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DevelopmentDisTract - the Distributed Bug Tracker Matthew Sackman recently announced the DisTract Distributed Bug Tracker project, which aims to decentralize bug tracking:
We're all now familiar with working with distributed software control
systems, such as Monotone, Git, Darcs, Mercurial and others, but bug
trackers still seem to be fully stuck in the centralised model:
Bugzilla and Trac both have single centralised servers. This is
clearly wrong, as if you're able to work on the Train, off the
network and still perform local commits of code then surely you should
also be able to locally close bugs too.
DisTract allows you to manage bugs in a distributed manner through
your web-browser.
The project is still in the early phases of its development, basic features are still being added: "Currently, there are two major features missing. The first is bug listings. The links to List Bugs at the top of each page will go nowhere. This should be implemented quite quickly. The other major feature is dealing with merging." DisTract is being released under the 3-clause BSD license. The software has been written in the Haskell language and takes advantage of several open-source packages. The movement of bugs across the net is handled by Monotone, a distributed version control system and the Markdown text-to-HTML conversion tool is used for working with bug descriptions and comments. DisTract defines bug information with its Bug Fields. Three field types have been defined: free form fields are for basic bug descriptions, simple lists are for keeping track of things like bug revision histories and graphs are for tracking the state of bugs. Release 0.1.1 of DisTract came out after the original announcement, it focuses on building the code: "This version has no new features other than the fact that it actually compiles in a sane way which no longer requires endless amounts of jiggery-pokery. This has been achieved by improving the hinstaller module which DisTract depends on. Thus for all of you who downloaded the source tarball of version 0.1 and were then deeply alarmed by the compilation instructions, fear not. The Compilation page is now, correspondingly, simpler!" DisTract is available for download here.
System Applications Database Software Building a Data Warehouse with MySQL and Perl (O'ReillyNet) Sam Tregar shows how to build a data warehouse with MySQL. "Most of us are at least somewhat familiar with the kind of relational database schemas that are created for e-commerce sites, among others. But there's another kind of database model out there: the data warehouse. Sam Tregar gives us the lowdown on this highly UNrelational database."
PostgreSQL Releases: 8.2.4, 8.1.9, 8.0.13, 7.4.17, and 7.3.19 A whole pile of PostgreSQL releases has come out with a fix for a privilege escalation bug. "The frequency of security fixes recently is a result of increased scrutiny of the PostgreSQL code by government agencies and security-conscious companies."
PostgreSQL Weekly News The April 22, 2007 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
SQLite 3.3.16 released Version 3.3.16 of SQLite, a light weight DBMS, is out. Changes include: "Performance improvements added in 3.3.14 but mistakenly turned off in 3.3.15 have been reinstated. A bug has been fixed that prevented VACUUM from running if a NULL value was in a UNIQUE column."
Interoperability Samba 3.0.25rc3 announced Version 3.0.25rc3 of Samba is available for testing. "This is the third release candidate of the Samba 3.0.25 code base and is provided for testing only. An RC release means that we are close to the final release but the code may still have a few remaining minor bugs. This release is *not* intended for production servers. There has been a substantial amount of development since the 3.0.23/3.0.24 series of stable releases. We would like to ask the Samba community for help in testing these changes as we work towards the next significant production upgrade Samba 3.0 release."
Mail Software Hermes Antispam Proxy 1.0 released Stable version 1.0 of Hermes Antispam Proxy has been announced. "Hermes is a generic, transparent, multi-platform anti-spam SMTP proxy that uses a combination of techniques (like greylisting, throttling, etc.) to stop spam from reaching your mailbox. It's compatible with most SMTP extensions like STARTTLS (for SSL security) and SMTP-AUTH (for user authentication)."
Networking Tools PowerDNS 2.9.21 released Version 2.9.21 of the PowerDNS authoritative name server is out. "This is the first release the PowerDNS Authoritative Server since the Recursor was split off to a separate product, and also marks the transfer of the new technology developed specifically for the recursor, back to the authoritative server. This move has reduced the amount of code of the Authoritative server by over 2000 lines, while improving the quality of the program enormously."
Web Site Development Midgard 1.8.3 released Version 1.8.3 of the Midgard web development platform is out. "Midgard 1.8.3 release includes major bugfixes and replication framework enchancements. "
mnoGoSearch 3.3.2 announced Version 3.3.2 of mnoGoSearch, a cross-platform web site search engine, is out. See the change log for a list of new features and bug fixes.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Amarok Weekly News (KDE.News) KDE.News has announced the latest issue of the Amarok Weekly Newsletter. "A new issue of the Amarok newsletter is out. It talks about interesting new developments, Amarok's Summer of Code projects, the current events in the 1.4 stable branch, and continues to provide cool Amarok-related tips."
jack_mixer version 3 released Version 3 of jack_mixer is out with some new capabilities and a number of bug fixes relating to NaNs.
jack_nuke 1 released Version 1 of jack_nuke has been announced. "jack_nuke is a client for the Jack Audio Connection Kit used to generate "unwanted" data on jack ports (both midi and audio) to test the robustness of other jack client applications. For those who've heard of Jack demolition, jack_nuke proposes similar functionalities as far as audio is concerned (jack_nuke is based on its code)."
ofqf 0.1.1 released The initial release of ofqf has been announced. "ofqf is a native OSC implementation in Qt4. Native means that ofqf doesn't depend on other external libs (except for QtCore and QtNetwork) and ofqf isn't just a wrapper around liblo or something."
Desktop Environments GNOME Software Announcements The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
Python Enters KDE with Guidance (KDE.News) KDE.News notes the arrival of the Python-based application Guidance to the KDE SVN repository. "The first non-C++ application in KDE's SVN has been moved from the playground module to Extragear. Guidance is a number of system configuration modules and a laptop power manager. The recent 0.8 release added a kcontrol module for setting up Wine and improvements to the power manager. One of the aims of KDE 4 is to increase the use of KDE bindings, such as Ruby's Korundum and PyKDE, which will make coding KDE easier for those who do not want to worry about pointers and compilers."
KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News) The April 22, 2007 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "A week-long Phonon/Solid developer sprint redefines and strengthens their API's. The start of a command-line client for Strigi. Continued improvements in the Konsole refactoring work. More work on visual effects in the KWin window manager composite support branch. Experiments to utilise Solid for connection management in Mailody. Initial support for the Jamendo music service in Amarok. A KDE frontend for Marble is begun, to complement the Qt-based original interface..."
The Road to KDE 4: Solid Brings Hardware Configuration and Control to KDE (KDE.News) KDE.News looks at Solid, the hardware API for KDE 4. "One of the many new technologies for KDE 4 is the often mentioned, but seldom explained Solid Hardware API. Hardware has always been a bit of an annoying element of using Linux and other Unix [like] operating systems, but Solid hopes to fix that for KDE 4. In many ways, Solid is like Phonon, in that it's a Qt/KDE style API around already existing components at the lower level, such as freedesktop.org's HAL. It is already quite functional in the backend, and it's already affecting visible KDE components."
KDE Software Announcements The following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Xorg Software Announcements The following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Desktop Publishing Dockboard 0.2 released Stable version 0.2 of Dockboard has been announced. "Dockboard is an outline editor created for authors writing books, articles, and other published works. It provides the ability to organize small to large documents."
LyX version 1.5.0 (beta 2) released Version 1.5.0 (beta 2) of LyX, a GUI front-end to the TeX typesetting system, is out. "Compared with the previous beta release we have fixed several bugs and added some graphical improvements: A new math toolbar replaces the old (faithful) math panel. The converter file cache can be now configured in the graphical interface. The TOC dialog is now a dock widget, embedded in the main window."
Electronics gEDA code sprint The gEDA electronic design and analysis project had a recent code sprint. "The 5th worldwide gEDA code sprint was held last Saturday (2007/[04]/10). This sprint was particularly successful (with at least ~20 different people hanging out in irc). The irc log from this code sprint has been posted."
Games Globulation 2 0.8.23 released The Alpha 0.8.23 release of Globulation 2 has been announced. "Globulation 2 is an innovative Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game which reduces micro-management by automatically assigning tasks to units." See the Changes document for information on this release.
Mail Clients Claws Mail 2.9.1 released Version 2.9.1 of Claws Mail, an email client, has been announced. "This release fixes a security bug (CVE-2007-1558) which affects APOP users. If you're using APOP for POP3 authentication you are strongly advised to upgrade."
Mozilla Thunderbird 2 released (MozillaZine) MozillaZine has an announcement for the Thunderbird 2 email client. "Scott MacGregor of Team Thunderbird writes in with news of the release of Mozilla Thunderbird 2: "Thunderbird 2 is now available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux in over 35 languages. Thunderbird 2 offers easy ways to manage and organize your email with message tags, advanced folder views, message history navigation, find as you type, and improved new mail alert notifications." See the Thunderbird 2 Features page for more information on this release.
Music Applications WhySynth DSSI softsynth 20070418 released Release 20070418 of the WhySynth DSSI softsynth has been announced, it features new oscillator modes, GUI enhancements, improved envelope generators and more.
Office Suites Pentaho and OpenOffice.org announce partnership A collaboration between Pentaho and OpenOffice.org has been announced. "The OpenOffice.org community is pleased to announce plans to extend the power of the database application, Base, with Report Designer, based on Pentaho's open-source reporting engine. Scheduled to be available in the next feature release of OpenOffice.org, Report Designer will particularly interest business users, as it will give them the ability to create sophisticated business intelligence reports from various sources, including OLAP and XML, and save them using the OASIS OpenDocument format, or ODF, the ISO-approved open standard for file format, among others."
Web Browsers Support for Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Extended Until Mid-May (MozillaZine) MozillaZine reports that support for Firefox 1.5 - which was supposed to end on April 24 - has been extended to mid-May. "This suggests that the Mozilla Corporation wants to extend support for Firefox 1.5 until after Firefox 2 has been pushed out to 1.5 users via the software update feature built in to the browser. To date, the update functionality in 1.5 has only offered 1.5.0.x patches to users, despite the Mozilla Corporation's stated intention to allow 1.5.0.x to 2.0.0.x upgrades."
Languages and Tools C GCC 4.2.0 Status Report The April 24, 2007 edition of the GCC 4.2.0 Status Report is online with the latest Gnu Compiler Collection news. "... I'm not going to consider any of these issues blockers after Sunday, April 29. At that point, I plan to freeze the branch and build a release candidate. Then, about a week later, I plan to release 4.2.0. There has been more than enough time for people to test and fix bugs."
GCC mini-summit Ian Lance Taylor reports on the recent GCC mini-summit. "We held a GCC mini-summit at Google on Wednesday, April 18. About 40 people came. This is my very brief summary of what we talked about. Corrections and additions very welcome. The goal of the mini-summit was just to let gcc developers meet face to face and talk. There was no goal of actually making any decisions, and, indeed, no decisions were made."
C++ C++0x branch in GCC Subversion repository Doug Gregor has announced a new C++0x development branch for GCC, the Gnu Compiler Collection. C++0x is the next revision of the C++ standard. "I have just created a new branch for development of C++0x-specific features in the GNU C++ front end. The branch is branches/cxx0x-branch in Subversion, and information about this branch is available at http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html."
Caml Caml Weekly News The April 24, 2007 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles.
Java GNU Classpath 0.95 released Release 0.95 of GNU Classpath, the essential libraries for Java, is out. Changes include: "Full merge of 1.5 generics work. Bootstrappable with OpenJDK javac compiler. URLConnection timeout support. TimeZone can use platform zoneinfo file when available. The Collection classes, lang.management and util.spi have been updated to 1.6. Addition of 1.6 ServiceLoader. Speedup for cairo and freetype Graphics2D support. The ASM library is now included. Better detection of browser plugin mechanisms for gcjwebplugin applet support in mozilla, iceweasel and firefox."
Designing Messaging Applications with Temporary Queues (O'Reilly) Thakur Thribhuvan works with JMS topics and queues on O'Reilly. "Most JMS destinations are created administratively and treated as static resources, but you can dynamically create your own topics and queues at runtime. In this article, Thribhuvan Thakur shows us how to create temporary JMS topics and queues, and discusses architectural reasons why we might want to do so."
Perl Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary (O'Reilly) The April 22, 2007 edition of the Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary is out with coverage of the latest Perl 6 developments.
PostScript GPL Ghostscript 8.56 released Version 8.56 of GPL Ghostscript has been announced. "Artifex Software, Inc. and artofcode LLC are pleased to announce the release of GPL Ghostscript 8.65. This is the latest in our stable 8.5x series, and the first new release since we began developing under the GPL. In addition to numerous bug fixes, conformance with published test suites is much improved in this release."
Python Python 2.5.1 final released Version 2.5.1 of Python has been released. "This is the first bugfix release of Python 2.5. Python 2.5 is now in bugfix-only mode; no new features are being added. According to the release notes, over 150 bugs and patches have been addressed since Python 2.5, including a fair number in the new AST compiler (an internal implementation detail of the Python interpreter). This is a production release of Python, and should be a painless upgrade from 2.5."
Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links The April 18, 2007 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links The April 23, 2007 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Tcl/Tk Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links The April 18, 2007 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
XML Which XML Technologies Are Beautiful? (O'Reilly) Michael Day ponders beautiful XML design on O'Reilly. "Given that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I had better define some criteria. To me, technology is beautiful when it achieves a balance between power and simplicity -- hitting a local maxima in the design space, if you will, such that it cannot be made any simpler without making it less powerful, and it cannot be made any more powerful without losing its simplicity."
Miscellaneous BIEW 5.6.4 released Version 5.6.4 of BIEW has been announced. "BIEW (Binary vIEW) is a free, portable, advanced file viewer with built-in editor for binary, hexadecimal and disassembler modes."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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