the Peers view by #req or sendQ.
Better completion reporting to trackers.
Better clientID reporting in some conditions.
Better handling of endgame mode.

Mods :

Changed the way the pieces view is drawn, to save horizontal space. Drawing should be more efficient too.
Optimized piece sorting.
Tweaked the choking mechanism.
Improved network code in many ways.
Rewrote the download code bottom-up. Piece requests are now done as soon as possible. Reduced CPU.
reduced CPU usage when all torrents are stopped.
Receive and send buffers are now dynamic. They can adapt to very fast uploading or downloading.

21/10/2005 Version 1.0.3

Fixes :

- made sure that data validated/left doesn't go out of bound.
- minor problem with version reporting in user-agent.
- 'complete' was not announced to tracker correctly.

Mods :

- modified the version checking code to send the current version.

20/10/2005 Version 1.0.2

Fixes :

- When coming from a previous version, BoW will clean its cache folder and re-open loaded torrents then check their hash. This is for version 1.0.2 only, future versions won't have this shortcoming.

- Installed a more compatible Tracker announce mechanism.

New :

- There is a new version checking mechanism. It will automatically connect at each launch. BoW doesn't send any private information, it only retrieves a version number. This can be unchecked in the preferences.

- Added preferences for confirm-quit and confirm-remove a torrent.

20/10/2005 Version 1.0.1 (updated) :

Version 1.0 contains many bug fixes, and new features like Global Upload Rate, manual and end-of-download hash check.: The look and feel has been enhanced, and general stability should be much better than previous versions.

Don't forget to setup your Preferences, even if you used a previous version of BoW. You need to set your Global Upload Rate and your Incoming Port.

Version 1.0.1 has a bug fix for Panther users who couldn't see the Torrents Window.

25/05/2005 Version 1.0 PR1.4 :

New :

- Torrent file Creation !
You can now create new .torrent files from whithin Bits on Wheels. Current implementation is with 'automatic' piece size.

Fixes :

- Fixed a crash bug introduced in PR1.3.x.

- A specific application freeze when quitting.

- Renamed single file torrents didn't remember or show their custom name.

- CPU usage was increasing after long use for some users.

- many fixes here and there.

- Better handling or non-ascii filenames.

Modifications :

- Reduced main thread running frequency, which reduces CPU usage.

- Reduced 3D Swarm view update frequency to reduce CPU usage.

20/05/2005 Version 1.0 PR1.3b (notes updated at 5pm GMT+1):

1.3 and 1.3b notes :

- G3 compatibility was broken with version 1.0PR1.3. Version PR1.3b corrects this problem. It's the only difference with version PR1.3. Sorry for the inconvenience.

New :

- TIGER ! Bits on Wheels is now fully Tiger compatible (and still works fine on Panther).
- You can now define default values for connect to max, upload to max and max upload rate.
- Added random piece selection inside a group of similar rarity.
- Improved multithreading. User Interface should be much smoother.
- BoW PR1.3 should globally be much more stable than previous versions.

Fixes :

- Fixed torrent file parsing problems.
- Fixed some possible deadlocks when switching tabs or torrents.
- Lots of small/big crash/bug fixes.
- Fixed a GL crash and burn bug.
- Table updates should now happen only when needed.
- Removed the unnecessary cache that was saved with each tracker transaction.
- Cleaned up multithreading lockups.
- Fixed the progress-indicator-from-hell once again.
- Pieces graphs in General tab should be more consistant with torrent data, draw faster, update when windows resize, and use much less CPU.
- Cleaned up the Pieces tab drawing and updating.
- Corrected a situation where the network would stop if too many files were opened.
- Listen ports were improperly handled in some cases. Prefs modifications weren't taken into account.
- Removed the visual artifacts seen when resizing the splitview with the 3D Swarm tab.
- fixed a handshake bug with incoming peers.

Modifications :: - Changed the way the uploaded/downloaded amounts are reported to the trackers.; - Modified the piece selection code to request rarest first as much as possible.; - Optimized piece selection cpu usage and efficiency.; - Improved network memory management, cpu-wise.; - Window size is better remembered.; - Tweaked the socket read/write schedules to optimise cpu usage. The 3D swarm view might look a bit jerkier than before, but that's because of the new packet scheduling.; - Modified the preference file's contents. Older prefs are transformed into the new format.

16/02/2005 Version 1.0 PR1.2:

New :

- ENDGAME mode is here ! That means that torrents won't get realllly slow when reaching 99%.
- Bits on Wheels should globally be more robust. Update is HIGHLY advised to everyone.

Fixes :

- A couple important memory leaks were removed.
- Cleaned up multithreading code. A few crashing/locking up issues were corrected.
- Cleaned up the piece reception code. Rare situations where the number of remaining pieces or data remaining lost sync, should no longer happen.
- Visual problem in the Peers window. Some Peers would appear as choking when they were not.
- Improved Piece-to-request selection and handling.

08/II/2005 Version 1.0 PR1.1:

New :

- Added Max Geeker's wheel icons. Added document icon too.
- Added torrent reply !
- Added double-click support in the torrents list -> Reveals the file in Finder.
- Added basic dbl-click support in the files view -> reveals the containing folder (for now).

Fixes :

- Crash bug on 10.3.3 with opengl code related to textures. I removed the code in question, since it was not used anyway.
- Fixed another crash bug with openGL and older macs (and low end video cards). BoW now tries different GL settings until one works right. It will eventually not show anything in the 3D view if GL can't be setup.
- set the tracker controler to request compact tracker protocol (compact=1), makes bow much more compatible ;-)
- BoW should no longer be in a weird state after a file open has been canceled.

Modifications :

- You can't stop a hash check any more (the start/stop button is disabled). This caused too many problems...
- tweaked the compiler optimizations.
- Renamed 'choco' in the help menu (woops).
- Changed the vertical row size in torrents list.
- fast-restart files are now deleted when a torrent is removed from the list.
- Remove the 'confirm replace' dialog when opening an existing torrent which was too scary to many users (even though the file wouldn't be trashed...).
- Files view now shows folder hierarchy as expanded by default. (still no saving of the previous state between launches etc).

08/II/2005 Version 1.0 PR1: Initial release !