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[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 23, 2013

corbet — 2013-05-23T00:40:47+00:00

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 23, 2013 is available.

[$] An "enum" for Python 3

jake — 2013-05-22T18:18:32+00:00

Designing an enumeration type (i.e. "enum") for a language may seem like a straightforward exercise, but the recently "completed" discussions over Python's PEP 435 show that it has a few wrinkles. The discussion spanned several long threads in two mailing lists (python-ideas, python-devel) going back to January in this particular iteration, but the idea is far older than that. Subscribers can click below for the full article from this week's edition.

[$] An unexpected perf feature

jake — 2013-05-21T22:10:55+00:00

Local privilege escalations seem to be regularly found in the Linux kernel these days, but they usually aren't quite so old—more than two years since the release of 2.6.37—or backported into even earlier kernels. But CVE-2013-2094 is just that kind of bug, with a now-public exploit that apparently dates back to 2010.

Click below (subscribers only) for LWN's look at this vulnerability.

LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 16, 2013

corbet — 2013-05-16T01:08:56+00:00

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 16, 2013 is available.

A look at the PyPy 2.0 release

jake — 2013-05-15T15:31:48+00:00

It's hard to say why, but May appears to be the month where we look in on PyPy. Three years ago, we had a May 2010 introduction to PyPy, followed by an experiment using it in May 2011. This year, the PyPy 2.0 release was made on May 9—that, coupled with our evident tradition, makes for a good reason to look in on this Python interpreter written in Python. Subscribers can click below for our report on the release from this week's edition.

PostgreSQL 9.3 beta: Federated databases and more

jake — 2013-05-14T20:04:15+00:00

In Berkeley, California — the birthplace of PostgreSQL — it's spring: plum and cherry blossoms, courting finches and college students, new plans for the summer, and the first beta release of the database system. Every year, the first beta of the next PostgreSQL version comes out in April or May, for a final release in September. PostgreSQL 9.3 beta 1 was released to the public on May 13th, and contains a couple dozen new features both for database administrators and application developers. Subscribers can click below for a look at some of the new features by guest author Josh Berkus.

LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 9, 2013

corbet — 2013-05-09T01:46:04+00:00

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 9, 2013 is available.

(Nearly) full tickless operation in 3.10

corbet — 2013-05-08T15:47:33+00:00

On a typical Linux system, each running CPU will be diverted between 100 and 1000 times each second by the periodic timer interrupt. That interrupt is the CPU's cue to reconsider which process should be running, catch up with read-copy-update (RCU) callbacks, and generally handle any necessary housekeeping. This periodic "tick" can be reasonably compared to the infamous big kernel lock (BKL): it is convenient to have around, but it also has an effect on performance that makes developers wish to abolish it. The key difference might be that getting rid of the timer tick has taken rather longer than was required to eliminate the BKL. The 3.10 kernel will take an important step in that direction, though, with the addition of the "full NOHZ" mode — but a lot of limitations still apply.

LFCS: The LLVMLinux project

jake — 2013-05-07T16:14:53+00:00

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (LFCS) seems to be a likely venue for an update on the status of building the kernel with Clang/LLVM. Both in 2011 and 2012, we covered those updates. LFCS 2013 continued the trend as LLVMLinux project lead Behan Webster presented the status and plans for the project at LFCS. The gathering lived up to its name as well, since two problems faced by the project were solved through collaboration at the summit.

LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 2, 2013

corbet — 2013-05-02T01:42:58+00:00

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 2, 2013 is available.

Go and Rust — objects without class

jake — 2013-05-01T18:06:06+00:00

Since the advent of object-oriented programming languages around the time of Smalltalk in the 1970s, inheritance has been a mainstay of the object-oriented vision. It is therefore a little surprising that both "Go" and "Rust" — two relatively new languages which support object-oriented programming — manage to avoid mentioning it. In this subscriber-only article, Neil Brown looks at how this classic object-oriented concept has evolved in two recent languages.

LFCS: The value of FOSS fiscal sponsorship

jake — 2013-04-30T19:21:00+00:00

As open source becomes more popular and mature, questions of formalizing the governance and corporate structures of projects are becoming of increasing importance, as can been seen by the rising visibility of various FOSS foundations. At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, Tony Sebro shared his insights about the value that fiscal sponsors bring as umbrella organizations for FOSS projects. Sebro is the General Counsel of Software Freedom Conservancy, which is the home of about 30 free and open source projects, including Samba, Git, and BusyBox.

Click below (subscribers only) for the full report by Martin Michlmayr.

LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 25, 2013

corbet — 2013-04-25T00:51:35+00:00

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 25, 2013 is available.

The 2013 Linux Storage, Filesystem, and Memory Management Summit

corbet — 2013-04-23T21:45:36+00:00

The 2013 Linux Storage, Filesystem, and Memory Management Summit was held April 18 and 19 in San Francisco, California, immediately after the Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit. The first set of notes from that gathering is now available; at this point, we have most of the plenary sessions and the entire memory management track written up. The rest of our notes from the Summit will be added in the near future.

LFCS: Preparing Linux for nonvolatile memory devices

corbet — 2013-04-19T18:28:31+00:00

Since the demise of core memory, there has been a fundamental dichotomy in data storage technology: memory is either fast and ephemeral, or slow and persistent. The situation is changing, though, and that leads to some interesting challenges for the Linux kernel. How will we adapt to the coming world where nonvolatile memory (NVM) devices are commonplace? Ric Wheeler led a session at the 2013 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit to discuss this issue.

LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 18, 2013

corbet — 2013-04-18T00:45:25+00:00

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 18, 2013 is available.

A taste of Rust

jake — 2013-04-17T22:35:23+00:00

Rust, the new programming language being developed by the Mozilla project, has a number of interesting features. One that stands out is the focus on safety. There are clear attempts to increase the range of errors that the compiler can detect and prevent, and thereby reduce the number of errors that end up in production code.

Click below (subscribers only) for an overview of the Rust language by LWN contributor Neil Brown.

Current challenges in the free software ecosystem

mkerrisk — 2013-04-17T08:54:21+00:00

Given Eben Moglen's long association with the Free Software Foundation, his work on drafting the GPLv3, and his role as President and Executive Director of the Software Freedom Law Center, his talk at the 2013 Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop promised to be thought-provoking. He chose to focus on two topics that he saw as particularly relevant for the free software ecosystem within the next five years: patents and the decline of copyleft licenses.

LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 11, 2013

corbet — 2013-04-11T01:34:57+00:00

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 11, 2013 is available.

Legal issues from a radical community angle

mkerrisk — 2013-04-10T09:00:59+00:00

The sixth Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop, which took place on 4-5 April 2013 in Amsterdam, opened with a keynote from Stefano "Zack" Zacchiroli, the Debian Project Leader (DPL) for the last three years. Zack's aim was to provide the assembled lawyers with an overview of the kinds of legal issues that are faced by Debian and other free software projects and provide suggestions about how lawyers can help free software projects.