Development

Bacula - The Network Backup Solution

Bacula is a cross-platform backup solution that licensed under version 2 of the GPL.

The project's motto is somewhat amusing: It comes by night and sucks the vital essence from your computers. [Insert evil laugh here.]

Bacula is a cross-platform project. The server side works on Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD. The client side works on the above server platforms plus other Unix variants, Irix, MacOS X, and many versions of Windows.

Bacula has a fairly length list of features including:

• A centralized director program.
• Automatic execution via an internal scheduler.
• Parallel execution of backups.
• A job sequencing priority system.
• Interactive file restore operation.
• Support for whole-system restores.
• Command line and GUI control via the Console program.
• File verification for break-in detection.
• Optional file compression with gzip.
• CRAM-MD5 password authentication.
• Support for daemon configuration files.
• Backup catalogs can be stored under several different SQL databases.
• Support for multiple backup volumes.
• Support for pool and volume library management.
• A message system that can email client messages to the administrator.
• Support for tape library hardware and barcodes.
• Data spooling to disk for streaming tape operation.

The Bacula User's Guide describes the software and its component utilities in greater detail.

Stable version 1.34.0 of Bacula was recently announced, the code is available on the GNU Directory Listing.

If you are looking for an open-source solution for performing network backup functions, Bacula looks like a good package to consider.

Comments (3 posted)

System Applications

Audio Projects

ALSA 1.04 release

Version 1.04 of the ALSA sound driver is available with "mostly bug-fixes and cleanups".

Comments (none posted)

Planet CCRMA Changes

The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of Spiral Synth Modular, Rosegarden 4, Noteedit, Hydrogen, Specimen, Timemachine, the Caps LADSPA Plugins, STK, Unison, Ocaml, Lablgtk1, Libsndfile, and Libsamplerate.

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Database Software

Release 2.3 of DbForms is available (SourceForge)

Bug fix release 2.3 of DbForms has been announced. "Tired of writing same code again and again? Try DbForms! DbForms is a Java (Servlet,JSP/Taglib) - based Rapid Application Development environment which enables developers to build web based database applications in _very_ short time."

Comments (none posted)

libgda/libgnomedb 1.1.1 released

Version 1.1.1 of libgda/libgnomedb, a database development framework for the GNOME environment, is out. "This is another development release in the road to 1.2, which will be the next stable release, and which shows a preview of the new features getting into the 1.2 final release. It is not intended for production use, but by people wanting to experiment with the new features and to help on the development."

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libgdamm 1.3.2 released

Version 1.3.2 of libgdamm is out with some new features. "libgdamm provides C++ wrappers for libgda for use with gtkmm. libgda is a generic database API with several database provider implementations."

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Mergeant 0.50 released

Version 0.50 of Mergeant is available. "Mergeant is a database user and administration tool based on GNOME-DB. It allows users to easily manage any database supported by GNOME-DB. This is a development release, the first one after the splitting of Mergeant into libmergeant and the GUI frontend, resulting in a much better architecture."

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PL/R - R Procedural Language for PostgreSQL

Version 0.6.0 alpha of PL/R, the R Procedural Language for PostgreSQL, is available. This version features bug fixes, support for the latest versions of PostgreSQL, and improved documentation.

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PostgreSQL Weekly News

The April 5, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News has been published.

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Filesystem Utilities

ntfsprogs 1.9.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.9.1 of ntfsprogs has been announced. "This release is a minor update featuring a mostly rewritten ntfsinfo, mkntfs now creates bootable volumes, some 64-bit architecture fixes and lots of cleanups. Update is recommended for people using 64-bit architectures."

Comments (none posted)

Mail Software

New milter.org releases

The milter.org site lists new versions of milter-spamc, milter-sender and milter-gris.

Comments (none posted)

Web Site Development

Gallery v1.4.3 Release Candidate 1 Available! (SourceForge)

Version 1.4.3 Release Candidate 1 of Gallery, a web-based photo management system, is available. "This version is a combination of lots of bugfixes and several new features: Lots of bug fixes, minor feature enhancements, and increased security; Gallery works when register_globals is turned off; GeekLog, phpBB2, MamboCMS, and NSNnuke integration; Image watermarking; Fullscreen fit-to-screen slideshow."

Comments (none posted)

Photo Galleries with Mason and Imager (O'Reilly)

Casey West makes a photo gallery with Perl's HTML::Mason on O'Reilly. "Creating a photo gallery is usually considered a daunting task. Lots of people have tried it, not many have succeeded. One of the reasons for so many similar projects is that they don't often integrate well into an existing web site. In this article we're going to build a photo gallery using two important components, Mason and Imager. Writing our gallery in Mason will make it much easier to integrate into an existing web site."

Comments (none posted)

Krang v1.014 released (use Perl)

Version 1.014 of Krang, an Open Source web publishing system, has been announced. "Krang v1.014, the first public release, is now available. Krang is an Open Source web-publisher / content-management system designed for large-scale magazine-style websites. It is a 100% Perl application using Apache/mod_perl and MySQL, as well as numerous CPAN modules."

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Web Services

Web services programming tips and tricks: Roundtrip issues in Java coding conventions

Russell Butek and Richard Scheuerle, Jr. present some web services programming tips on roundtripping and data integrity in an IBM developerWorks article. "Java APIs for XML-Based Remote Procedure Call's (JAX-RPC's) Java-to-WSDL/WSDL-to-Java mapping rules do not try to preserve Java constructs during roundtripping. Many constructs are preserved, but not all. This tip describes, in particular, why following Java coding conventions is very important to maintaining the ability to roundtrip."

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Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

abcde 2.1.16 released

Version 2.1.16 of abcde, a CD ripping and writing utility, is out with lots of new features.

Comments (1 posted)

Muine 0.5.1 announced

Version 0.5.1 of Muine is out with new backends, bug fixes, improved translations, and more. "Muine is a new music player using some new UI ideas. The idea is that it will be much easier and comfortable to use than the iTunes model, which is used by both Rhythmbox and Jamboree."

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Rhythmbox 0.7.2 released

Version 0.7.2 of Rhythmbox, a music management system, is out. "Here's a new version in the Rhythmbox development series. We're rapidly approaching 0.8.0. A lot of bugs have been fixed."

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Data Visualization

DiaCanvas 2.0.12.0 released

Version 2.0.12.0 of DiaCanvas, the GTK/Gnome diagramming widget, is out with an improved API, better Python support, and memory leak fixes.

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EarthSight 1.0

Version 1.0 of EarthSight, has been announced. "EarthSight is an Earth viewer application using NASA satellite imagery". A Linux version is forthcoming.

Comments (2 posted)

PyX 0.6.1 was released

Version 0.6.1 of PyX, the Python graphics package is available. The Change Log file lists a bug fix and new documentation.

Comments (none posted)

Desktop Environments

GNOME Platform Bindings: Release Candidate (2.5.7) (GnomeDesktop)

Version 2.5.7 of the GNOME Platform Bindings are available. "murraycu writes "This is the last development release before our totally ABI/API-stable 2.6.0 release on April 12th. Please note that the GNOME Platform Bindings are now in API freeze, so only very important API changes will be allowed before the fully-frozen GNOME Platform Bindings 2.6.0 release, on April 12th."

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Revelation 0.3.0 revealed

Version 0.3.0 of Revelation, a password manager for the GNOME 2 desktop, has been released. This version features an integrated password generator, password hiding, ui improvements, code cleanup, and more.

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KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The April 2, 2004 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is online. Here's the content summary: "KStars adds ability to use V4L devices. KPilot adds interface to Python and Perl conduits. Kontact adds groupware configuration wizards for Kolab and eGroupware. KWord and KSpread support OpenOffice format natively."

Comments (none posted)

Quick Lounge Applet 2.1.1 released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 2.1.1 of the Quick Lounge Applet for GNOME is available. "The Quick Lounge Applet is an applet for the GNOME desktop similar to quick launch for Windows."

Comments (none posted)

New software releases (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has a multiple announcement for new GNOME software. "New releases of the GRAMPS genealogy program, GNOME-IOR 0.3 a GUI for CORBA object reference parsing and object lifeness tests, and the Gnomoradio peer-to-peer music playing system are now available."

Comments (none posted)

Electronics

XCircuit 3.2.15 released

Version 3.2.15 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, is available. Change information is in the source code.

Comments (none posted)

Games

New PyGame releases

The PyGame site lists new versions of KCB, a coloring book application, and LEISERSELT, a game involving snowballs.

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GUI Packages

Tutorial: Custom Widgets using PyQt (KDE.News)

Roberto Alsina has announced the availability of a tutorial on using PyQt. "Everyone who has programmed an application knows that sometimes you create a gadget that can be reused in other situations, and that code reuse is good. In the specific case of GUI applications, often what you would want to reuse is a widget. I wrote a short tutorial explaining how to create easy-to-reuse custom widgets using PyQt."

Comments (none posted)

gtkmm 2.2.11 released

Version 2.2.11 of gtkmm, a C++ interface to GTK+, is out." gtkmm 2.2.10 had an incorrect configure-time test, that mistakenly disabled some template code for gcc, used to convert from intermediate C++ containers to STL containers."

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SLgtk 0.5.6 and Vwhere 1.2.0 released

Version 0.5.6 of SLgtk, an S-Language binding to Gtk2 and GtkExtra, is out. Version 1.2.0 of Vwhere is also included. "SLgtk also includes a visual version of the powerful S-Lang "where" command, extensions to and performance enhancements for several GtkExtra widgets, and a pixbuf loader for the FITS image file format widely used within astronomy."

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wxPython 2.5.1.5 released

Version 2.5.1.5 of the wxPython GUI toolkit has been announced. "The changes in this version are too numerous to list here, please see the following websites for more details. If you are upgrading from 2.4.x then please do read the MigrationGuide fully before as there are some backwards incompatible changes."

Comments (none posted)

Instant Messaging

Gaim 0.76 Released! (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.76 of the Gaim instant messaging client is available with lots of changes. "To prove even further that Gaim isn't dead, you should read the ChangeLog, which is quite extensive."

Comments (none posted)

GnomeICU 0.99.5 released (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeICU version 0.99.5 is out. "Its been a long year since the last release, but GnomeICU is not dead... GnomeICU is a Gnome fully featured ICQ client. We are slowly moving towards GnomeICU 1.0, the full ICQ release. This is an intermediate release, so that you, as our beloved users, can enjoy all of the bug fixes that are in our CVS."

Comments (none posted)

Interoperability

Samba 3.0.3pre2 Available for Download

Version 3.0.3pre2 of Samba has been released. "This is the second preview release of the Samba 3.0.3 code base and is provided for testing only. This release is *not* intended for production servers. Use at your own risk. There have been several bug fixes since the 3.0.2a release that we feel are important to make available to the Samba community for wider testings."

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Wine Traffic

Issue #248 of Wine Traffic is online with the latest Wine project news.

Comments (none posted)

Mail Clients

Perdition 1.14 released

Perdition 1.14, a Mail Retrieval Proxy, is out. Here are the changes: "Various minor bug fixes and feature enhacements. In particular pid file creation on FreeBSD (and possibly others) has been fixed. A segmentation fault problem in the ldap module has been resolved. And enhanced logging".

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Office Suites

ooo-build 1.1.52 is available

Build 1.1.52 of OpenOffice.org is out. "This package contains the Gnome integration work for OpenOffice.org, and a much simplified build wrapper, making an OO.o build / install possible for the common man. It is a staging ground for up-streaming patches to OO.o. The major change in this release is targetting OO.o 1.1.1, which includes a number of bug fixes - particularly a fix for the "occasionally you loose random images" nasty that people suffered too long."

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Science

JChemPaint 1.9.11 is out (SourceForge)

Version 1.9.11 of JChemPaint, a Java 2 program for drawing chemical structures, is available. "This release is mostly a bug fix release, and also includes other minor improvements, like a more efficient Rendering engine and a GUI periodic table for selecting the drawing element."

Comments (none posted)

Web Browsers

Mozilla 1.7 to Become New Long-Lived Stable Branch (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports that the stable Mozilla 1.4 branch will be replaced by the new stable Mozilla 1.7 branch. Mozilla Firefox 1.0, a new milestone of Mozilla Thunderbird, a new Camino release and several third party Mozilla based products will be based on Mozilla 1.7.

Comments (none posted)

Replacing DHTML Menus with XUL (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine mentions a new article on XUL by Nigel McFarlane. "I've written another article highlighting the features of Mozilla. To the best of my knowledge this is the first 'dirty XUL trick' that might appeal to web developers. It's nice to see that the Mozilla styling and layout systems are robust enough to support this kind of fiddling. It would be wonderful to see a full Web toolkit of XBL objects spring up to replace the junk we do in Dynamic HTML."

Comments (none posted)

Mozilla and the potential for interaction (O'Reilly)

Jono Bacon discusses web programming and XUL on O'Reilly. "I have been playing with XUL recently and I have been really motivated with the potential for building truly interactive system type web applications. You only need to take a look at the Amazon application that is bandied around by pro-XUL hackers to see an example of what is possible with it."

Comments (none posted)

Word Processors

AbiWord 2.0.6 Released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 2.0.6 of AbiWord is out. "The AbiWord development team is happy to release version 2.0.6 of AbiWord. This release solves quite some problems reported against the previous versions of AbiWord, and fixes for example the longstanding Copy & Paste bug."

Comments (none posted)

Miscellaneous

GanttProject 1.9.11 (SourceForge)

Version 1.9.11 of GanttProject has been announced. "GanttProject is a project management tool written in Java. Release 1.9.11 is a bugfix/usability release although there are some new features."

Comments (none posted)

SC-Track Roundup 0.6.8 released

Version 0.6.8 of Roundup, a Python-based issue tracker is out. "I'm pleased to announce Roundup 0.6.8, a maintenance release which fixes some bugs".

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Languages and Tools

C

Self-Diagnostic APIs: Software Quality's Next Frontier (Linux Journal)

Steve Graves writes about Self-Diagnostic APIs under C and C++ in a Linux Journal article. "With embedded software adding intelligence to so many everyday objects, it seems remarkable that the tools used to create these programs aren't smarter when it comes to catching highly destructive bugs. In assigning blame for such errors, one culprit lies in the application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by software publishers."

Comments (none posted)

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The March 30 - April 6, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is available with the latest Caml language articles.

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New Caml Software

The latest new Caml software includes OCaml-TDL, an OCaml library for dealing with TODO lists in XML format, and Contfrac, an OCaml module for working with continuous fractions.

Comments (none posted)

Java

MX4J 2.0.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 2.0.1 of MX4J is available. "MX4J 2.x is an implementation of JMX 1.2.1 and JSR 160 (JMX Remote API) 1.0. MX4J is an Open Source implementation of the Java Management Extensions technology, for both JSR 3 (JMXTM) and JSR 160 (JMX Remote API). MX4J 2.0.1 is a bug fix release."

Comments (none posted)

Java and Sound, Part 1 (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly has published part one in a series on sound with Java by David Flanagan. "Where can you learn how to play simple audio clips with the java.applet.AudioClip class, as well as how to use the javax.sound.sampled and javax.sound.midi packages to do such things as load and play sound clips, and monitor and change the playback position within a clip? In these first excerpts in a two-part series of excerpts from Chapter 17 ("Sound") of Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition."

Comments (none posted)

Bug Prevention with Code Generation: A J2EE Case Study (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly is running an article on J2EE bug detection by Francesco Aliverti-Piuri. "If you had to drill 12,000 holes, would you prefer a manual drill, or its automated equivalent? Francesco Aliverti-Piuri describes using code generation for discovering bugs in a J2EE example."

Comments (none posted)

Taming Tiger: Formatted output (IBM developerWorks)

John Zukowski discusses the use of Tiger for working with C printf statements in Java. "Tiger brings printf-style formatted output to the world of Java programming; and this month, columnist John Zukowski discusses all facets of the C-inspired support for printf and format strings."

Comments (none posted)

JSP

Developing Applications with KJSEmbed (KDE.News)

KDE.News points to an article series on KJSEmbed development. "KJSEmbed is the KDE JavaScript engine with bindings for Qt/KDE. These bindings allow people to create scripts that can tightly integrate into KDE quickly with simple JavaScript. This article goes through the process of how to build a core script, add database connectivity and to add GUI control."

Comments (none posted)

Perl

Perl 5.8.4 RC1 is out (use Perl)

Version 5.8.4 RC1 of Perl has been released. "This is a regular maintenance release for perl 5.8.x, providing bug fixes and integrating module updates from CPAN."

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This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The March 29 - April 5, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is online. "Elizabeth Mattijsen writes "With a little delay comes this week the weekly Perl 5 Porters Summary from the centre of reality that is Echt, the Netherlands. About 250 messages were posted in the last week. A lot was said about documentation. And a Release Candidate was released! Well, technically not inside the week, but inside of the bounds of this summary, anyway.""

Comments (none posted)

This week on Perl 6

The March 28, 2004 edition of This week on Perl 6 is online. "... and we're back! Another interesting week in Perl 6. Your Summarizer even wrote some [parrot] code and it's been simply ages since he did that. In accordance with ancient custom, we'll start the summary with perl6-internals."

Comments (none posted)

PHP

PHP 4.3.6RC2 released

Release Candidate 2 of PHP version 4.3.6 is available. "This release addresses 2 major bugs introduced in the 4.3.5 release. One of these bugs caused problems when loading dynamic extensions on Windows and thread-safe (ZTS) builds and the other involves incorrect handling of daylight savings time. A few other minor bugs were fixed as well."

Comments (none posted)

PHP Weekly Summary for April 7, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for April 7, 2004 is out. Topics include: PHP 4.3.6, PHP 5 RC2, mysqli not in sync, CLI and STDIN/OUT/ERR, and Bundling libxml.

Comments (none posted)

PostScript

GGV 2.6.0.1 is available

Version 2.6.0.1 of the GGV PostScript previewer is available. "As some of you might have noticed, 2.6.0 sometimes used an indecent amount of time to start, due to do a number of dumb existance checks on recent files when starting up; if those files were not local, this lasted and lasted and lasted and then it lasted some more. therefore the checks were eliminated."

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Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for April 5, 2004 is out; with this week's news and links.

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Two Python new-style objects articles

Shalabh Chaturvedi has published two articles on new-style objects for Python 2.2 and later.

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'Dive into Python' versions 4.8 and 4.9

Mark Pilgrim has published versions 4.8 and 4.9 of his online book Dive into Python. "Version 4.8 finished the chapter on dynamic functions and fixed some broken links. Version 4.9 splits the chapter introducing unit testing into two, finishes the chapter on regression testing, and fixes some typos in the chapter on dynamic functions." (Found on the Daily Python-URL.)

Comments (none posted)

Smalltalk

Two new versions of Squeak

Two new versions of the Unix Squeak smalltalk implementation are available. Versions 3.7b-5 and 3.6.3 are out, both feature numerous bug fixes.

Comments (none posted)

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The April 5, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is available with the week's Tcl/Tk article links.

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XML

Use XML namespaces with care (IBM developerWorks)

Uche Ogbuji writes about XML namespace issues on IBM's developerWorks. "XML namespaces are an imperfect solution to a difficult problem. From basic information architecture to difficulties with APIs, namespaces can open up rather painful gotchas if used carelessly. In this article, Uche Ogbuji covers some of the more important design principles which, if followed, can minimize problems with namespaces."

Comments (none posted)

Using libferris with XML

Ben Martin explains XML and libferris, a user-mode virtual filesystem, on O'Reilly's XML.com. "This article presents the benefits of using libferris with your XML applications. libferris presents a uniform interface to hierarchical data. This data can be persisted using many providers including the filesystem, an RDBMS, or even XML."

Comments (none posted)

Version Control

darcs version 0.9.18

Version 0.9.18 of the darcs revision control system is available. "'darcs' is an advanced revision control system along the lines of CVS or arch. It has two particularly distinctive features which differ from other revision control systems: each copy of the source is a fully functional branch, and underlying it is a consistent and powerful theory of patches (the latter being darcs' most important feature)."

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