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DevelopmentRelease 6.6 of the GNU Project DebuggerRelease 6.6 of the GNU Project Debugger (GDB) has been announced. GDB is one of the classic GNU software projects, it has been around for a full two decades. GDB even comes with its own song. The release note explains GDB:
GDB is a source-level debugger for Ada, C, C++, Objective-C,
Pascal and many other languages. GDB can target (i.e., debug programs
running on) more than a dozen different processor architectures, and GDB
itself can run on most popular GNU/Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows
variants.
GDB 6.6 is available for download here. It is advisable to look over the list of known problems before installing the software. Your editor tried a test build of GDB 6.6 on a machine running the Ubuntu Breezy Badger distribution. The build/install process involved the standard configure, make and make install steps, it worked without any problems. The newly built GDB installed itself in /usr/local/bin and works alongside the already installed (version 6.3) /usr/bin/gdb from the Ubuntu package. A test run of GDB 6.6 on a simple C program worked as expected. For more information on GDB, take a look at the extensive online documentation, a good place to start is Debugging with GDB. Unlike many new open-source software releases, the documentation has been kept up to date with the newest release.
System Applications Database Software PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe December 17, 2006 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
Embedded Systems BusyBox 1.3.0 is availableVersion 1.3.0 of BusyBox, a collection of command line tools for embedded systems, is out. "This release has CONFIG_DESKTOP option which enables features needed for busybox usage on desktop machine. For example, find, chmod and chown get several less frequently used options, od is significantly bigger but matches GNU coreutils, etc. Intended to eventually make busybox a viable alternative for "standard" utilities for slightly adventurous desktop users."
Mail Software Postfix 2.4 experimental releaseSnapshot 20061217 of experimental version 2.4 of Postfix, a mail transfer agent, has been announced. See the release notes for change information.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ecasound 2.4.5 releasedVersion 2.4.5 of Ecasound, a multi-track audio processing utility, is out. Changes include: "Native support for FLAC files has been added using the sndfile library. New debugging tools for ecasound scripting and ECI applicati[o]n development have been added. Bugs related to ecasound process return values, memory corruption in ECI apps, handling of 24/32bit big-endian audio files, robustness of mp3/ogg/flac/aac support, managing loop devices, parsing user input, and build errors on cygwin, have been fixed. A set of new processing ops for channel routing and mixing has been added."
Business Applications Liferay Portal 4.2 releasedVersion 4.2 of Liferay Portal has been announced, it adds integration with the ServiceMix Java Business Integration engine. "Liferay Portal is an open source portal that helps organizations collaborate more efficiently by providing a consolidated view of disparate applications. It is used by large and small organizations all over the world. Liferay has an extensive list of features that compares with most commercial portals but without the high license fees."
CAD Thirty-fifth release of PythonCAD announcedRelease 35 of PythonCAD, a scriptable drafting program, has been announced. "The thirty-fifth release contains several improvements dealing with the storage and adjustment of user preferences and image settings. The global user preferences are now saved into a file kept in the user home directory, so the settings are now preserved between PythonCAD sessions. Individual drawing settings can be examined and adjusted via a new set of menus and dialogs. These new dialogs are more complete than the single dialog previously used as well as easier to use. In addition to the preference and setting changes, a variety of bug fixes and miscellaneous code improvements are also present in this new release." The PythonCAD web site has also undergone a makeover.
Desktop Environments GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
GNOME subversion migrationThe GNOME desktop environment project is undergoing a migration of version control systems from CVS to Subversion. "I'm happy with the latest test results and would like to propose a new migration cut-off date: Friday December 29th 2006 at 23:59UTC. This is much shorter notice than I would really like to have given (I was hoping to announce this last week), but this is the best date I can come up with, given the holes in GNOME's schedule and my own."
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)The December 17, 2006 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "A new interface element, the 'viewbar', makes its debut; continued work on Flake and Kross-based scripting within KOffice. Continued refinements in KSysGuard. Much work to improve support for VPN connections in KNetworkManager, with KNetworkManager being moved from playground/ to extragear/. Kaffeine begins porting to GStreamer 0.10. KGeography extends its global coverage with a handful of new country maps. KWin4 and Kolf begin their transition towards improved and scalable (SVG) graphics. Commits start to flow in the Student Mentoring program. Support for bullet-aliased passwords across KDE."
Xorg Software AnnouncementsThe following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Mail Clients Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Beta 1 Released (MozillaZine)MozillaZine has announced version 2 beta 1 of the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. "Features new to Thunderbird 2 include message tags, folder views, session navigation history, a visual refresh of the theme, and improved new mail notification alerts. Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Beta 1 is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Localized builds will be offered for beta 2, currently scheduled for January." See the release notes for more information.
Medical Applications GNUmed 0.2.3 released (LinuxMedNews)Version 0.2.3 of GNUmed, an open-source medical practice software system, has been announced. "Version is up to 0.2.3 Version features and bug fixes are explained in our Wiki".
Miscellaneous Gnofract 4D 3.2 releasedVersion 3.2 of Gnofract 4D is out with bug fixes. "Gnofract 4D is a free, open source program which allows anyone to create beautiful images called fractals. The images are automatically created by the computer based on mathematical principles. These include the Mandelbrot and Julia sets and many more. You don't need to do any math: you can explore a universe of images just using a mouse."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe December 19, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles.
Haskell Haskell Weekly NewsThe December 20, 2006 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is online. This week sees a new release of the Edison data structures library, along with several other new libraries, and some new Haskell articles in the blogspace.
Java Apache Harmony Board Report, December 2006The December, 2006 Board Report from the Apache Harmony open-source Java project is online. "The project continues to make progress towards it's primary goal of a complete implementation of Java SE 5. We have over 96% of the Java SE 5 class library complete, and the virtual machine continues to make substantial progress. We look forward to securing the JCK for Java SE 6 to start integrating it into our build/test frameworks as to immediately begin testing the portions of the classlibrary that we believe are spec complete."
GNU Classpath 0.93 releasedVersion 0.93 of GNU Classpath, a set of essential libraries for Java, is out. Release highlights include: "NIO Selector epoll (linux 2.6 kernel) and kio (BSD and Darwin) notification mechanisms added. Fast, direct call, support for in runtime CORBA objects. Support for user JNDI context factories (plus corbaname: and rmi: jndi urls). New javah tool included. JSSE SSLEngine support including TLSv1.1 and pre-shared key ciphersuites. Full lang.management MX Beans ManagementFactory implementation. 99.95% api coverage for 1.4, 95.5% api coverage for 1.5. Much better swing HTML support (aka JGecko). Graphics2D on cairo speedups and make it respects interpolation hints, better gradient support and custom Composites and Paints."
OVal 0.8 released (SourceForge)Version 0.8 of OVal is available with several new features and some bug fixes. "OVal is a generic Java 5 based object validation framework for any kind of Java objects (not only JavaBeans). Constraints can be expressed with annotations or in XML. OVal supports validation of class fields, method return values, as well as constructor/method parameters. Automatic validation (programming by contract) can be achieved by using pre-built AspectJ aspects."
Migrating to Spring (O'ReillyNet)Ethan McCallum writes about migration to Spring on O'Reilly. "Sure, everyone's been talking up Spring for the last year or so, but what if your app already uses some other framework, or if you didn't even use a framework and instead rolled your own JDBC and DAOs? Ethan McCallum has a case study showing how he took a web application written for another article and converted it to Spring, highlighting what he gained in the process."
Lisp CMUCL 19d releasedVersion 19d of CMU Common Lisp (CMUCL) has been released. "This version improves debugging functionality, adds support for the EXT:DOUBLE-DOUBLE-FLOAT type, fixes several ANSI compliance issue, and includes several more enhancements."
SBCL 1.0 releasedVersion 1.0 of Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) has been announced. "Besides bug fixes, it features several improvements such as experimental support for threading on FreeBSD/x86, support for files larger than 2GB for CL streams and SB-POSIX on Linux/x86, better introspection functionality, better support for Windows, and more."
Perl Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary (O'Reilly)The December 17, 2006 edition of the Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary is out with coverage of the latest Perl 6 developments.
Python Guido van Rossum on the Python 3000 processFor those who are interested in Python 3000: Guido van Rossum has posted a note to the mailing list expressing his concerns about where this project is going. "With few exceptions, the discussions on the python-3000 list seem more about radical redesign of the language than about the relatively modest tweaks that I had in mind when I started the project." He would like to pull together a smaller set of well-defined objectives which would allow an initial alpha release by next June.
new Python-Ideas mailing listThe Python-Ideas mailing list has been announced. "At Guido's suggestion, a new mailing list has been created named Python-Ideas. This list is meant as a place for speculative, pie-in-the-sky language design ideas to be discussed and honed to the point of practically being a PEP before being presented to python-dev or python-3000. This allows both python-dev and python-3000 to focus more on implementation work or final approval/denial of ideas instead of being flooded with long threads where people discuss ideas that are too nebulous to be considered for inclusion into Python."
Python-URL!The December 18, 2006 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The December 19, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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![[GDB]](/images/ns/gdbfish.png)
One of the more powerful capabilities of GDB is the ability to debug
programs running on a