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DevelopmentThe Linux Desktop Testing Project reaches the 1.0.0 releaseThe Linux Desktop Testing Project is a cross-UNIX GUI testing framework. The project was started in 2005. In the Linux world, LDTP originally just supported the GNOME desktop environment. KDE support was planned from the beginning, this capability is now in place with the recently released KDE 4.0. In addition to operating with the two major Linux desktops, LDTP is being used by Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. From the LDTP home page: ![[LDTP]](/images/ns/ldtp-logo-small.png){kind=logo}
Linux Desktop (GUI Application) Testing Project (LDTP) is aimed at producing high quality test automation framework and cutting-edge tools that can be used to test Linux Desktop and improve it. It uses the Accessibility libraries to poke through the application's user interface. The framework also has tools to record test-cases based on user-selection on the application. LDTP is a Linux / Unix GUI application testing tool. It runs on Linux / Solaris / FreeBSD / Embedded environment (Palm source).
Version 0.8 of LDTP was investigated last February on LWN, take a look to get an overview of the software's operation. LDTP version 0.9.0 was released in August 2007, it featured new Firefox automation support and bug fixes. This week, version 1.0.0 was announced:
This release features
number of important breakthroughs in LDTP as well as in the field of Test
Automation. This release note covers a brief introduction on LDTP followed
by the list of new features and major bug fixes which makes this new version
of LDTP the best of the breed. Useful references have been included at the
end of this article for those who wish to hack / use LDTP.
New features in this release include the Object Oriented LDTP, the LDTP Editor with record and replay functionality, major bug fixes and lots of work on the documentation. The Linux Desktop Testing Project is maturing and its scope is getting wider. LDTP can become an important tool for automated testing of GUI-based applications. With a bit of effort on the part of developers, LDTP can improve the quality of applications and speed up the testing of new releases.
System Applications Backup Software Safekeep: version 1.0.4 (stable) released (SourceForge)Version 1.0.4 of SafeKeep has been announced. "This is release 1.0.4 of SafeKeep, a centralized and easy to use backup application that combines the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. What's new in this release: - Add options to allow the query of the backup repository - Important fixes when dealing with snapshots - Make it more compatible with Python 2.2 (more work remains) - Avoid build-time dependency on asciidoc which depends on Python 2.3 - Add some clarifications to the documentation - Add support for FreeBSD"
Clusters and Grids rsplib 2.4.0 announcedStable version 2.4.0 of the RSPLIB Open Source RSerPool package is out. "RSPLIB is the Open Source implementation (GPLv3) of the IETF's upcoming standard for Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool). It provides protocols and functionalities for the management of server pools and sessions between users and pools. In particular, RSerPool takes care for server selection and session failover support among servers of a pool."
Database Software Postgres Weekly NewsThe February 24, 2008 edition of the Postgres Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
Printing Common UNIX Printing System 1.3.6 announcedVersion 1.3.6 of the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) has been announced. "The new release fixes some platform-specific build problems, web interface issues, PDF and PostScript filter option handling, and a number of minor bugs discovered during routine code audits."
Web Site Development Midgard 2.0alpha1 releasedVersion 2.0alpha1 of the Midgard web development platform has been announced. "The first alpha of the Midgard 2.0 branch is targeted at web framework and desktop developers. This release does not consist of the CMS components, but instead targets at providing the development tools for building a modern web framework. Framework based not only on one tool, but which can connect multiple technologies and languages. The version 3 of MidCOM web content management components for PHP5 are currently in the process of being ported to the Midgard 2.0 platform."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Sonic Visualiser: 1.2 released (SourceForge)Version 1.2 of Sonic Visualiser, a tool that can display audio spectrums and more, has been announced. "This is a significant feature release, containing a number of new features over the previous 1.0 including an exciting new audio alignment capability."
Data Visualization Gmsh 2.1.0 announcedVersion 2.1.0 of Gmsh has been announced. "Gmsh is an automatic 3D finite element grid generator with a build-in CAD engine and post-processor. Its design goal is to provide a simple meshing tool for academic problems with parametric input and advanced visualization capabilities. Gmsh is built around four modules: geometry, mesh, solver and post-processing. The specification of any input to these modules is done either interactively using the graphical user interface or in ASCII text files using Gmsh's own scripting language." This version adds a new post-processing database and other improvements.
Desktop Environments GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
Quickies: Nepomuk, Raptor, LProf, FOSDEM, Supporting Member (KDE.News)KDE.News presents another quickies article with lots of KDE news bites. "The Nepomuk KDE project that is creating the social semantic desktop on top of KDE has launched its new website. Go there for numerous tutorials integrating Nepomuk features like "who sent me this file?". The German Kubuntu team has an interview with Amarok release dude, Harald Sitter..."
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
The Xorg 7.4 release planFor readers interested in X.org development: Adam Jackson has posted a plan for the upcoming 7.4 release. Much of the timing seems driven by a desire to have a stable release in time for Fedora 9; that leads to a projected date of April 25. There's a lot of problems to be resolved between now and then, but, as Adam puts it, "These are just bugs. They're fixable. And we need to fix them."
Xorg Software AnnouncementsThe following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Desktop Publishing LyX 1.5.4 is releasedVersion 1.5.4 of LyX, a GUI front-end to the TeX typesetting system, has been announced. "This is a maintenance release. Besides the usual stability improvements and fixes, this release comes with major improvements in the handling of Chinese, Korean and Japanese (CJK) languages and scripts, and introduces some minor new features (such as a character count option)."
Electronics UrJTAG: 0.8 is available (SourceForge)Version 0.7 of UrJTAG has been announced. "UrJTAG aims to create an enhanced, modern tool for communicating over JTAG with flash chips, CPUs, and many more. It is a descendant of the popular openwince JTAG tools with a lot of additional features and enhancements. UrJTAG, descendant of the openwince JTAG tools, can now read BSDL descriptions natively, transfers data over USB much faster, and got some new bus and cable drivers. Numerous improvements have been added, many bugs have been fixed."
Financial Applications LedgerSMB 1.2.13 releasedVersion 1.2.13 of LedgerSMB, a web-based accounting system, has been announced. "This release corrects all known issues with running LedgerSMB 1.2.x on PostgreSQL 8.3 and although other issues may surface, we will fix those as they are brought to our attention."
Games PyChess Philidor Goes Gold (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop takes a look at PyChess Philidor developments. "PyChess Philidor 0.8 has been released. This happens after nearly a year coding, and a rewrite of large parts of the codebase for stability and features. If you haven't already beaten fruit, gnuchess, pychess-engine and your friend with PyChess, now is time to!"
Ryzom.org State of the GameA new Ryzom.org State of the Game notice has been mailed out. "It has been more than a year since our last update here. A lot happened, and I will try to sum it up for those who aren't regular visitors of the Ryzom.org forums. But first, I need to attract your attention on a very important part of this email: It is very important that you contact all Ryzom players you know or have known, to ask them to subscribe to this mailing list. With Gameforge shutting down the servers (and maybe the offic[i]al forums), that's the only way to keep a way to reach the whole Ryzom community when needed."
Interoperability Wine 0.9.56 releasedVersion 0.9.56 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: Proper handling of OpenGL/Direct3D windows with menu bars, Stubs for all the d3dx9_xx dlls, Several graphics optimizations, Many installer fixes, Improved MIME message support, and Lots of bug fixes.
Mail Clients Claws Mail 3.3.1 announcedVersion 3.3.1 of Claws Mail has been announced. "New in this release: Forbid attaching anything containing "../" or ".ssh/" in mailto: URIs. Add a hidden preference, 'use_networkmanager', to disable NetworkManager handling. Updated translations: French, Hebrew. Bug fixes."
Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 releasedThunderbird 2.0.0.12 is out; it contains a number of fixes, including some for a set of security issues. The announcement also reminds users that Thunderbird 1.5 is no longer supported. For those wondering about the quality of Thunderbird 2.0 support - this update took a while to arrive - it's worth noting that the developers are concerned too and will, presumably, act to improve the security update process.
Music Applications QM Vamp Plugins 1.4 is now availableVersion 1.4 of QM Vamp Plugins, a set of audio analysis plugins in the Vamp plugin format, has been announced. "This release is a major update including new plugins and numerous bug fixes. Note onset detector, beat tracker, tempo estimator, key estimator, tonal change detector, structural segmenter, timbral and rhythmic similarity, chromagram, constant-Q spectrogram, and MFCC calculation plugins are included."
Qtractor 0.1.1 releasedVersion 0.1.1 of Qtractor, an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application, has been announced. "After some time in quarantine, meaning that it just passed almost 40 days since its last public appearance, the frivolous debutante has matured a bit but not that much. Truth is, it is not quite healed and in fact, it is getting seriously bloated ;)"
Science Staden Package: io_lib 1.11.0 released (SourceForge)Version 1.11.0 of Staden Package has been announced. "A fully developed set of DNA sequence assembly (Gap4), editing and analysis tools (Spin) for Unix, Linux, MacOSX and MS Windows. Finally I decided enough beta releases and packaged an official version of io_lib 1.11.0. Hence from here on I'll support multiple SRF revisions should it change, but I'm confident it's now at a reasonably stable point."
Speech Software DictionaryMaker 2.14 released (SourceForge)Version 2.14 of DictionaryMaker has been announced, it features a new export function feature and a bug fix. "DictionaryMaker is a graphical tool for creating electronic pronunciation dictionaries (for natural languages). The system allows a user to develop a pronunciation dictionary without requiring expert linguistic knowledge or programming expertise."
Video Applications Schroedinger 1.0.0 releasedVersion 1.0.0 of Schroedinger, an implementation of the Dirac video codec specification, has been announced. "This release is mainly intended for early adopters and integrators, in order to work out many of the kinks that inevitably arise when a project gains more wide usage."
Languages and Tools C GCC 4.3.0-rc1 availableVersion 4.3.0-rc1 of GCC, the Gnu Compiler Collection, has been announced. "Please test the tarballs there and report any problems to Bugzilla."
Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe February 26, 2008 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.
Haskell Haskell Weekly NewsThe February 23, 2008 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is online. It includes details of the one hundred unique new and updated Haskell libraries and applications in the past two weeks, including mutable arrays, compression, games, web frameworks, data structures, a file system, Haskell tools, concurrency, graphics, cryptography, systems administration, signal processing, new guis and several audio libraries.
Java GNU Classpath 0.97 releasedMaintenance release version 0.97 of GNU Classpath has been announced. "We are proud to announce the release of 0.97 "I Aten't Dead" GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools for the java programming language. The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development platforms."
Lisp SBCL 1.0.15 has been releasedVersion 1.0.15 of Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) has been announced. "This version revives Alpha support, improves backtrace information, implements POSIX mktemp and mkdtemp, and fixes many bugs."
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The February 10-16, 2008 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out with the latest Perl 5 news.
Python Python-URL! - weekly Python news and linksThe February 26, 2008 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Tcl/Tk Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and linksThe February 22, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Editors Emacs news: new maintainer, version 22 pretestRichard Stallman's approach to the maintenance of the Emacs editor has come under occasional fire. He has now announced that he will be handing the maintainership over to developers Chong Yidong and Stefan Monnier; it will be interesting to see how the Emacs development process changes. Meanwhile, pretest version 22.1.91 (leading up to the upcoming stable 22.2 release) is now available.
Libraries IT++: 4.0.3 released (SourceForge)Version 4.0.3 of IT++ has been announced, it features an important bug fix. "IT++ is a C++ library of mathematical, signal processing and communication system routines/functions. Its main use is in simulation of communication systems or for performing research in the area of communications. Although IT++ 4.0.2 was published only a few days ago, we decided to prepare the next maintenance release quite fast."
Version Control GIT 1.5.4.3 announcedVersion 1.5.4.3 of the GIT distributed version control system has been announced. "Largest user visible change in this is RPM packaging updates by Kristian Høgsberg. 'git-core' will only be pure git without pulling foreign SCM packages in as its dependencies anymore when you do "yum install git-core"."
monotone 0.39 releasedVersion 0.39 of the monotone version control system has been announced. "It has new features and a few changes in the automate interface and a new section in the manual, about merge conflicts and ways to resolve them, among other changes."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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