Development

The Cairo Project reaches a new milestone

The cairo project is producing a cross-platform universal vector graphics library:

Cairo is used by the GNOME and desktop environment and some KDE applications. The Wikipedia article on cairo has more background information on the project. LWN investigated cairo back in August, 2005 at the time of the 0.9.0 release. Progress on cairo has been steady since then, with releases coming out frequently.

Major version 1.6.0 of cairo was recently announced:

A list of the major changes in cairo 1.6.X includes:

• The pdf generation has been greatly improved, the number of rasterized image fallbacks has been greatly reduced.
• The PostScript and PDF output code have had a number of efficiency and portability improvements.
• The pixman library has been split out so that it can be shared by cairo and the X server.
• Cairo 1.6.X now supports arbitrary X trueColor and 8-bit PseudoColor visuals.
• The Mac OS X Quartz backend is now an official part of cairo and the API has been stabilized.
• A new win32 printing backend has been added.
• There have been a number of minor API additions to cairo.
• Numerous "robustness fixes" have been added.
• Other enhancements and bug fixes have been added.

As is typical with major releases, several bug fix releases quickly followed. The first was version 1.6.2 which addressed a problem with certain PostScript printers. That was followed by version 1.6.4: "The cairo community is wildly embarrassed to announce the 1.6.4 release of the cairo graphics library. This release reverts the xlib locking change introduced in 1.6.[2], (and the application crashes that it caused)." Hopefully the code will now stabilize and be adopted by the upstream applications.

Congratulations go out to Carl Worth and the other cairo developers for this major release and their continued work on this important project.

Comments (7 posted)

MySQL 5.1.24-rc has been released (part 1 of 2)

Version 5.1.24-rc of the MySQL DBMS has been announced. "Bear in mind that this is still a "candidate" release, and as with any other pre-production release, caution should be taken when installing on production level systems or systems with critical data." The release notes are rather lengthy, see the second part of the announcement for the rest of the change info.

Full Story (comments: none)

PostgreSQL Weekly News

The April 13, 2008 edition of the Postgres Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: none)

announcing ClamAV 0.93

Version 0.93 of ClamAV, an email virus scanner, has been announced. "This release introduces many new features and engine enhancements, please see the notes below for the list of major changes. The most visible one is the new logic in scan limits which affects some command line and config options of clamscan and clamd. Please see clamscan(1) and clamd.conf(5) and the example config file for more information on the new options."

Full Story (comments: none)

KontrolPack: 1.0.3 Released (SourceForge)

Version 1.0.3 of KontrolPack has been announced. "KontrolPack is an efficient, cross-platform remote shell command executor. The project's goal is to improve system interoperability connecting remote computers (independently of operating systems running) and executing shell command across networks. This release is stable, few bugs have been fixed and the user interface has been improved. We"

Comments (none posted)

NanoStack: v1.0.3 Released (SourceForge)

Version 1.0.3 of NanoStack has been announced. "NanoStack is a 6lowpan IPv6 + IEEE 802.15.4 protocol stack, enabling wireless embedded and sensor networking. The goal is to help 6lowpan spread globally and to encourage new features from the IETF and ISA100 to be implemented and tested."

Comments (none posted)

Zenoss Core: 2.1.91 (Zenoss 2.2 Beta 2) available (SourceForge)

Version 2.1.91 (Zenoss 2.2 Beta 2) of Zenoss Core has been announced. "Zenoss Core is an enterprise network and systems management application written in Python/Zope. Zenoss provides an integrated product for monitoring availability, performance, events and configuration across layers and across platforms. In anticipation of the Zenoss 2.2 release, the latest packaged version of Zenoss, version 2.1.91 (zenoss-2.2 Beta 2) is available for download. This release continues the 2.2 development cycle and is the second of the beta releases for 2.2. There will be no more feature additions between now and the release only bug fixes."

Comments (none posted)

RPM Package Manager (RPM) version 5.1.0 released

Version 5.1.0 of RPM, the RPM Package Manager has been announced. This is the forked version, it is not being used by RedHat and SUSE. "RPM 5.1 is the second major release of RPM 5 and incorporates over 300 distinguished fixes and improvements which were made since the release of RPM 5.0 in January 2008. Most notably, RPM 5.1.0 provides many additional macro and Lua scripting functionality (UUID generation, path resolution, text-processing, etc), supports initial path-to-repository expansions on the command line ("+N-V-R.A"), provides additional output format specifiers on querying (":sqlescape", ":utf8", ":cdata", etc), provides an RPM 4 compatibility C API, and additionally ships with new utilities ("rpmdigest", "rpmgrep", etc) and many more."

Full Story (comments: none)

mnoGoSearch 3.3.7 released

Version 3.3.7 of mnoGoSearch, a web site search engine, has been announced. This release adds new features, and includes performance improvements and bug fixes. See the Change Log for more information.

Comments (none posted)

Ardour 2.4.1 released

Version 2.4.1 of Ardour, a multi-track audio editor, has been announced. "Yes, its time for the usual bug-fix-after-the-real-release. 2.4.1 primarily fixes two significant bugs in 2.4 (no undo after region dragging being the most important). But it also has a couple of new features and several other nice fixes and improvements, particularly for users of AudioUnit plugins on OS X."

Comments (none posted)

lv2-c++-tools 1.0.0 released

Version 1.0.0 of lv2-c++-tools has been announced. "This software package contains libraries and programs that should make it easier to write LV2 plugins and GUIs." LV2 is the successor of the LADSPA audio plugin framework.

Full Story (comments: none)

Rivendell v1.0.0rc0 released

Version 1.0.0rc0 of Rivendell, a radio station automation system, has been released. Several new capabilities have been added and some bugs have been fixed.

Full Story (comments: none)

Sweep 0.9.3 released

Version 0.9.3 of the Sweep audio editor has been announced, it features several bug fixes. "Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems. It supports many music and voice formats including WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Speex and MP3, with multichannel editing and LADSPA effects plugins. Inside lives a pesky little virtual stylus called Scrubby who enjoys mixing around in your files."

Full Story (comments: none)

Azureus: Vuze 3.0.5.2 released (SourceForge)

Version 3.0.5.2 of Azureus Vuze has been announced, it includes new features and bug fixes. "Azureus Vuze is a powerful, full-featured, cross-platform bittorrent client and content distribution platform."

Comments (none posted)

Fred 2008: 1.4.0 release (SourceForge)

Version 1.4.0 of Fred 2008 has been announced. "Fred is a platform independent time tracking tool. With Fred you can very easy file, view and record efforts, structure them into tasks and projects and send them (in multi-user projects) to a project leader. We're pleased to announce Fred 2008 version 1.4.0 (stable). This release contains a lot of bugfixes, improvements and new features."

Comments (none posted)

GNOME 2.22.1 released

Version 2.22.1 of the GNOME desktop environment is out. "This is the first update to GNOME 2.22. Come and see all the bug fixing, all the new translations and all the updated documentation brought to you by the wonderful team of GNOME contributors! A lot of work has been done in the stable branch to make it even more solid than it was. The next stable version of GNOME will be GNOME 2.22.2, which is due on May 26. Meanwhile, the GNOME community is actively working on the unstable branch of GNOME that will become GNOME 2.24 in September 2008."

Full Story (comments: none)

GARNOME 2.22.1 announced

Version 2.22.1 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge GNOME distribution, is out. "This is the second stable release in the 2.22 cycle, incorporating the GNOME 2.22.1 Desktop and Developer Platform, fine-tuned with love by the GARNOME Team. It includes a wealth of new application releases, updated translations and bug fixes as part of this GNOME release -- as well as updates and fixes after the GNOME freeze, a host of third-party GNOME packages, Bindings and the Mono(tm) Platform."

Full Story (comments: none)

GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:

• Banshee 1.0 Alpha 3 (new features and bug fixes)
• Glade 3.5.2 (bug fixes)
• gnome-games 2.22.1.1 (bug fixes)
• gtkmm 2.13.0 (new features and bug fixes)
• PyClutter 0.6.2 (bug fixes)
• Quick Lounge Applet 2.12.5 (bug fixes and translation work)
• Swfdec 0.6.4 (bug fixes - including a security hole)

You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

Comments (none posted)

KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)

The March 30, 2008 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "The menu item styles of the KDE 3 "Classic" menu return to Kickoff. GetHotNewStuff for KDE colour schemes. "Recently Visited" listings in Konqueror. A new simplified hotkeys configuration module. The ability to print a "cheat sheet" of shortcuts. Automation plugin for scheduling checks, and GetHotNewStuff support in KLinkStatus. Support for Synonyms, Antonyms and False Friends in Parley. Improved online play (through GGZ) in KSquares. "Photocopy" functionality in Kooka.."

Comments (none posted)

KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)

The April 6, 2008 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "General improvements in Kickoff, KRunner, and assorted Plasma applets. Integration of Marble into Digikam for geolocation of photos. Configuration of fullscreen mode in Gwenview. KHTML fully passes "selector" test. An automation GUI for KLinkStatus. A database connection plugin for the Kommander scripting framework. Tutorials and examples added to Step, which moves from kdereview to kdeedu. More maps for KGeography..."

Comments (none posted)

KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week:

• aKu 0.99 (unspecified)
• Audex 0.6a (new features and bug fixes)
• eggy 0.2 (new features and bug fixes)
• Firewall Builder 2.1.18 (new features)
• ForeWall 0.5 (new features, bug fixes and documentation work)
• KDE application starter and installer 0.1.1 (unspecified)
• KleanSweep 0.2.9 (feature deprecation and translation work)
• kradview 1.0.0 (new features and bug fixes)
• kradview 1.1.0 (bug fixes and code cleanup)
• LilyKDE 0.4.11 (new features and translation work)
• LilyKDE 0.5.1 (bug fixes and translation work)
• PySMSsend 1.32 (new features)
• QNapi 0.1.4 (unspecified)
• QtiPlot 0.9.5 (new features and bug fixes)
• report rc 1 (initial release)

You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

Comments (none posted)

Xorg Software Announcements

The following new Xorg software has been announced this week:

• xf86-video-radeonhd 1.2.0 (new features and bug fixes)

More information can be found on the X.Org Foundation wiki.

Comments (none posted)

Qucs 0.0.14 released

Version 0.0.14 of Qucs a GUI-based circuit simulator, has been announced. "The new release comes with a few new components, i.e., diac, triac, thyristor, logarithmic amplifier, HICUM L0 v1.12, potentiometer, equation defined RF device and MESFET (Curtice, Statz, TOM-1 and TOM-2). The Qucs-Transcalc tool now also contains synthesis and analysis of coplanar line types. Printing under Win32 has been finally fixed. Support for sub- and super-script in graphical text paintings have been added. Last but not least 3- and more argument versions of PlotVs() have been added to the equation solver capabilities."

Comments (none posted)

Strasheela 0.9.4 has been released

Version 0.9.4 of Strasheela has been announced. "Strasheela is a highly expressive constraint-based music composition system. Users declaratively state a music theory and the computer generates music which complies with this theory. A theory is formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) by a set of rules (constraints) applied to a music representation in which some aspects are expressed by variables (unknowns). Music constraint programming is style-independent and is well-suited for highly complex theories (e.g. a fully-fledged theory of harmony). Results can be output into various formats including MIDI, Lilypond, and Csound."

Full Story (comments: none)

puppy: 1.14 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.14 of puppy has been announced. "Puppy will allow a user to communicate with a Topfield TF5000 or TF6000 PVRs via a USB port. ftpd-topfield provides a similar service via FTP. A new release to implement a few requests from users. In particular, support for Ubuntu and for the USB accelerator firmware patch."

Comments (none posted)

BeWelcome-Rox: 0.5 released - new: translatable forum posts (SourceForge)

Version 0.5 of BeWelcome-Rox has been announced. "Get to know the global village and other cultures, share your place. BW Rox is the platform driving http://www.bewelcome.org and other social networks, aiming to bring people together in real life. Organize your travel or stay abroad, travelblog, meetings, ... The BeWelcome-Rox project who's aim it is to create an open source platform for cultural and hospitality exchange social networking websites [2-4] released a new development version. This release features a working draft for a fully translatable forum."

Comments (none posted)

GCC 4.2.4 Status Report

The April 10, 2008 edition of the GCC 4.2.4 Status Report has been published. "The GCC 4.2 branch is open for commits under normal release branch rules. All fixes going on that branch should first have gone on trunk and 4.3 branch."

Full Story (comments: none)

This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The March 30 - April 5, 2008 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out with the latest Perl 5 news.

Comments (none posted)

Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links

The April 14, 2008 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

Full Story (comments: none)

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The April 10, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: none)

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The April 15, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: none)

GDB record patch: 0.1.3 for GDB-6.8 release (SourceForge)

Version 0.1.3 of the GDB record patch for GDB-6.8 has been announced. "GDB record patch make GDB support Reversible Debugging. It make GDB disassemble the instruction that will be executed to get which memory and register will be changed and record them to record all program running message. Through these on the use of this information to achieve the implementation of the GDB Reversible Debugging function. Record 0.1.3 support sysenter syscall. Then it can be use with Linux ker[n]el 2.6 system call."

Comments (3 posted)

monotone 0.40 released

Version 0.40 of the monotone version control system has been announced. "This release has a few changes that speeds up internal operations, some new features, and bug fixes of course."

Full Story (comments: none)

Concur memory allocator: 1.0.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.0.1 of Concur memory allocator has been announced. "Concur is an extremely scalable multi-threaded transparent drop-in replacement for malloc() and other standard memory allocation calls. Scales linearly to any number of CPU cores. More scalable and memory efficient than mtmalloc, ptmalloc, Hoard, etc. This is the latest release of the Concur memory manager. The release includes compliance fixes and other improvements."

Comments (none posted)