Search Results: "ed"

4 May 2015

Mike Gabriel: My FLOSS activities in April 2015

April 2015 has been my first month on the Debian LTS team (as a paid contractor working underneath the Freexian [1] umbrella). Working in the team of paid Debian LTS developers requires to write a monthly summary about sponsored work on Debian LTS. Thanks to Raphael Hertzog for having me on his company's team and providing the framework for providing paid work on Debian LTS. I will use this requirement for a monthly report as a starting point for documenting my FLOSS activities on a monthly basis via my blog (not only for Debian LTS, but also for other projects). Work on Debian LTS For the Debian LTS team I have been doing 8h of contracted work in April 2015 (and at the beginning of May 2015). The work focused on: Several more hours have been spent by myself (and also Raphael) for getting me started in the team. Thanks for your patience. Work on Debian jessie The Debian MATE Packaging team was able to provide several fixes last-minute before the Debian jessie release (mate-control-center[5], caja-extensions[6], mate-desktop [7]). Thanks to the release team for processing the last-minute unblock requests so smoothly. read more

Michael Prokop: The #newinjessie game: tools related to RPM packages

Continuing the #newinjessie game: Bernhard Miklautz, contributor to jenkins-debian-glue and author of jenkins-package-builder (being in an early stage but under active development to provide support for building RPMs, similar to what jenkins-debian-glue provides for building Debian/Ubuntu packages) pointed out that there are new tools related to RPM packaging available in Debian/jessie:

Julien Danjou: The Hacker's Guide to Python, 2nd edition!

A year passed since the first release of The Hacker's Guide to Python in March 2014. A few hundreds copies have been distributed so far, and the feedback is wonderful! I already wrote extensively about the making of that book last year, and I cannot emphasize enough how this adventure has been amazing so far. That's why I decided a few months ago to update the guide and add some new content. So let's talk about what's new in this second edition of the book! First, I obviously fixed a few things. I had some reports about small mistakes and typos which I applied as I received them. Not a lot fortunately, but it's still better to have fewer errors in a book, right? Then, I updated some of the content. Things changed since I wrote the first chapters of that guide 18 months ago. Therefore I had to rewrite some of the sections and take into account new software or libraries that were released. At last, I decided to enhance the book with one more interview. I've requested my fellow OpenStack developer Joshua Harlow, who is leading a few interesting Python projects, to join the long list of interviewees in the book. I hope you'll enjoy it! If you didn't get the book yet, go check it out and use the coupon THGTP2LAUNCH to get 20% off during the next 48 hours!

Lunar: Reproducible builds: first week in Stretch cycle

Debian Jessie has been released on April 25th, 2015. This has opened the Stretch development cycle. Reactions to the idea of making Debian build reproducibly have been pretty enthusiastic. As the pace is now likely to be even faster, let's see if we can keep everyone up-to-date on the developments. Before the release of Jessie The story goes back a long way but a formal announcement to the project has only been sent in February 2015. Since then, too much work has happened to make a complete report, but to give some highlights: Lunar did a pretty improvised lightning talk during the Mini-DebConf in Lyon. This past week It seems changes were pilling behind the curtains given the amount of activity that happened in just one week. Toolchain fixes We also rebased the experimental version of debhelper twice to merge the latest set of changes. Lunar submitted a patch to add a -creation-date to genisoimage. Reiner Herrmann opened #783938 to request making -notimestamp the default behavior for javadoc. Juan Picca submitted a patch to add a --use-date flag to texi2html. Packages fixed The following packages became reproducible due to changes of their build dependencies: apport, batctl, cil, commons-math3, devscripts, disruptor, ehcache, ftphs, gtk2hs-buildtools, haskell-abstract-deque, haskell-abstract-par, haskell-acid-state, haskell-adjunctions, haskell-aeson, haskell-aeson-pretty, haskell-alut, haskell-ansi-terminal, haskell-async, haskell-attoparsec, haskell-augeas, haskell-auto-update, haskell-binary-conduit, haskell-hscurses, jsch, ledgersmb, libapache2-mod-auth-mellon, libarchive-tar-wrapper-perl, libbusiness-onlinepayment-payflowpro-perl, libcapture-tiny-perl, libchi-perl, libcommons-codec-java, libconfig-model-itself-perl, libconfig-model-tester-perl, libcpan-perl-releases-perl, libcrypt-unixcrypt-perl, libdatetime-timezone-perl, libdbd-firebird-perl, libdbix-class-resultset-recursiveupdate-perl, libdbix-profile-perl, libdevel-cover-perl, libdevel-ptkdb-perl, libfile-tail-perl, libfinance-quote-perl, libformat-human-bytes-perl, libgtk2-perl, libhibernate-validator-java, libimage-exiftool-perl, libjson-perl, liblinux-prctl-perl, liblog-any-perl, libmail-imapclient-perl, libmocked-perl, libmodule-build-xsutil-perl, libmodule-extractuse-perl, libmodule-signature-perl, libmoosex-simpleconfig-perl, libmoox-handlesvia-perl, libnet-frame-layer-ipv6-perl, libnet-openssh-perl, libnumber-format-perl, libobject-id-perl, libpackage-pkg-perl, libpdf-fdf-simple-perl, libpod-webserver-perl, libpoe-component-pubsub-perl, libregexp-grammars-perl, libreply-perl, libscalar-defer-perl, libsereal-encoder-perl, libspreadsheet-read-perl, libspring-java, libsql-abstract-more-perl, libsvn-class-perl, libtemplate-plugin-gravatar-perl, libterm-progressbar-perl, libterm-shellui-perl, libtest-dir-perl, libtest-log4perl-perl, libtext-context-eitherside-perl, libtime-warp-perl, libtree-simple-perl, libwww-shorten-simple-perl, libwx-perl-processstream-perl, libxml-filter-xslt-perl, libxml-writer-string-perl, libyaml-tiny-perl, mupen64plus-core, nmap, openssl, pkg-perl-tools, quodlibet, r-cran-rjags, r-cran-rjson, r-cran-sn, r-cran-statmod, ruby-nokogiri, sezpoz, skksearch, slurm-llnl, stellarium. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed: Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues but not all of them: Patches submitted which did not make their way to the archive yet: Improvements to reproducible.debian.net Mattia Rizzolo has been working on compressing logs using gzip to save disk space. The web server would uncompress them on-the-fly for clients which does not accept gzip content. Mattia Rizzolo worked on a new page listing various breakage: missing or bad debbindiff output, missing build logs, unavailable build dependencies. Holger Levsen added a new execution environment to run debbindiff using dependencies from testing. This is required for packages built with GHC as the compiler only understands interfaces built by the same version. debbindiff development Version 17 has been uploaded to unstable. It now supports comparing ISO9660 images, dictzip files and should compare identical files much faster. Documentation update Various small updates and fixes to the pages about PDF produced by LaTeX, DVI produced by LaTeX, static libraries, Javadoc, PE binaries, and Epydoc. Package reviews Known issues have been tagged when known to be deterministic as some might unfortunately not show up on every single build. For example, two new issues have been identified by building with one timezone in April and one in May. RD and help2man add current month and year to the documentation they are producing. 1162 packages have been removed and 774 have been added in the past week. Most of them are the work of proper automated investigation done by Chris West. Summer of code Finally, we learned that both akira and Dhole were accepted for this Google Summer of Code. Let's welcome them! They have until May 25th before coding officialy begins. Now is the good time to help them feel more comfortable by sharing all these little bits of knowledge on how Debian works.

Ricardo Mones: Bye bye DebConf15

Yep, I had planned to go, but given the last mail from registration seems there's a overwhelming number of sponsorship requests, so I've dediced to withdraw my request. There's lots of people doing much more important things for Debian than me which deserve that help. Having to complete my MSc project does also help to take this decision, of course.

I guess the Debian MIA meeting will have to wait for next planetary alignment ;-) well, not really, any other member of the team can set up it, hint! hint!

See you in DebConf17 or a nearby local event!

Mike Hommey: Gnome shell Hello world

Gnome Shell, besides providing the main user interface for GNOME 3, is a Javascript shell with bindings to many native interfaces that allow e.g. Window manipulation, graphics rendering and animations, compositing, etc. It also allows developers to write extensions changing Gnome Shell s behavior. Less known is that it is possible to replace the entire Javascript code base that Gnome Shell uses. It can be useful to hack on Gnome Shell itself (no need to fiddle with system files, or, since 3.12, no need to rebuild libgnome-shell.so), but it can also be used to implement a completely new User Interface in Javascript. I m starting to experiment with the latter, because I want to try building a window manager that fits my needs, while keeping away the boring details of EWMH, xinerama, and other X11 things. And because it s fun. But baby steps, first: let s bootstrap a Hello world with Gnome shell. I tested this with Gnome Shell 3.14. Trying various older versions, I got different results for reasons I don t know. 3.4 doesn t display anything unless, paradoxically, global.stage.show() is removed, and 3.8 doesn t display anything no matter what. I guess the next step is to go through some Clutter tutorials and transpose them to Javascript. Update: On the other hand, a lot of the window managing is still done by mutter under the hood, which doesn t leave a lot of space for something really different.

Steve Kemp: A weekend of migrations

This weekend has been all about migrations:
Host Migrations
I've migrated several more systems to the Jessie release of Debian GNU/Linux. No major surprises, and now I'm in a good state. I have 18 hosts, and now 16 of them are running Jessie. One of them I won't touch for a while, and the other is a KVM-host which runs about 8 guests - so I won't upgraded that for a while (because I want to schedule the shutdown of the guests for the host-reboot).
Password Migrations
I've started migrating my passwords to pass, which is a simple shell wrapper around GPG. I generated a new password-managing key, and started migrating the passwords. I dislike that account-names are stored in plaintext, but that seems known and unlikely to be fixed. I've "solved" the problem by dividing all my accounts into "Those that I wish to disclose post-death" (i.e. "banking", "amazon", "facebook", etc, etc), and those that are "never to be shared". The former are migrating, the latter are not. (Yeah I'm thinking about estates at the moment, near-death things have that effect!)

3 May 2015

Erich Schubert: @Zigo: Why I don't package Hadoop myself

A quick reply to Zigo's post:
Well, I looked at the Bigtop efforts because I needed Hadoop packages. But they are not very useful. They have lots of issues (including empty packages, naming conflicts etc.).
I filed a few bugs, and I even uploaded my fixes to Github. Some of that went unnoticed, because Sean Owen of Cloudera decided to remove all Debian packaging from Spark. But in the end, even with these fixes, the resulting packages do not live up to Debian quality standards (not to say, they would outright violate policy).
If you wanted to package Hadoop properly, you should ditch Apache Bigtop, and instead use the existing best practises for packaging. Using any of the Bigtop work just makes your job harder, by pulling in additional dependencies like their modified Groovy.
But whatever you do, you will be stuck in .jar dependency hell. Whatever you look at, it pulls in another batch of dependencies, that all need to be properly packaged, too. Here is the dependency chain of Hadoop:
[INFO] +- org.apache.hadoop:hadoop-hdfs:jar:2.6.0:compile
[INFO]    +- com.google.guava:guava:jar:11.0.2:compile
[INFO]    +- org.mortbay.jetty:jetty:jar:6.1.26:compile
[INFO]    +- org.mortbay.jetty:jetty-util:jar:6.1.26:compile
[INFO]    +- com.sun.jersey:jersey-core:jar:1.9:compile
[INFO]    +- com.sun.jersey:jersey-server:jar:1.9:compile
[INFO]       \- asm:asm:jar:3.1:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-cli:commons-cli:jar:1.2:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-codec:commons-codec:jar:1.4:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-io:commons-io:jar:2.4:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-lang:commons-lang:jar:2.6:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-logging:commons-logging:jar:1.1.3:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-daemon:commons-daemon:jar:1.0.13:compile
[INFO]    +- javax.servlet.jsp:jsp-api:jar:2.1:compile
[INFO]    +- log4j:log4j:jar:1.2.17:compile
[INFO]    +- com.google.protobuf:protobuf-java:jar:2.5.0:compile
[INFO]    +- javax.servlet:servlet-api:jar:2.5:compile
[INFO]    +- org.codehaus.jackson:jackson-core-asl:jar:1.9.13:compile
[INFO]    +- org.codehaus.jackson:jackson-mapper-asl:jar:1.9.13:compile
[INFO]    +- tomcat:jasper-runtime:jar:5.5.23:compile
[INFO]    +- xmlenc:xmlenc:jar:0.52:compile
[INFO]    +- io.netty:netty:jar:3.6.2.Final:compile
[INFO]    +- xerces:xercesImpl:jar:2.9.1:compile
[INFO]       \- xml-apis:xml-apis:jar:1.3.04:compile
[INFO]    \- org.htrace:htrace-core:jar:3.0.4:compile
[INFO] +- org.apache.hadoop:hadoop-auth:jar:2.6.0:compile
[INFO]    +- org.slf4j:slf4j-api:jar:1.7.5:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.httpcomponents:httpclient:jar:4.2.5:compile
[INFO]       \- org.apache.httpcomponents:httpcore:jar:4.2.4:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.directory.server:apacheds-kerberos-codec:jar:2.0.0-M15:compile
[INFO]       +- org.apache.directory.server:apacheds-i18n:jar:2.0.0-M15:compile
[INFO]       +- org.apache.directory.api:api-asn1-api:jar:1.0.0-M20:compile
[INFO]       \- org.apache.directory.api:api-util:jar:1.0.0-M20:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.zookeeper:zookeeper:jar:3.4.6:compile
[INFO]       +- org.slf4j:slf4j-log4j12:jar:1.7.5:compile
[INFO]       \- jline:jline:jar:0.9.94:compile
[INFO]    \- org.apache.curator:curator-framework:jar:2.6.0:compile
[INFO] +- org.apache.hadoop:hadoop-common:jar:2.6.0:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.hadoop:hadoop-annotations:jar:2.6.0:compile
[INFO]       \- jdk.tools:jdk.tools:jar:1.6:system
[INFO]    +- org.apache.commons:commons-math3:jar:3.1.1:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-httpclient:commons-httpclient:jar:3.1:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-net:commons-net:jar:3.1:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-collections:commons-collections:jar:3.2.1:compile
[INFO]    +- com.sun.jersey:jersey-json:jar:1.9:compile
[INFO]       +- org.codehaus.jettison:jettison:jar:1.1:compile
[INFO]       +- com.sun.xml.bind:jaxb-impl:jar:2.2.3-1:compile
[INFO]          \- javax.xml.bind:jaxb-api:jar:2.2.2:compile
[INFO]             +- javax.xml.stream:stax-api:jar:1.0-2:compile
[INFO]             \- javax.activation:activation:jar:1.1:compile
[INFO]       +- org.codehaus.jackson:jackson-jaxrs:jar:1.8.3:compile
[INFO]       \- org.codehaus.jackson:jackson-xc:jar:1.8.3:compile
[INFO]    +- net.java.dev.jets3t:jets3t:jar:0.9.0:compile
[INFO]       \- com.jamesmurty.utils:java-xmlbuilder:jar:0.4:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-configuration:commons-configuration:jar:1.6:compile
[INFO]       +- commons-digester:commons-digester:jar:1.8:compile
[INFO]          \- commons-beanutils:commons-beanutils:jar:1.7.0:compile
[INFO]       \- commons-beanutils:commons-beanutils-core:jar:1.8.0:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.avro:avro:jar:1.7.4:compile
[INFO]       +- com.thoughtworks.paranamer:paranamer:jar:2.3:compile
[INFO]       \- org.xerial.snappy:snappy-java:jar:1.0.4.1:compile
[INFO]    +- com.google.code.gson:gson:jar:2.2.4:compile
[INFO]    +- com.jcraft:jsch:jar:0.1.42:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.curator:curator-client:jar:2.6.0:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.curator:curator-recipes:jar:2.6.0:compile
[INFO]    +- com.google.code.findbugs:jsr305:jar:1.3.9:compile
[INFO]    \- org.apache.commons:commons-compress:jar:1.4.1:compile
[INFO]       \- org.tukaani:xz:jar:1.0:compile
[INFO] +- org.apache.hadoop:hadoop-core:jar:1.2.1:compile
[INFO]    +- org.apache.commons:commons-math:jar:2.1:compile
[INFO]    +- tomcat:jasper-compiler:jar:5.5.23:compile
[INFO]    +- org.mortbay.jetty:jsp-api-2.1:jar:6.1.14:compile
[INFO]       \- org.mortbay.jetty:servlet-api-2.5:jar:6.1.14:compile
[INFO]    +- org.mortbay.jetty:jsp-2.1:jar:6.1.14:compile
[INFO]       \- ant:ant:jar:1.6.5:compile
[INFO]    +- commons-el:commons-el:jar:1.0:compile
[INFO]    +- hsqldb:hsqldb:jar:1.8.0.10:compile
[INFO]    +- oro:oro:jar:2.0.8:compile
[INFO]    \- org.eclipse.jdt:core:jar:3.1.1:compile
So the first step for packaging Hadoop would be to check which of these dependencies are not yet packaged in Debian... I guess 1/3 is not.
Maybe, we should just rip out some of these dependencies with a cluebat. For the stupid reason of making a webfrontend (which doesn't provide a lot of functionality, and I doubt many people use it at all), Hadoop embeds not just one web server, but two: Jetty and Netty...
Things would also be easier if e.g. S3 support, htrace, the web frontend, and different data serializations were properly put into modules. Then you could postpose S3 support, for example.
As I said, the deeper you dig, the crazier it gets.
If the OpenDataPlatform efforts of Hortonworks, Pivotal and IBM were anything but a marketing gag, they would try to address these technical issues. Instead, they make things worse by specifying yet another fatter core, including Ambari, Apaches attempt to automatically make a mess out of your servers - essentially, they are now adding the ultimate root shell, for all those cases where unaudited puppet commands and "curl sudo bash" was not bad enough: 
Example:
  command1 = as_sudo(["cat,"/etc/passwd"]) + "   grep user"
(from the Ambari python documentation)
The closer you look, the more you want to rather die than use this.
P.S. I have updated the libtrove3-java package (Java collections for primitive types; but no longer the fastest such library), so that it is now in the local maven repository (/usr/share/maven-repo) and that it can be rebuilt reproducible (the build user name is no longer in the jar manifest).

Lunar: Paranoia, uh?

A couple days ago The Intercept has released new documents provided by Edward Snowden. They show the efforts of the CIA to break the security of Apple plateforms. One of the document introduces the Strawhorse program: Attacking the MacOS and iOS Software Development Kit:
(S//NF) Ken Thompson's gcc attack [ ] motivates the StrawMan work: what can be done of benefit to the US Intelligence Community (IC) if one can make an arbritrary modification to a system compiler [ ]? A (whacked) SDK can provide a subtle injection vector onto standalone developer networks, or it can modify any binary compiled by that SDK. In the past, we have watermarked binaries for attribution, used binaries as an exfiltration mechanism, and inserted Trojans into compiled binaries.
I knew it was a plausible hypothesis, but just reading it black on white gives me shivers. Reproducible builds need to become the standard.

Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in April 2015

FTP assistant Another month, another statistic. This month I marked 90 packages for accept and rejected 20 of them. Squeeze LTS This was my tenth month that I did some work for the Squeeze LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. For some reasons this month I got assigned an exceptional high workload of 26.5h and I spent these hours to upload new versions of: [DLA 191-1] and [DLA 193-1] have been only sponsored uploads, where Markus Koschany and Joachim Wiedorn prepared the patches.
Due to the large number of hours I was able to make a php5 upload which resolves several issues that have been marked as no-dsa before. At this point I would like to thank Jan Ingvoldstad for his thorough tests of the package before I did the final upload.
The next big adventure will be ruby1.9.1. Unfortunately my workload in May is (hopefully) exceptional low, so I am not sure whether I can finish this by the end of that month. I also uploaded [DLA 206-1] python-django-markupfield security update although no LTS sponsor indicated any interest in this package. Other stuff While searching for another bug, I stumbled upon #128818. It is a whishlist bug for apt to support rsync while downloading package metadata. It might not be useful for the entire Packages-file. But wouldn t it make sense if each package gets its own file and one has to download only stuff that has really changed? Donations Again, thanks alot to all donors. I really appreciate this and hope that everybody is pleased with my commitment. Don t hesitate to make suggestions for improvements.

Hideki Yamane: release, and user complains

Now I've just finished to translate Debian Jessie release note for Japanese... *Phew*

Also we Japanese people has celebrated its release at Tokyo and Kyoto (thanks to someone who added it to Wiki), I'll put some photos later.


Anyway, we succeeded to push it out, now users get Jessie as stable release. Then, I found many users complain about it. Why? because it includes incompatible changes with previous wheezy. However it is obviously noted to release notes (check! lazy people ;), and even they could try it before its release!

Most of users don't want to use pre-release version, what they want is released one. Probably Debian should consider to push "something release version" out, not only each 2 years stable release. Since our distribution's quality relies on manual Exploratory testing in unstable by developers and users now, but it is not enough to check bugs. Somehow we get more human resource for testing.

2 May 2015

Eriberto Mota: Upload to jessie-backports from Debian Jessie stable

Today, trying upload to jessie-backports from a Jessie jail, I got this message from dput-ng: 
 $ dput netdiscover_0.3beta7~pre-2~bpo8+1_amd64.changes
Uploading netdiscover using ftp to ftp-master (host: ftp.upload.debian.org; directory: /pub/UploadQueue/)
running allowed-distribution: check whether a local profile permits uploads to the target distribution
 jessie-backports' not in the codename group
To solve this problem, you can edit the /usr/share/dput-ng/codenames/debian.json file and add jessie-backports here: 
 "backport": [
 "stable-backports",
 "oldstable-backports",
 "jessie-backports",
 "wheezy-backports",
 "squeeze-backports"
 ],
I hope this help someone.

Neil Williams: vmextract userspace VM helper

In my previous post, I covered how to extend an initramfs to serve as a basis for tests and other purposes. In that example, the initramfs was simply copied off a device after installation. It occurred to me that python-guestfs would be a useful tool to make this step easier. So I ve written the vmextract helper which is currently in the vmdebootstrap upstream git and will make it into the next release of vmdebootstrap for Debian (0.7). Once vmdebootstrap has built an image, various files can be generated or modified during the install operations and some of these files can be useful when testing the image or packages which would be included in an updated image, before release. One example is the initrd built by the process of installing a Debian kernel. Rather than having to mount the image and copy the files manually, the vmextract helper can do it for you, without needing root privileges or any special setup. 
$ /usr/share/vmdebootstrap/vmextract.py --verbose --boot \
  --image bbb/bbb-debian-armmp.img \
  --path /boot/initrd.img-3.14-2-armmp \
  --path /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libresolv.so.2
This uses python-guestfs (which will become a Recommended package for vmdebootstrap) to prepare a read-only version of the image in this case with the /boot partition also mounted and copies files out into the current working directory. Note the repeating use of --path to build a list of files to be copied out. To copy out an entire directory (and all sub-directories) as a single tarball, use: 
$ /usr/share/vmdebootstrap/vmextract.py --verbose --boot \
  --image bbb/bbb-debian-armmp.img \
  --directory /boot/ \
  --filename bbb-armmp-boot.tgz
If --filename is not specified, the default filename is vmextract.tgz. (vmextract uses gzip compression, just because.) The other point to note is the use of the --boot option to mount the /boot partition as well as the root partition of the image as this example uses the beaglebone-black support which has a boot partition. It s just a little helper which I hope will prove useful if only to avoid both the need for sudo and the need for loopback mount operations with the inherent confusion of calculating offsets. Thanks to the developers of python-guestfs for making this workable in barely 100 lines of python. It uses the same cliapp support as vmdebootstrap, so can be used silently in scripts by omitting the --verbose option. I haven t taken this on to the next step of unpacking the initrd and extending it, but that would just a bit of shell scripting using the files extracted by vmextract.py. Next! Next on the list will be extensions to vmdebootstrap to build live images of Debian, essentially adding Debian Installer to a vmdebootstrap image, which could actually be another python-guestfs helper (mounting read-write this time) to avoid adding lots more code to vmdebootstrap (which has grown to nearly 600 lines of python). That way, we can publish the bare VM images as well as a live conversion and reducing the number of times debootstrap needs to be called.

Andreas Metzler: balance sheet snowboarding season 2014/15

A very late start into the season, with a nice ending. We had about zero snow until after christmas, and not just down in the valley, but also at 2000m in the mountains. My first run was therefore very late, on January 1st, followed by two short excursions (8:45 - 11:20) due to too many people on January 5th and 6th. After that we had more than enough snow which allowed me to go to Diedamskopf most of the time (basically only natural snow there, which makes better slopes). I went there almost exclusively until they closed on Easter sunday after heavy snowfall in Holy week, and had 5 more days therafter In Dam&uumlls and Warth/Schr cken. Last run was on April 19. Here is the balance sheet:
2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15
number of (partial) days25172937303025233024
Dam ls10105101623104299
Diedamskopf15424231341419113
Warth/Schr cken0304131002
total meters of altitude12463474096219936226774202089203918228588203562274706224909
highscore10247m8321m12108m11272m11888m10976m13076m13885m12848m13278
# of runs309189503551462449516468597530
What does not show up here is the number of times I walked (with and without snowshoes) up the mountain and used the lift down and obviously also tobogganing.

Patrick Schoenfeld: Inbox: Zeroed.

E-Mail is a pest, a big time killer wasting your and my time each and every day. Of course it is also a valuable tool, one that no one can renounce. So how can it be of more use than trouble? So far I ve followed a no-delete policy when it comes to my mails, since space was not a problem at all. But it developed into a big nasty pile of mails, that brought regular distraction, each time I looked at my inbox. So I decided to adopt the Inbox zero concept. Step 1: Get the pile down My e-mails piled up since years, so I had around 10000 mails in my inbox, with some hundred being unread. I needed to get this pile down and started with the most recent mails, trying to identify clusters of mails, filtering for them and then following these steps: Since it wasn t possible to decide on a course for every mail (that would be a bit like hoovering in the dessert), I did this only for the first 1000 of mails or so. All mails older than a month were marked read and moved to archive immediately after. Another approach would be to move all files to a folder called DMZ and go to step 2. Step 2: Prepare for implanting some habits Most mails are the opposite of good old hackish perl code: read only. They are easy to act on, when they come around: just archive or delete them. But the rest will be what steals your time. Some mails require action, either immediately or in a while, some wait for a schedule, e.g. flight informations or reservation mails and stuff. Whatever the reason is, you want to keep them around, because they still have a purpose. There are various filing systems for those mails, most of them GTD variants. As a gmail user I found this variant, with multiple inboxes in a special gmail view, interesting and now give it a try. One word about the archive folders. I can highly recommend to reduce the number of folders you archive to as much as possible. Step 3: Get into habit Now to the hard part. Get into habit with acting on your inbox. Do it regularly, maybe every hour or so and be prepared to do quick decisions. Act on any mail immediately, which means either file/delete it, reply to it (if this is what takes less time) or mark it according to your filing system as prepared in step 2. And if no mails arrived, then it s a good moment to review your marked mails if any on them can be further processed. Now let s see weither my inbox will still be zeroed in a month from now.

Dimitri Fontaine: Quicklisp and debian

Common Lisp users are very happy to use Quicklisp when it comes to downloading and maintaining dependencies between their own code and the librairies it is using. Sometimes I am pointed that when compared to other programming languages Common Lisp is lacking a lot in the batteries included area. After having had to package about 50 common lisp librairies for debian I can tell you that I politely disagree with that. And this post is about the tool and process I use to maintain all those librairies. Quicklisp is good at ensuring a proper distribution of all those libs it supports and actually tests that they all compile and load together, so I've been using it as my upstream for debian packaging purposes. Using Quicklisp here makes my life much simpler as I can grovel through its metadata and automate most of the maintenance of my cl related packages. It's all automated in the ql-to-deb software which, unsurprisingly, has been written in Common Lisp itself. It's a kind of a Quicklisp client that will fetch Quicklisp current list of releases with version numbers and compare to the list of managed packages for debian in order to then build new version automatically. The current workflow I'm using begins with using ql-to-deb is to check for the work to be done today: 
$ /vagrant/build/bin/ql-to-deb check
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/dist/quicklisp.txt"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/dist/quicklisp/2015-04-07/releases.txt"
update: cl+ssl cl-csv cl-db3 drakma esrap graph hunchentoot local-time lparallel nibbles qmynd trivial-backtrace
upload: hunchentoot
After careful manual review of the automatic decision, let's just update all what check decided would have to be: 
$ /vagrant/build/bin/ql-to-deb update
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/dist/quicklisp.txt"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/dist/quicklisp/2015-04-07/releases.txt"
Updating package cl-plus-ssl from 20140826 to 20150302.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-plus-ssl.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/cl+ssl/2015-03-02/cl+ssl-20150302-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/cl+ssl-20150302-git.tgz"
      md5: 61d9d164d37ab5c91048827dfccd6835
Building package cl-plus-ssl
Updating package cl-csv from 20140826 to 20150302.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-csv.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/cl-csv/2015-03-02/cl-csv-20150302-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/cl-csv-20150302-git.tgz"
      md5: 32f6484a899fdc5b690f01c244cd9f55
Building package cl-csv
Updating package cl-db3 from 20131111 to 20150302.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-db3.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/cl-db3/2015-03-02/cl-db3-20150302-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/cl-db3-20150302-git.tgz"
      md5: 578896a3f60f474742f240b703f8c5f5
Building package cl-db3
Updating package cl-drakma from 1.3.11 to 1.3.13.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-drakma.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/drakma/2015-04-07/drakma-1.3.13.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/drakma-1.3.13.tgz"
      md5: 3b548bce10728c7a058f19444c8477c3
Building package cl-drakma
Updating package cl-esrap from 20150113 to 20150302.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-esrap.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/esrap/2015-03-02/esrap-20150302-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/esrap-20150302-git.tgz"
      md5: 8b198d26c27afcd1e9ce320820b0e569
Building package cl-esrap
Updating package cl-graph from 20141106 to 20150407.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-graph.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/graph/2015-04-07/graph-20150407-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/graph-20150407-git.tgz"
      md5: 3894ef9262c0912378aa3b6e8861de79
Building package cl-graph
Updating package hunchentoot from 1.2.29 to 1.2.31.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//hunchentoot.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/hunchentoot/2015-04-07/hunchentoot-1.2.31.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/hunchentoot-1.2.31.tgz"
      md5: 973eccfef87e81f1922424cb19884d63
Building package hunchentoot
Updating package cl-local-time from 20150113 to 20150407.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-local-time.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/local-time/2015-04-07/local-time-20150407-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/local-time-20150407-git.tgz"
      md5: 7be4a31d692f5862014426a53eb1e48e
Building package cl-local-time
Updating package cl-lparallel from 20141106 to 20150302.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-lparallel.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/lparallel/2015-03-02/lparallel-20150302-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/lparallel-20150302-git.tgz"
      md5: dbda879d0e3abb02a09b326e14fa665d
Building package cl-lparallel
Updating package cl-nibbles from 20141106 to 20150407.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-nibbles.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/nibbles/2015-04-07/nibbles-20150407-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/nibbles-20150407-git.tgz"
      md5: 2ffb26241a1b3f49d48d28e7a61b1ab1
Building package cl-nibbles
Updating package cl-qmynd from 20141217 to 20150302.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-qmynd.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/qmynd/2015-03-02/qmynd-20150302-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/qmynd-20150302-git.tgz"
      md5: b1cc35f90b0daeb9ba507fd4e1518882
Building package cl-qmynd
Updating package cl-trivial-backtrace from 20120909 to 20150407.
     see logs in "//tmp/ql-to-deb/logs//cl-trivial-backtrace.log"
Fetching "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/trivial-backtrace/2015-04-07/trivial-backtrace-20150407-git.tgz"
Checksum test passed.
     File: "/tmp/ql-to-deb/archives/trivial-backtrace-20150407-git.tgz"
      md5: 762b0acf757dc8a2a6812d2f0f2614d9
Building package cl-trivial-backtrace
Quite simple. To be totally honnest, I first had a problem with the parser generator library esrap wherein the README documentation changed to be a README.org file, and I had to tell my debian packaging about that. See the 0ef669579cf7c07280eae7fe6f61f1bd664d337e commit to ql-to-deb for details. What about trying to install those packages locally? That's usually a very good test. Sometimes some dependencies are missing at the dpkg command line, so another apt-get install -f is needed: 
$ /vagrant/build/bin/ql-to-deb install
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-csv_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-csv-clsql_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-csv-data-table_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-db3_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-drakma_1.3.13-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-esrap_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-graph_20150407-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-hunchentoot_1.2.31-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-local-time_20150407-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-lparallel_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-nibbles_20150407-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-qmynd_20150302-1_all.deb /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-trivial-backtrace_20150407-1_all.deb
(Reading database ... 79689 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-plus-ssl (20150302-1) over (20140826-1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package cl-csv.
Preparing to unpack .../cl-csv_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-csv (20150302-1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package cl-csv-clsql.
Preparing to unpack .../cl-csv-clsql_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-csv-clsql (20150302-1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package cl-csv-data-table.
Preparing to unpack .../cl-csv-data-table_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-csv-data-table (20150302-1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package cl-db3.
Preparing to unpack .../cl-db3_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-db3 (20150302-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-drakma_1.3.13-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-drakma (1.3.13-1) over (1.3.11-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-esrap_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-esrap (20150302-1) over (20150113-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-graph_20150407-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-graph (20150407-1) over (20141106-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-hunchentoot_1.2.31-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-hunchentoot (1.2.31-1) over (1.2.29-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-local-time_20150407-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-local-time (20150407-1) over (20150113-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-lparallel_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-lparallel (20150302-1) over (20141106-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-nibbles_20150407-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-nibbles (20150407-1) over (20141106-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-qmynd_20150302-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-qmynd (20150302-1) over (20141217-1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../cl-trivial-backtrace_20150407-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-trivial-backtrace (20150407-1) over (20120909-2) ...
Setting up cl-plus-ssl (20150302-1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of cl-csv:
 cl-csv depends on cl-interpol; however:
  Package cl-interpol is not installed.
dpkg: error processing package cl-csv (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of cl-csv-clsql:
 cl-csv-clsql depends on cl-csv; however:
  Package cl-csv is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing package cl-csv-clsql (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of cl-csv-data-table:
 cl-csv-data-table depends on cl-csv; however:
  Package cl-csv is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing package cl-csv-data-table (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up cl-db3 (20150302-1) ...
Setting up cl-drakma (1.3.13-1) ...
Setting up cl-esrap (20150302-1) ...
Setting up cl-graph (20150407-1) ...
Setting up cl-local-time (20150407-1) ...
Setting up cl-lparallel (20150302-1) ...
Setting up cl-nibbles (20150407-1) ...
Setting up cl-qmynd (20150302-1) ...
Setting up cl-trivial-backtrace (20150407-1) ...
Setting up cl-hunchentoot (1.2.31-1) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 cl-csv
 cl-csv-clsql
 cl-csv-data-table
Let's make sure that our sid users will be happy with the update here: 
$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  g++-4.7 git git-man html2text libaugeas-ruby1.8 libbind9-80
  libclass-isa-perl libcurl3-gnutls libdns88 libdrm-nouveau1a
  libegl1-mesa-drivers libffi5 libgraphite3 libgssglue1 libisc84 libisccc80
  libisccfg82 liblcms1 liblwres80 libmpc2 libopenjpeg2 libopenvg1-mesa
  libpoppler19 librtmp0 libswitch-perl libtiff4 libwayland-egl1-mesa luatex
  openssh-blacklist openssh-blacklist-extra python-chardet python-debian
  python-magic python-pkg-resources python-six ttf-dejavu-core ttf-marvosym
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  cl-interpol
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  cl-interpol
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 51 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 20.7 kB of archives.
After this operation, 135 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Get:1 http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ sid/main cl-interpol all 0.2.1-2 [20.7 kB]
Fetched 20.7 kB in 0s (84.5 kB/s)
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
debconf: (Dialog frontend will not work on a dumb terminal, an emacs shell buffer, or without a controlling terminal.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
Selecting previously unselected package cl-interpol.
(Reading database ... 79725 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../cl-interpol_0.2.1-2_all.deb ...
Unpacking cl-interpol (0.2.1-2) ...
Setting up cl-interpol (0.2.1-2) ...
Setting up cl-csv (20150302-1) ...
Setting up cl-csv-clsql (20150302-1) ...
Setting up cl-csv-data-table (20150302-1) ...
All looks fine, time to sign those packages. There's a trick here, where you want to be sure you're using a GnuPG setup that allows you to enter your passphrase only once, see ql-to-deb vm setup for details, and the usual documentations about all that if you're interested into the details. 
$ /vagrant/build/bin/ql-to-deb sign
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-csv_20150302-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-csv_20150302-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-db3_20150302-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-db3_20150302-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-drakma_1.3.13-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-drakma_1.3.13-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-esrap_20150302-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-esrap_20150302-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-graph_20150407-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-graph_20150407-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/hunchentoot_1.2.31-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/hunchentoot_1.2.31-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-local-time_20150407-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-local-time_20150407-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-lparallel_20150302-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-lparallel_20150302-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-nibbles_20150407-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-nibbles_20150407-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-qmynd_20150302-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-qmynd_20150302-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-trivial-backtrace_20150407-1.dsc 60B1CB4E
 signfile /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-trivial-backtrace_20150407-1_amd64.changes 60B1CB4E
Successfully signed dsc and changes files
Ok, with all tested and signed, it's time we upload our packages on debian servers for our dear debian users to be able to use newer and better versions of their beloved Common Lisp librairies: 
$ /vagrant/build/bin/ql-to-deb upload
Trying to upload package to ftp-master (ftp.upload.debian.org)
Checking signature on .changes
gpg: Signature made Sat 02 May 2015 05:06:48 PM MSK using RSA key ID 60B1CB4E
gpg: Good signature from "Dimitri Fontaine <dim@tapoueh.org>"
Good signature on /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1_amd64.changes.
Checking signature on .dsc
gpg: Signature made Sat 02 May 2015 05:06:46 PM MSK using RSA key ID 60B1CB4E
gpg: Good signature from "Dimitri Fontaine <dim@tapoueh.org>"
Good signature on /tmp/ql-to-deb/cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1.dsc.
Uploading to ftp-master (via ftp to ftp.upload.debian.org):
  Uploading cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1.dsc: done.
  Uploading cl-plus-ssl_20150302.orig.tar.gz: done.
  Uploading cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1.debian.tar.xz: done.
  Uploading cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1_all.deb: done.
  Uploading cl-plus-ssl_20150302-1_amd64.changes: done.
Successfully uploaded packages.
Of course the same text or abouts is then repeated for all the other packages. Enjoy using Common Lisp in debian! Oh and remember, the only reason I've written ql-to-deb and signed myself up to maintain those upteens Common Lisp librairies as debian package is to be able to properly package pgloader in debian, as you can see at https://packages.debian.org/sid/pgloader and in particular in the Other Packages Related to pgloader section of the debian source package for pgloader at https://packages.debian.org/source/sid/pgloader. That level of effort is done to ensure that we respect the Debian Social Contract wherein debian ensures its users that it's possible to rebuild anything from sources as found in the debian repositories.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 0.11.6

The new release 0.11.5 of Rcpp arrived on the CRAN network for GNU R yesterday; the corresponding Debian package has also been uploaded. Rcpp has become the most popular way of enhancing GNU R with C++ code. As of today, 373 packages on CRAN depend on Rcpp for making analyses go faster and further; BioConductor adds another 57 packages, and casual searches on GitHub suggests many more. This version adds a little more polish and refinement around things we worked on previous releases to solidify builds, installation and the run-time experience. It does not bring anything new or majorrelease continues the 0.11.* release cycle, adding another large number of small bug fixes, polishes and enhancements. As always, you can follow the development via the GitHub repo and particularly the Issue tickets and Pull Requests. And any discussions, questions, ... regarding Rcpp are always welcome at the rcpp-devel mailing list. See below for a detailed list of changes extracted from the NEWS file.
Changes in Rcpp version 0.11.6 (2015-05-01)
  • Changes in Rcpp API:
    • The unwinding of exceptions was refined to protect against inadvertent memory leaks.
    • Header files now try even harder not to let macro definitions leak.
    • Matrices have a new default constructor for zero-by-zero dimension matrices (via a pull request by Dmitrii Meleshko).
    • A new empty() string constructor was added (via another pull request).
    • Better support for Vectors with a storage policy different from the default, i.e. NoProtectStorage, was added.
  • Changes in Rcpp Attributes:
    • Rtools 3.3 is now supported.
Thanks to CRANberries, you can also look at a diff to the previous release As always, even fuller details are on the Rcpp Changelog page and the Rcpp page which also leads to the downloads page, the browseable doxygen docs and zip files of doxygen output for the standard formats. A local directory has source and documentation too. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.5.100.1.0

A new minor release 5.100.1 of Armadillo was released by Conrad yesterday. Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. Our corresponding RcppArmadillo release 0.5.100.1.0 also reached CRAN and Debian yesterday. See below for the brief list of changes.
Changes in RcppArmadillo version 0.5.100.1.0 (2015-05-01)
  • Upgraded to Armadillo release 5.100.1 ("Ankle Biter Deluxe")
    • added interp1() for 1D interpolation
    • added .is_sorted() for checking whether a vector or matrix has sorted elements
    • updated physical constants to NIST 2010 CODATA values
Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent CRAN release. As always, more detailed information is on the RcppArmadillo page. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Niels Thykier: The release of Debian Jessie from an RM s PoV

It was quite an experience to partake in the Jessie release and also a rather long Saturday . This post is mostly a time line of how I spent my release day with doing the actual release. I have glossed over some details the post is long enough without these. :) We started out at 8 (UTC) with a final dinstall run, which took nearly 2 hours. It was going to take longer, but we decided to skip the synchronisation to coccia.debian.org (the server hosting the DD-accessible mirror of release.debian.org). The release itself started with the FTP masters renaming the aliases of Squeeze, Wheezy and Jessie to oldoldstable, oldstable and stable respectively. While they worked, the release team reviewed and double checked their work. After an hour (~11), the FTP masters reported that the stable releases were ready for the final review and the SRMs signed the relevant Release files. Then the FTP masters pushed the stable releases to our CD build server, where Steve McIntyre started building the installation images. While Steve started with the CDs, the FTP masters and the release team continued with creating a suite for Stretch. On the FTP/release side, we finished shortly before 12:30. At this point, our last ETA from Steve suggested that the installation media would take another 11 and a half hours to complete. We could have opened for mirror synchronisation then, but we decided to wait for the installation media. At 12:30, there was a long intermission for the release team in the release process. That was an excellent time to improve some of our tools, but that is for another post. :) We slowly started to resume around 22:20, where we tried to figure out when to open for the mirror synchronisation to time it with the installation media. We agreed to start the mirror sync at 23:00 despite the installation media not being completely done then. They followed half an hour later, when Steve reported that the last CD was complete. At this point, all that was left was to update the website and send out the press announcement. Sadly, we were hit by some (minor) issues then. First, I had underestimated the work involved in updating the website. Secondly, we had no one online at the time to trigger an out of band rebuild of the website. Steve and I spent an hour and a half solving website issues (like arm64 and ppc64el not being listed as a part of the release). Unsurprisingly, I decided to expand our the release checklist to be slightly more verbose on this particular topic. My Saturday had passed its 16th hour, when I thought we had fixed all the website issues (of course, I would be wrong) and we would now just be waiting for the an automatic rebuild. I was tempted to just punt it and go to bed, when Paul Wise rejoined us at about 01:25. He quickly got up to speed and offered to take care of the rest. An offer I thankfully accepted and I checked out 15 minutes later at 01:40 UTC. That more or less covers the Jessie release day from my PoV. After a bit of reflection inside the release team, we have found several points where we can improve the process. This part certainly deserves its own post as well, which will also give us some time to flesh out some of the ideas a bit more. :)
Filed under: Debian, Release-Team

1 May 2015

Daniel Kahn Gillmor: Preferred Packaging Practices

I just took a few minutes to write up my preferred Debian packaging practices. The basic gist is that i like to use git-buildpackage (gbp) with the upstream source included in the repo, both as tarballs (with pristine-tar branches) and including upstream's native VCS history (Joey's arguments about syncing with upstream git are worth reading if you're not already convinced this is a good idea). I also started using gbp-pq recently -- the patch-queue feature is really useful for at least three things: My preferred packaging practices document is a work in progress. I'd love to improve it. If you have suggestions, please let me know. Also, if you've written up your own preferred packaging practices, send me a link! I'm hoping to share and learn tips and tricks around this kind of workflow at debconf 15 this year. Tags: git, git-buildpackage, packaging

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