Search Results: "will"

13 May 2007

Andreas Metzler: burn hurd burn

I wish hurd was purged from unstable on ftp.*.debian.org since it would stop hurd's build status from influencing the bts versioning code. Currently the bts default view http://bugs.debian.org/findutils redirects to the listing for unstable which strangely lists bug#385896 as open although the fix was uploaded three months ago and is even in testing. The reason is simple: The hurd-i386 autobuilder still has not built the new version of findutils. For the time being I will follow Don's advice and will simply add &arch=i386 to the url.

Russell Coker: mobile phone etiquette

Paul Dwerryhouse blogs about mobile phone etiquette.
  1. Taking excessive calls at a restaurant is annoying, but keep them short and it’s no big deal.

  2. Strange ring tones are OK as long as people answer their phone. It’s when they decide that they don’t want to answer a call that the entire Avril Lavigne song annoys people. In regard to this issue wearing headphones in public with the volume turned up high enough that everyone else can hear is a much worse problem - which will incidentally deafen the person using the headphones in the long-term as well as annoying everyone else in the short-term.

  3. I used to work with Paul and we had a colleague who repeatedly chose not to answer his mobile phone because he didn’t want to talk to a particular recruiting agent but refused to say so. Eventually the agent tried calling the office and got to me, I told him “if someone never answers their mobile phone when you call it means that they don’t like you, take a hint and stop calling”. There were fewer unanswered calls after that.

  4. I have to agree with that, having a phone call in the cinema (or even worse the theatre) is just wrong. If you are on the list for organ transplant (the only time you really MUST have your phone on all the time) then turn the phone to vibrate mode.

  5. When on the train the range of things that I can do is limited. Rather than waste time I make calls that I don’t have time to make on other occasions. The only exception is when I was in Japan, in respect of their cultural standards I turned my phone off most times when on the train.

  6. Walking and talking? Unless you are crossing a busy street then why not? People who inappropriately use mobile phones while performing dangerous activities will tend to be weeded out by Darwin. They usually don’t give Darwin Awards for mundane things such as not seeing an oncoming truck while talking on a mobile phone.

  7. In regard to the issue of whether you have to answer a phone, some people believe that it’s an issue of courtesy to the person who is calling to answer the phone if reasonably possible.

  8. Whether “call me back” is adequate depends on who is calling. I generally find that when someone leaves such a message they have been correct in their assessment of the value of their call to me. The people who leave such messages are generally the people who’s call I will return on the basis of such a message. Leaving a long voicemail message adds to the profits of the telco used to making the call as well as the telco that maintains the voice-mail box. My 3 voicemail service charges me to receive the messages and I prefer them to be kept short.

  9. Anyone who thinks that having a fancy phone, car, computer, etc will make them a better person or impress anyone has bigger problems than the choice of a phone. Also if the $600 a year that you might spend on regularly updating your mobile phone makes a significant difference to your savings then you will probably never be able to afford a house either.

  10. Bluetooth headsets do make you look like an idiot, but they do have some benefits. When doing tech-support it is a real benefit to be able to use both hands for typing. The only reason I don’t have one is that I don’t do tech support enough to justify the expense of buying one or the inconvenience of carrying it everywhere. Note that when you define “tech support” in the most broad sense (which includes helping all your relatives with their computer problems) most computer people do quite a lot of it even if it’s not their job.

12 May 2007

Joerg Jaspert: SPI CA

Had to create a new SPI CA as the old isnt usable anymore. You can find it here and the information to validate it is also available. You should include this in your browser by downloading the file, then checking its fingerprints against those found in the second link above, with those commands there and finally simply “opening” the downloaded file in your browser. Depending on your browser you will see a dialog with wildly differing details. You should be able to import it there and/or also assign a “Trust it for web/mail/whatever” level. Its currently used to sign certificates for various SPI sites, all of DebConf.org and also various debian.org sites (certs send out, may need a day to get installed everywhere) like alioth, db, nm, rt.

Enrico Zini: tg-i18n-quirks

Turbogears i18n quirks Collecting strings from .kid files tg-admin i18n collect won't collect strings from your .kid files: you need the toolbox web interface for that. Indentation problems in .kid files The toolbox web interface chokes on intentation errors on your .kid files. To see the name of the .kid file that causes the error, look at the tg-admin toolbox output in the terminal for lines like Working on app/Foo/templates/bar.kid. What happens is that the .kid files are converted to python files, and if there are indentation glitches they end up in the python files, and python will complain. Once you see from the tg-admin toolbox standard error what is the .kid file with the problem, edit it and try to make sure that all closing tags are at the exact indentation level as their coresponding opening tags. Even a single space would matter. Bad i18n bug in TurboKid versions earlier than 1.0.1 faide on #turbogears also says:
It is of outmost importance that you use TurboKid 1.0.1 because it is the first version that corrects a BIG bug regarding i18n filters ... The version below had a bug where the filters kept being added at each page load in such a way that after a few hundreds of pages you could have page loading times as long as 5 minutes!
If one has a previous version of TurboKid, one (and only one) of these is needed: So, in short, all i18n users should upgrade to TurboGears 1.0.2.2 or patch TurboKid using http://trac.turbogears.org/ticket/1301.

MJ Ray: Satellite TV: Eurovision 2007

It's voting time in the lunacy that is the Eurovision Song Contest. Here is a summary, including some strange bits of Euronglish:
  1. Bosnia+Herzegovina - nice but no chance;
  2. Spain - 4 guys in tight white and pink lights - creepy;
  3. Belarus - Medallion man with a rock ballad to bukkake - "when you cast your loving potion over me";
  4. Ireland - Folksie, charming, dark yet jolly;
  5. Finland - more noisy dark rock with drums;
  6. Republic of Macedonia - up/down ballad with drums;
  7. Slovenia - Opera in black with drums;
  8. Hungary - Bluesy rock angst. No drums. Phew;
  9. Lithuania - Guitarry song with "lonely shades walking";
  10. Greece - an odd disco/dance at the "heart of attention";
  11. Georgia - a nice slice of trance;
  12. Sweden - revenge of 70s glam! Maybe "with my head in the can" was deliberate;
  13. France - Franglais pop. How did monoglots follow this?
  14. Latvia - a singalong. In Italian. But it looks like Italy aren't here this year. So how's that help?;
  15. Russia - another fun girl band, singing different (ruder) lyrics to the official song sheet;
  16. Germany - sexism swings;
  17. Serbia - a red up/down song;
  18. Ukraine - dance nonsense - the first song I walked out on this year;
  19. UK - an example of Britishness and why I call myself English, not British;
  20. Romania - a fun little polyglot guitar song;
  21. Bulgaria - drums, dance, squeaking;
  22. Turkey - "How much I crave for you" - a dancey whirly song;
  23. Armenia - the tearful stalker's song;
  24. Moldova - gothest song of the night - "each people will gnaw our wishes no more"???
I can't pick a winner from that. I only voted to try to stop Ukraine.

Steve Kemp: Fed through the tube that sticks in me

Thanks to everybody who told me that there wasn't a simple way to persuade Mutt to work with mailboxes containing unread messages. I've now discovered the mutt-ng project, packaged in Debian's experimental branch. This contains the infamous mutt sidebar patch which caters to my needs fully: Job done. Expect a more involved writeup shortly ..

Luk Claes: First real blog entry

This is my first real blog entry. After setting up etch's version of ikiwiki, it looked like the documentation didn't match that version, so I installed and configured the unstable version on my etch system which went pretty well. I also hope that this will show up on planet.debian.org...

Remi Vanicat: weblogger

Even if one could ask why I’ve such a blog were I wrote next to nothing, I can use it to test the new Emacs mode : weblogger. I’m afraid there will be difficulties with the line breaking… I will have to look again on a different way to auto-fill on Emacs. Or may be a way to tell to weblogger to not put br every time there is a line break…

11 May 2007

Steve Kemp: Will you lead me to your armchair

Assume I'm using mutt for my mailclient and that I have all my mail stored beneath ~/Maildir. Is there a simple way of limiting an index to only those folders containing New messages? I know that I can use the index_format to display something like "N" next to folders containing new messages - but I cannot seem to limit the display to just those ones. (At any given time I'll have something like 30+ mailboxes with unread messages, if not more.) My current mutt looks something like this, which shows that I have 24 folders with unread messages - but it doesnt make it easy to tell which they are:
..
269       4096 May 11 22:49   ~/Maildir/.spam/
270       4096 May 11 23:36   ~/Maildir/.spam.bayes/
271       4096 May 11 22:49 N ~/Maildir/.spam.image/
272       4096 May 11 22:49   ~/Maildir/.spam.pyzor/
273       4096 May 11 22:49   ~/Maildir/.spam.razor/
274       4096 May 11 22:49   ~/Maildir/.spam.request/
275       4096 May 11 23:27   ~/Maildir/.spam.unsure/
276       4096 May 11 22:54   ~/Maildir/.steve_org_uk/
277       4096 May 11 22:49   ~/Maildir/.syswear_com/
..
-- Mutt: Mailboxes [24]

DebConf team: DebConf7 accommodation (Posted by Peter Nuttall)

As Moray blogged last week, there are spare beds in the hostel block booking. If you haven’t already written in ask for one, and you would like to stay with the sponsored DebConf attendees, please write to accommodation@debconf.org now. The plan is to close this option in about 24 hours, so please be prompt. The spare beds will be allocated to people in the order emails are received; the price per night will be 12 (currently 17.60), which is a special reduced rate due to our large bookings.

MJ Ray: the Cooperative Group: SW Regional AGM: Q+A

Sam commented:
"Quality motion. This is exactly the point that I raise at just about every committee meeting I attend, but to have it formally supported by the wider membership is a good step. If things don't improve soon, we should try that line of attack in the Central and Eastern region."
One suggestion in the debate was to have a co-operatives fortnight, similar to the fairtrade fortnight, to promote the Co-operative Group (tCG) membership, other tCG businesses and other local cooperatives. Let's see whether SW can lead the way again! ;-) [pic of agm chair] The question-and-answer session was pretty interesting. All of the questions were submitted in writing. Some of them were submitted in advance and others during the lunch break. No spoken questions were taken and most Insurance (CIS) and Bank questions were held back because no-one from financial services was there. The answers were grouped under a few headings.
Ethics, answersed by Catherine Staveley
  1. CIS's voting record is public, but some details are buried under sustainabiliy on the group's corporate web site.
  2. The panel were asked to define a few terms. By ethical, tCG means generally being "a good neighbour". Materiality is how much a business relates to tCG's aims and they think shelf penetration is how much space and promotion a product gets in the stores. The financial services profits aim to be all-ethical.
  3. Members were asked to please take part in the consultations about the new food retail ethical policy.
  4. tCG has a "triple bottom line" - in addition to looking at profits, we also consider our effects on our communities and sustainability.
  5. tCG is leading the way on packaging minimisation: onion nets are already biodegradable, work continues on developing biodegradable fruit nets and a new light-weight (but still strong) whiskey bottle has just been launched. We'll see whether it's possible to give more dividend points for buying less packaged goods.
Food retail, answered by David Parker (regional food), Gary Metcalfe (operations), Clive Netherway (top 100 stores) and Nick Lowe (sales and support)
  1. Local stores: Minehead Post Office contracts have been exchanged and planning permission granted in Budleigh Salterton - both sites should be ready in a couple of months.
  2. There are new small stores at Amesbury, Ilfracombe, Perranport and Lyneham (where it's hurting Tesco Express more than anyone). tCG have also acquired 7 stores from Higgins, one from Savages and a petrol station with minimarket in Bath. Dawlish has just opened, giving a total of 14 new stores. In addition, 50 stores are being refitted in the south-west region.
  3. The Falmouth store is a bit of a puzzle: whether to split the existing store or develop a nearby site.
  4. tCG stores have outperformed the The Institute of Grocery Distribution index for 15 months in a row and is now seeing growth-on-growth.
  5. Problems with product stocking should be taken up with store managers first.
  6. Home delivery has been trialled and failed several times, but is being trialled again in the new OCO stores. (What does OCO mean? There's one at Portishead.)
  7. Supply problems with RSPCA Freedom Foods meats will be investigated.
  8. The Westbury-on-Trim Stoke Lane store will only be expanded if its turnover increases.
  9. Suppliers are still letting some stores down on delivery times. This will be re-checked.
  10. The best response to the crocodile community projects of other companies is to strengthen tCG's community project funding in areas before other supermarkets open new stores.
  11. Local produce is rarely stocked because of problems with availability and meeting tCG technical standards (I could almost hear the hackles raise at this answer!). Organic is only usually stocked in areas where surveys suggest the target audience lives (which I guess is why my tatty 60s store has more sweets and sugar drinks than fresh food). Similar biases exist for other ranges.
  12. Missing product complaints will get written answers: Clipper tea and sugar-free Mintoes.
  13. There was a complaint about the lack of notices about the unique status of co-op milk. (In short, we own our farms so our milk had better not be getting abused.)
Corporate questions, answered by Frank Jones
  1. Compensations of the merged tCG/United Co-op societies are shown on page 12 of Stronger Together.
  2. There was a question about a 10% profit target which I didn't understand. The answer was on page 13 of the annual report.
  3. Party politicians were in the hall.
  4. The results of the merger meetings were unknown at the time.
  5. The Co-operative Funerals are derecognising the GMB union, which has worried many members. The comment from the floor was "there's usually one motive for derecognising a union"!
  6. There's a 16% pay increase for executives who don't join tCG's pension fund, which is what would have been paid into the fund for them. Whether it applies to all employees will be checked and a written reply given.
Strategic questions, answered by David Doyle
  1. Travel offers will be promoted in the food stores. tCG wants to avoid "silo" businesses which don't cross-promote with other businesses where appropriate.
  2. Leaflets of other tCG and other co-ops should be stocked, particularly at festive times.
  3. Offsetting CO2 is not a complete answer to climate change, but it was the only one of five suggested actions which was approved. Is the Co-operative Travel chain underperforming because it doesn't offer enough ethical choices? Some shouting from the floor about them still not offering European rail tickets.
  4. The regional view of the United merger... This was nicely controversial, as it bloody well ought to be... There's no requirement for a tCG membership vote, so there will be no tCG membership vote. There was a hierarchical vote: very few of the Cornwall area turned up at the regional meeting in Bristol, but Devon and Somerset turned out in numbers and the south-west's delegates to the national meeting voted against 5 of the 6 merger resolutions, which were passed anyway. The chair stepped in and cut short the debate, stating that everyone knows the south-west is unhappy about certain aspects, like not having a choice on the first merged chief executive, but what's done is done.
Finally, a list of questions being sent for written answers were given by Andrew North and the chair (was it Colin House? It's annoying to find one name and lose another).

David Welton: JavaFX

I'm not convinced. It looks to me like they're aiming at something a bit more dynamic/higher level than Java, in more or less the space that Javascript, Ruby and Python operate in. The declarative GUI stuff looks pretty good, but I don't know if the rest will make that worth it. The language itself seems neither here nor there. It's a lot like Javascript - but not quite. It doesn't have real hash tables, something I don't care for in JS, and I didn't see an eval() method in the documentation, which means that their aim is to make something that you compile, and that doesn't carry around an interpreter with it like most dynamic languages with eval have to. I wonder what kind of support it will get from Sun and the open source community? Will the internal Java group view this as some sort of competitor? I wonder what sort of discussions went on during the creation of this system at Sun. They can't have take the decision to make a new, incompatible language very lightly. A new language has to have a killer app to drive acceptance, and I don't quite see one for this. The FAQ sheds some light on where they'd like to go:
Why did you create another scripting language? JavaFX Script is specifically designed to optimize the creative process of building rich and compelling UIs leveraging Java Swing, Java 2D and Java 3D for developers and content authors. Why isn't Groovy enough? Groovy and other languages have two specific traits which don't precisely meet these needs, namely that they are generic in nature and don't provide the appropriate abstractions necessary to optimize the UI design process and similarly are designed specifically for programmers other than content authors.
So it does look like they're aiming for a language that makes it easy to quickly create GUI's for people who perhaps aren't expert enough (or patient enough) to deal with Java itself. Pity they didn't just stick with Tcl and Tk, which have had a more or less declarative syntax for specifying layout for something like 10 years, and in any case have a flexible enough syntax to "run DSL circles" around most languages that are currently popular. As the author of Hecl, I'm particularly curious about their mobile strategy. If I may be permitted a bit of hubris, it's nice that they see things my way, that mobile apps need a good scripting language in order to make them more accessible to the masses, but it wasn't too hard to see that coming, with the ever increasing capabilities of higher end phones, and the "scaling down" that scripting languages bring to programming (making it easier for people to get started even if they aren't experts). I wonder what sort of diffusion they'll get with their phone system, and how fast, and how easy it will actually be to program the phones. For many people it's probably not as important, but by creating a real interpreter, rather than something that's compiled and doesn't have an eval function, Hecl lets you download and execute code, which makes for some very interesting possibilities (as well as some risks, of course). That's probably not important though, if they can actually make a system that's widely used, and easier to create applications for than J2ME currently is. I wonder if they'll allow J2ME on the phone platform, or close that down in favor of JavaFX? Even for Big Companies, launching a new language is a difficult endeavour[1], and it will be a number of years before we see where this ends up, but I'm not convinced. [1] The Economics of Programming Languages

Martin Michlmayr: GCC 4.3 related build problems: pedantic preprocessor warnings in C++

GCC 4.3 changed pedantic preprocessor warnings in C++ code into errors, in line with the C++ front-end. Because of this change, preprocessor warnings are now errors. This leads to a number of errors that are in my opinion too strict and I've started a discussion about this problem on the GCC mailing list. I hope this change will be reverted, or that some of these errors are downgraded to warnings again, but users of current gcc-snapshot package might encounter these errors. I haven't filed bugs about these issues since I'm waiting for a census from GCC developers. Nevertheless, it makes sense to fix these problems if they are present in one's package. This change has caused at least the three following errors which are all fairly common. error: "xxx" redefined It's not allowed to #define something twice, as in this example:
#define TEST "foo"
#define TEST "bar"
This code will lead to the following error:
test2.cc:2:1: error: "TEST" redefined
test2.cc:1:1: error: this is the location of the previous definition
Most typically, this occurs because something is defined in a header that is included and then redefined in the current source file. It can also happen when a #define is put in the code but also on the command line, e.g. via -DTEST="bar". This will lead to:
test2.cc:1:1: error: "TEST" redefined
<command line>:1:1: error: this is the location of the previous definition
The correct solution is to avoid redefinitions directly or to use #ifndef to make sure that something has not been defined already. extra tokens at end of #endif directive While an #ifdef obviously needs a second parameter, it's not allowed to give one to #else and #endif. Unfortunately, this is commonly done as a reminder for what is being tested for:
#ifdef TEST
#endif TEST
This code will lead to the following error:
test3.cc:2:8: error: extra tokens at end of #endif directive
missing newline The last line of a source file has to end with a newline. If this is not the case, the following error is now shown:
test4.cc:1:19: error: no newline at end of file

MJ Ray: the Cooperative Group: SW Regional AGM

I went to the Co-operative Group's South-west region Annual General Meeting in Taunton last Saturday (5 May) and I'll be writing this up over the next few days. It's taken me that long to find time to reread my notes. I'll try to blog the two bits that I think are interesting to other regions today, because more AGMs are happening tomorrow.
[pic of agm panel]
"The AGM is one of only two [formal decision-making] meetings open to members each year, when they can recieve information on the performance of their Society, and hold their elected representatives to account. Afternoon sessions will again be less formal, and include topics such as food retail, ethics, our banking and insurance businesses, and healthy eating."
(from A Cambridge Co-operator). There are other meetings for members during the year, of course, but they tend to be consultations and workshops and so on. The meeting was opened by the Woodcraft Folk, who I didn't know much about, but they seem to be like an outdoorsy co-operative youth club. Then there were introductions by the chair, a presentation by Catherine Staveley from group head office about ethics, environment and community, the annual reports and then a motion:
"This meeting is disappointed that we fail to declare our distinctive, mutual, consumer ownership and ethical values in our trading outlets. In our large outlets, wall space is left vacant and little attempt is made to promote what we stand for. We undersell ourselves as an alternative form of business enterprise which has principles. Therefore, we request the Regional Board to pursue the prominent display of messages to proclaim our ownership structure and promote the causes fundamental to our unique consumer appeal."
After many speakers in support and one against, the regional board came out in support and the motion was passed overwhelmingly. Finally, there were the questions and the report of the Party. More on that soon.

MJ Ray: More Highway Code Cycling

More developments on cycling and the Highway Code: There was a written answer in parliament about the Highway Code which completely avoided the question - cyclists are voting 'no' to its 'Does this answer the above question?' poll. I have. bikeuser wrote about the Highway Code with excerpts and links to me and also linked Eleanor Blair - More Highway Code which mentions the Early Day Motion in parliament with a suggestion that you write to your MP and ask them to sign it. In a comment, Anonymous asked:
"I agree with you that cyclists should have the right to decide that a cycling road seems too hazardous. However, other than that, any reason why cyclists should get to use roads when cycle paths exist?"
Yes. The most important reason is that most cycle paths are built to a very low standard (design speed of 18mph on an unladen hybrid bike) which is unsuitable for commercial carriers and even ordinary road bicycles (what I used to call racers). Even national government suggests to use the road if you want to exceed the design parameters of cycle paths.
"As a general rule, if you want to cycle quickly, say in excess of 18 mph/30 kph, then you should be riding on the road."
Also, cycle paths usually get the lowest priority of all highways at every junction (contrary to national guidance) and are hopelessly badly signposted. Would you choose a bumpy-road that gives way at every piddling side road when you have the choice of a flat, smooth A road? I doubt it - that's the basic form of traffic calming in bypassed villages like Blisworth. There are some cycle tracks I use, but even those are so badly signed, it's taken me weeks to figure them out - and I've been visiting family in this area for years! For example, I don't enjoy riding on the exposed Somerset Avenue dual carriageway and the adjacent purpose-built shared-use path is segregated, with few junctions or pedestrians, but consider the junction complex at West Wick (the aerial picture shows the cycle path, but the roads on the bottom right have changed). It's faster to use the underpasses, cross Churchlands Way into Yew Tree Drive and then use the Summer Lane underpass to reach North Worle, but which way do the cycle route signs send you? Yep, round to the left, across four sets of traffic lights where the cyclists get the lowest priority (and a 'Cyclists Dismount' sign for good measure) and then along a path that level-crosses an estate road completely blind (under construction in the aerial pic, above the roundabout). Oh, and the cycle route map's wrong for that area, just to make it even more confusing. Because of the bad signposts and maps, it's also very difficult to report any problems with cycle paths and tracks to the highways maintenance team. Cycle paths often don't have names and I've sometimes had reports come back with "there is no fault" when it turns out they've looked at the nearby road, not the cycleway. Forcing cyclists to use cycle paths will probably always be the wrong choice, but there's a lot of improvements needed before you can expect many cyclists to use them by choice. Doing so now would be like directing all cars onto unsigned B-roads instead of motorways that exist for the same journey, just because vans and lorries have a bigger need for the motorways. I like having B-roads available for journeys which would be much longer otherwise, but I wouldn't want to be forced off the motorways just because they exist. Even if you're a car driver, write to your MP and object to directing classes of traffic off of roads that are safer than alternatives. Else, if you tolerate this... The bigger question is "why is so much money spent on the cycling equivalent of B-roads?" and I don't know the answer to that. We would do much better to widen roads to add cycle lanes (or allow safe in-lane overtaking by cars), instead of widening the adjacent paths and painting them as shared use.

Michal &#268;iha&#345;: Service numbers in python-gammu

python-gammu now supports service numbers dialogue. How it is useful for you depends on services your network provides. For example with Vodafone in Czech republic, you can use it to configure various services:
$ ./service-numbers.py 
This example shows interaction with network using service codes
Enter code (empty string to end): *111#
Talking to network...
Network reply:
Status: ActionNeeded
Vitejte v Kapesni Samoobsluze!
1 Muj ucet
2 Me sluzby
3 Nastaveni telefonu
4 Info a zabava
5 Oblibene
Enter code (empty string to end): 1
Talking to network...
Network reply:
Status: ActionNeeded
Muj ucet
1 Vyuct. a platby
2 Vydaje pod kontrolou
3 Osobni udaje
4 PIN a PUK kod
------
0 Zpet
00 Uvod
Enter code (empty string to end):
Python code which can be used for this is available as example. It will be probably one time integrated to Wammu, but it needs a bit more time than hacking this simple script :-).

Martin Michlmayr: GCC 4.3 related build problems: extra semicolons

One mistake which some C++ programmers make which GCC 4.3 rejects is to put semicolons after functions. While a semicolon is needed to terminate a class, struct and enum it must not be used after functions. The following code is invalid because of an extra semicolon (in bold):
class Test  
    Test()  ;
 ;
GCC 4.3 will reject this code with the following error message:
test.cc:2: error: extra ';'
The obvious solution is to remove the spurious semicolon.

10 May 2007

Aigars Mahinovs: Stuff happening

You know that you haven’t blogged in a while, when you realize that you have changed your address twice since the last post. Changes in my life since last post:
* finished my Masters paper and submitted it, waiting for viva now :S
* moved back to Latvia, lived for some time with parents (and no Internet) and now moved into an apartment in Riga - great place :D
* working on projects to make living :
* got my camera stolen at some point during my move from UK to Latvia, and my finances will not allow to replace it this year ;(
* another person is contributing heavily to SBackup and is single-handedly doing the bulk of the bug fixing for a new stable release of SBackup :D !
* another patent treat is looming (EPLA - a united patent court under EPO), but this time we are asked for our opinion by our government - nice change of pace there :)

Thomas Girard: frysk for Debian

A frysk package is ready to test; it's available here. It is targeted for sid and is apt-get'able, just add :
deb http://thomas.g.girard.free.fr/frysk/ ./
to your /etc/apt/sources.list. For now you'll also need to install Java-Gnome packages in NEW, also available from:
deb http://thomas.g.girard.free.fr/java-gnome/ ./
Last, you'll need libaudit0 from Philipp's private repo. Unless something really weird is found in this frysk package, it will be uploaded to master right after auditd. Update: uploaded to experimental

Martin Michlmayr: GCC 4.3: common build failures

Even though GCC 4.2 has seen many delays and still hasn't been released (although it's finally getting close), a lot of development has already been done on trunk for the release of GCC 4.3. I started testing 4.3 in March and in addition to finding and reporting compiler issues I have filed bugs on packages that fail to build with GCC 4.3. The idea is to give people an advance warning and to be ready for GCC 4.3 when it will be released. We have almost 500 bugs related to GCC 4.3 already, mostly due to a clean-up of C++ headers in GCC that has exposed sloppy programming in many programs. Fortunately, these bugs are easy to fix. As I'm finding common mistakes in packages, I will document these problems and way to make sure a program is ready for GCC 4.3. Common problems

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