M10 Tools is going Open Source, help needed

Hey guys,

Some more bad news, but some good news to.

Bad news first, Flemmard decided finally, that he hasn't got enough time anymore to support and develop M10Tools fulltime. That means, he is quitting the main development. This is very unfortunate because Flemmard and I are the only two people who actually know how to reverse engineere the *.m10 format.

Therefore we are searching a new developer now, who can take Flemmard's part over. And here comes the good news: The next version is going to be OpenSource (most likely some kind of GPL). (This doesn't include the upcoming Virtuous Ten Studio, only the decoder/encoder for the m10 files itself).

Now let's get to the actual search. The requirements are quite hard. We search (Flemmard will be still here as some kind of help) one or two very experience C# or C++ developers with the following requirements:

  • Very good experience in C# and/or C++
  • Windows dev of course
  • Experience with reading/writing binary data would be helpful
  • Experience with reverse engineering file formats would be also helpful
  • Good spoken english required (German would be nice too)
  • Communication is done via either IRC or Skype Development uses SVN, so knowledge about SVN and how it works is quite helpful
  • Having a HTC phone with a sense 3.0/3.5 ROM is strongly advised. You don't totally need it, but it helps a lot

Now lets come to the tasks that needs to be done and the usual workflow

  • We do know everything important about the m10 file format, so the hard work is already done
  • But you still WILL be starring at your hexeditor four hours (no joke here), so if you don't like digging through hexcodes you are totally wrong here
  • This is not a halftime job. Writing such a decider/encoder requires quite a bit of spare time.
  • Once I explained you most of the things we know about m10 formats, YOU will start writing a parser for those files. This is much trial and error.
  • The time will come where you understand the basics of the format. Then you need to finish that decoder/encoder and start working on the addtional things (mainly image decoding/encoding).
  • Image decoding: The images saved in m10 have different special file formats. We do know how to decode them. There is just ONE format that needs further research.
  • One last thing: Flemmard won't give out his current source code. We have to accept that.

Diamondback has requested that anyone who is interested should reply in his thread on XDA

Flemmard and Diamondback had a great time developing this tool, so Diamondback is looking forward to working with new developers.

December Update

Festive greetings to you all.

Affinity

I'm afraid I must start December's update with some bad news. For personal reasons we have had to put the Affinity project on hold. As I'm sure you can appreciate big multi devices projects such as Unity and Affinity take up a lot of time. So we have decided to take a break and re-prioritize. Support for both Affinity and for those still using Unity will still be available on XDA and in #virtuousrom.
Development on smaller individual projects will continue as normal.

Other News

This month need see a return to the scene from rmk, he has taken over management of Virtuous Sensation from mdeejay. Mdeejay has now sold his Sensation and brought a EVO3D and Desire S. For information and download on Virtuous Sensation click here.

Tun4f1sh has released numerous updates for Virtuous G-Lite, this ROM is about as stable as a ROM can get. Any DZ/G2 Users looking for a rock solid, stock Gingerbread ROM should check it out.

Mdeejay and Flemmard have been working on ICS builds for the Inc S, DZ/G2, and Desire S. Anyone interested in trying these early beta builds should come and join in us in our IRC channel. The current build is broken so at the moment there is nothing test, but keep your eyes peeled on all offical channels for an update.

And Diamondback has been working on the next evolution of the m10tools project, Virtuous Ten Studio. Check out his thread for more info.

And just a final word, we would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Carrier IQ on Virtuous roms

Just to avoid confusion, of course Virtuous roms are free from Carrier IQ software.

In fact the community discovered these services way back in time, but we didn't see how dangerous they can be. These things are removed since ages, but back then we removed them mainly for perfomance reasons.

So there is no need to worry for our users :)