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DevelopmentThe Valgrind Project releases version 3.4.0Valgrind is a suite of code analysis and debugging tools for Linux:
Valgrind is an award-winning instrumentation framework for building dynamic analysis tools. There are Valgrind tools that can automatically detect many memory management and threading bugs, and profile your programs in detail. You can also use Valgrind to build new tools.
The Valgrind distribution currently includes six production-quality tools: a memory error detector, two thread error detectors, a cache and branch-prediction profiler, a call-graph generating cache profiler, and a heap profiler. It also includes one experimental tool, which detects out of bounds reads and writes of stack, global and heap arrays.
![[Valgrind Logo]](/images/ns/ValgrindLogo.png)
Valgrind version 3.4.0 was recently released, it adds a long list of improvements. The release notes explain the changes, which include:
Building and installing the Valgrind 3.4.0 source code on an Ubuntu 8.10 system was straightforward. For those who don't need the latest release, version 3.3.1 is available as a standard Ubuntu package. The source code was downloaded, uncompressed and extracted with tar. The standard Unix configure, make and make install steps were run, the code built and installed with no problems. A test run of Valgrind was done on a fairly simple interactive C program. The Quick Start Guide was consulted, the program was compiled with the -g flag and valgrind was run: valgrind --leak-check=yes ./program options . This produced a report with a list of some still reachable memory and a hint of how to get more information on the problem. Following the hint, Valgrind was run again with: valgrind --leak-check=full --show-reachable=yes ./program options and the location of the code that produced the still reachable memory was revealed. This experiment only showed the most basic of Valgrind's utility in debugging the simplest of test cases. Even so, it quickly revealed a small memory leak in the tested code. The lengthy online user manual explains the depth of Valgrind's testing capabilities in full. Those who maintain large projects could likely improve their code by running Valgrind and correcting any issues that it finds.
System Applications Audio Projects Rivendell 1.2.2 releasedVersion 1.2.2 of Rivendell, a radio station automation system, has been announced. "This is a maintenance release of Rivendell. The following issues have been corrected..."
Database Software PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe January 11, 2009 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
SQLite release 3.6.8 is availableRelease 3.6.8 of the SQLite DBMS has been announced. "Changes associated with this release include the following: * Added support for nested transactions * Enhanced the query optimizer so that it is able to use multiple indices to efficiently process OR-connected constraints in a WHERE clause. * Added support for parentheses in FTS3 query patterns using the SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3_PARENTHESIS compile-time option."
Device Drivers CWiid update 2009Donnie Smith, author of the CWiid driver project for the Wii remote, has published a CWiid update 2009 document. "So I feel like I owe it to my users to give an update on the status of CWiid for now and expected activity over the coming months. There has been the occasional question about whether the site is still active, whether development is still active, etc. The answer for now, is that both are semi-active. I still monitor the activity here on an almost-daily basis (the RSS feed is on my home page), and respond to issues that I have any intelligent input on. However, I'm a man of many interests (probably too many), and CWiid is no longer number 1. While there have been a few contributors, no one has really stepped up with the long-term contributions required of an admin (nickishappy has come closest to filling this role, Nick if you have the time and want the responsibility, just let me know). Such are the breaks of open-source software." The Wii remote and CWiid driver was covered on LWN a few months ago.
Networking Tools libnfnetlink 0.0.40 releasedVersion 0.0.40 of libnfnetlink, the low-level netfilter library, has been announced. "This release includes a couple of updates for the interface2index infrastructure one bugfix."
Mandriva Directory Server 2.3.2 is availableVersion 2.3.2 of Mandriva Directory Server has been announced, a number of new capabilities have been added.
Web Site Development Midgard 8.09.3 releasedVersion 8.09.3 of the Midgard content management system has been announced. "The 8.09.3 "New Year's diet" release focuses on API and architecture cleanups in order to ease transition from Midgard 1.x series API to Midgard 2.x APIs. Stable 8.09.3 release is recommended for all users of Midgard."
web2py 1.55.3 announcedVersion 1.55.3 of web2py, a cross-platform database driven web framework, has been announced, it adds a number of enhancements.
Zero RRD Framework: Major Update (SourceForge)A new release of Zero RRD Framework has been announced. "This RRDTool Framework provides a central HTTP-based service for import into standard RRD DBs and graph generation. A lightweight, easily extendable agent for the data sources is pushing updates with minimal resource consumption on the master service."
Miscellaneous lsscsi 0.22 releasedVersion 0.22 of lsscsi has been announced, some new features have been added. "lsscsi is a utility that uses sysfs in linux 2.6 series kernels to list information about SCSI devices and SCSI hosts. Both a compact format which is one line per device and a "classic" format (like the output of 'cat /proc/scsi/scsi') are supported."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Amarok 2.0.1.1 released (including security fix)Version 2.0.1.1 of the Amarok music player has been announced, the release notes have more details: "Just a few weeks after the 2.0 release the new and improved Amarok 2.0.1.1, codenamed Magellan, is ready for you. Don't let the small version number increase fool you though! We brought back features a lot of you have been waiting for and of course fixed a lot of bugs as well as one security issue."
BitTorrent Applications qBittorrent: 1.3.0 (stable) released (SourceForge)Version 1.3.0 of qBittorrent has been announced. "A Bittorrent client using C++ / libtorrent and a Qt4 Graphical User Interface. It aims to be a good alternative to other bittorrent clients. It has more and more features such as an integrated search engine, UPnP, encryption, PeX, a torrent creation tool Happy new year to you all. With this new year, qBittorrent is growing older (and mature) and we are proud to announce the release of qBittorrent v1.3.0. This is a new major release based on libtorrent-rasterbar v0.14.x and powered by a newly rewritten core code to make it even more efficient."
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.25.4 releasedVersion 2.25.4 of the GNOME desktop environment has been announced. "This is the forth development release towards our 2.26 release that will happen in March 2009. By now, development is well under way, and we've already made good progress on some of the goals that we've set ourselves for 2.26 (http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals)."
GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE 4.1.4 and 4.2-RC releasedVersions 4.1.4 and 4.2-RC of KDE have been announced. "We've done two releases simultaneously tonight: KDE 4.1.4, bugfix and translation update KDE 4.1.4 and 4.2 Release Candidate Available Now".
KDE 4.1.4 and 4.2 RC available now (KDE.News)KDE.News has more information on the two latest KDE releases: "KDE 4.1.4 is the latest update for the KDE 4.1 series. It contains many bugfixes, mainly in the e-mail and PIM suite Kontact and the document viewer Okular. KDE 4.2 RC is the release candidate of KDE 4.2, also bringing new features and thousands of bug fixes to the KDE desktop and applications. KDE 4.1.4 is the last planned update to the KDE 4.1 series and stabilises the 4.1 platform further."
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Xorg Software AnnouncementsThe following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Encryption Software GnuPG 2.0.10 releasedVersion 2.0.10 of GnuPG has been announced. "We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG-2 release: Version 2.0.10. The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is GNU's tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data, create digital signatures, help authenticating using Secure Shell and to provide a framework for public key cryptography."
Financial Applications SQL-Ledger 2.8.20 releasedVersion 2.8.20 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting system, has been announced. The What's New document says: "fixed "database handle destroyed" error when printing".
GUI Packages Another Year of WXThe wxWidgets cross-platform GUI toolkit project has published a 2008 summary entitled Another Year of WX. "So, what have we done in the almost 7000 revisions checked in during 2008? Maybe surprisingly, the most important changes haven't been about writing code at all but rather about improving the project infrastructure. This may not seem like a big deal but the old SourceForge-based bug tracker was completely unusable and basically was unused because of this and literally hundreds of bugs could have been triaged and closed since the switch to using Trac."
Multimedia Elisa Media Center 0.5.23 releasedVersion 0.5.23 of Elisa Media Center has been announced. "Elisa is a cross-platform and open-source Media Center written in Python. It uses GStreamer [1] for media playback and pigment [2] to create an appealing and intuitive user interface. The main highlight of this release feature-wise is on the plugins installation: plugin updates will now be silently installed by default as well as new recommended plugins. New configuration options allow to tune this default behaviour."
Music Applications Aldrin 0.13 releasedVersion 0.13 of Aldrin has been announced. "Aldrin is an open source modular music sequencer/tracker for the GNU/Linux operating system. It is written in python and supported by the Armstrong audio processing backend (previously known as libzzub)."
DSSI 1.0 release; FluidSynth-DSSI, hexter, Xsynth-DSSI updatesVersion 1.0 of DSSI, an audio plugin API for software instruments and effects, and new releases of FluidSynth-DSSI, hexter and Xsynth-DSSI are out. "This release contains one small addition to the DSSI API itself, allowing for communication of the sample rate to DSSI UIs. Since the DSSI API has been stable now (with minor additions) for four and a half years, and since most active interest in further extending a Linux softsynth plugin standard has been absorbed by the LV2 project, it seems appropriate to call this release "version 1.0"."
guitarix 0.03.3-1 releasedVersion 0.03.3-1 of guitarix has been announced, a long list of new features have been added. "guitarix is a simple Linux Rock Guitar amplifier for jack(Jack Audio Connektion Kit) with one input and two outputs. Designed to get nice thrash/metal/rock/blues guitar sounds. There are controls for bass, treble, gain, compressor, preamp, balance, distortion, freeverb, impulse response (), crybaby(wah) and echo . A fixed resonator will be used when distortion is disabled. For 'pressure' in the sound you can use the feedback and feedforward sliders."
GuitarTeX2: 3.2.0 released (SourceForge)Version 3.2.0 of GuitarTeX2 has been announced. "GuitarTeX is based on the idea of Chord. It takes a Chord file containing Chordpro directives to produce good-looking and easy-to-play song sheets for guitarists in PostScript or PDF format. GuitarTex2 is a further development of GuitarTex. Major change in compatibility with other chordpro files. Also a bugfix in combination Windows + Java 1.6".
MC09Edit: Version 0.1-alpha released (SourceForge)Version 0.1-alpha of MC09Edit has been announced. "MC09Edit is a complete visual editor for the Roland MC-09 Phraselab. It communicates with the synthesizer over a midi connection. Its main feature is the ability of storing and managing your user patterns on your computer. It is cross-platform. This is the first release, all features aren't active but the soft is usable."
Science Papywizard 1.6.0 announcedVersion 1.6.0 of Papywizard, a panohead control application for the Merlin/Orion astronomic mount, has been announced. "This will probably be the last release of the 1.x branch. Papywizard v2 is on the road; first task will be to switch from PyGTK to PyQt, then re-think the internal design for a better modularity (plugins)."
Miscellaneous The openSUSE Project announces csyncThe openSUSE Project has announced the launch of csync. "As mobile computing becomes more and more important, file synchronization is more important than ever. Our jobs often require working not only on multiple computers, but in multiple locations, and disconnected from our networks. To help solve this problem, we need effective strategies for replication of user data and files. csync is a bidirectional file synchronizer for Linux and allows to keep two copies of files and directories in sync. It uses uses widely adopted protocols like smb or sftp so that there is no need for a server component of csync."
Languages and Tools Java All HTML elements are now included in HtmlUnit (SourceForge)A new version of HtmlUnit has been announced. "HtmlUnit is a "browser for Java programs". It models HTML documents and provides an API that allows you to invoke pages, fill out forms, click links, etc... just like you do in your "normal" browser. In SVN version, HtmlUnit has recently added all HTML elements (some are rarely used), which may have some backward compatibility effect in the next version 2.5 For example, <b> was evaluated to HtmlUnknownElement, but now will be HtmlBold."
Java INI Package: v1.0.0 released (SourceForge)Version 1.0.0 of Java INI Package has been announced. "The aim of this project is to develop a straight forward java package for creating, reading and writing INI files (aka configuration files). Furthermore, the package should retain all comments of the INI file when reading and writing the files. After more than 6 months since the last release (due to other comitments), version 1.0.0 of Java INI Package has been released. This release makes the stable version of Java INI Package and locks the API for all future v1.*.* releases."
Python Jython 2.5 Beta1 releasedVersion 2.1 Beta1 of Jython, a Python implementation written in Java, has been announced. "Jython 2.5 Beta1 continues a code cooling period where the number of new features should significantly slow as we concentrate on solidifying Jython 2.5 for an eventual release. I would guess that we will put out about two more betas before we start pushing out release candidates, hopefully in February."
Python-URL! - weekly Python news and linksThe January 13, 2009 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Tcl/Tk Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and linksThe January 14, 2009 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
UML Bouml: 4.9.2 released (SourceForge)Version 4.9.2 of Bouml has been announced, a number of bugs have been fixed. "BOUML is a free UML 2 tool box allowing you to specify and generate code in C++, Java, Idl, Php and Python. BOUML runs under Unix/Linux/Solaris, MacOS X and Windows. It is very fast and doesn't require much memory to manage several thousands of classes."
IDEs Pydev 1.4.2 releasedVersion 1.4.2 of Pydev has been announced, it includes numerous bug fixes and other enhancements. "PyDev is a plugin that enables users to use Eclipse for Python and Jython development -- making Eclipse a first class Python IDE -- It comes with many goodies such as code completion, syntax highlighting, syntax analysis, refactor, debug and many others."
Libraries libsmf 1.2 announcedVersion 1.2 of libsmf has been announced. "LibSMF is a BSD-licensed C library for handling SMF ("*.mid") files. It transparently handles time<->pulses conversions, tempo map handling etc. The only dependencies are C compiler and glib. API documentation and examples are included."
Version Control tig 0.13 releasedVersion 0.13 of tig, an ncurses-based text-mode interface for git, has been announced. "This release contains a major rewrite of the IO layer of tig to use fork+exec instead of popen() and remove use of stdio's fopen() and friends. The new IO API removes the need for shell quoting and improves the overall speed of loading view data. On the downside, it brings a few incompatibilities wrt. commands given via the environment. While the patch series began by being based on git's run-command.c module, the final version contains no code from git."
Miscellaneous MyHDL 0.6 releasedVersion 0.6 of MyHDL has been announced. "MyHDL is a Python package for using Python as a hardware description language. The highlight of this release is conversion to VHDL, in addition to the existing Verilog capability. Furthermore, the convertible subset has been broadened substantially beyond synthesizable logic, to support test bench conversion."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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