Bits from the Debian i18n meeting (Extremadura 2007)

From December 12th to December 15th, Junta de Extremadura hosted another one of the Debian Meetings; five i18n guys shared ideas, food, buses and fun with the Debian KDE maintainers. We would like to thank Extremadura for hosting us during the Hispalinux Meeting 2007, the event was held at Universad de Derecho (Law University) in Caceres, Spain.

These are the minutes, results and notes from our work, it is a brief description but hopefully complete of what we have done and what is still missing/pending.

Thanks to Cesar (cek) we had the chance to work on churro (i18n.debian.net) locally; the server is still running a 2.4 kernel because of some "tick" problems with 2.6 series, the last one tried was 2.6.21 and we should try newer ones, in order to support upgrades and not get stuck with 2.4, we hope Cesar will find time to test new Debian kernels.

First, let me introduce everybody to the services, robots and resources being hosted by i18n.d.n:

• MoinMoin wiki for local and simple reference documentation, it contains all the links to the below resources. (http://i18n.debian.net/wiki/)
• Pootle experimental server
• dl10n scripts, aka dl10n robots (codename Lion), these scripts are responsible for the status of pseudo URLs used by some translation teams, by the Project Smith and by the NMU Priority List for i18n NMU Campaign
• Synchronization of the i18n material used by the Debian website to generate translation statistics about PO and PO-debconf
• Generation of Compendium PO files per-language
• Different types of statistics
• Other non user-visible services like a full source mirror for stable, testing, unstable and experimental, used by the scripts and robots.
• DDTP, Debian Descriptions Translation Project
• DDTSS, The Debian Distributed Translation Server Satellite, a web front-end for DDTP, now integrated to DDTP to use the Database back-end instead of the e-mail interface.

And, at some point, we found important to state clear the acronyms and names used in related DDTP projects/tools:

• DDTS, Debian Description Translation Server, this is the main "back-end" used in DDTP, it tends to be the interface between translator tools (present and future ones) and the database;
• ddt.cgi is a CGI interface that is able to provide info for specific packages or translations, including diffs, related packages and active/inactive descriptions.
• DDTC which is the old (and still functional) command line client for DDTP.

We took the chance to organize a few things on churro, old accounts were cleaned out and removed, we moved from /org to /srv and got more GBs of space to the "playground". Old files were also removed and some are schedule to deletion on early 2008. With the reallocation of /org we also find some more space to /home and /var, we reorganize some of the links on the web space (specially to remove services from people's accounts), and we changed the mirror script to also synchronize the Packages and Contents files.

Grisu and Martijn worked mainly on DDTP and DDTSS integration. DDTSS now provides statistics for stable, testing and unstable, we are also working with Debian Med to provide support and infrastructure to a specific audience, like packages related to Medicine. The conversion to talk directly with DDTP/DDTS database also provided:

• Fetching new translations is almost instantaneous and marks translation as requested (avoiding duplicated works via the e-mail interface).
• After sufficient reviews occurred, the upload is instant
• Committed DDTS / DDTSS / DDTP website generation into SVN
  • Added READMEs for the above directories

DDTSS now announces the user using authentication because of its integration with the Database backend used by DDTP. Quick trivia: DDTP is now a compound of 25 languages occupying 18 GBytes.

A few days before the meeting we had the offer to use "AUTOBYHAND" to upload a package with the Translation-* files. The package is now called 'ddtp-translations' and we worked during the meeting to create scripts to build the package and to test it on the archive side. This approach allow Debian i18n Team to upload new translations and remove old ones (or inactive ones) without bother FTP Master Team. Special thanks to Anthony Town, he has been working with us to prove tips, fixes and info on how to produce the package and the scripts. The code is available in the debian-l10n SVN under pkg-ddtp-translations:
http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/debian-l10n/pkg-ddtp-translations

In our case, "BYHAND" processing consists of a simple tarball of the main,contrib,non-free /i18n/Translation-*, we decide to work on a set of scripts to make it easier to create new packages (ddtp-translations) in a consistent way and keeping debian/changelog up-to-date. We also made some suggestions to the script what will run on the archive side to check the tarball structure, base on the examples of debian-maintainers and debtags (tags-override).

One of our initial targets for the meeting with regards to Pootle and Debian was to try big PO files per language, fortunately, Nicolas and Friedel were able to increase Pootle performance enough to get a few languages from DDTP loaded in Pootle. Using the upstream Pootle-diet branch, which uses a database back-end for the generation of statistics, the time to browse the DDTP POs of a language (~20.000 files) went down to a dozen of seconds.

Speaking about Pootle, Friedel gave us a good picture of what is coming next in terms of Pootle's development. There are improvements planned in the areas of permissions and rights delegation, as well as file management (for projects and templates). Improved management of terminology projects is also planned.

Improvements in the QA capabilities of the translate toolkit and Pootle are planned to help with the "false positives" of the pofilter checks. Better reuse of existing translations will become possible by using better translation memory techniques. There is also work planned on formats and converters involving, for example, XLIFF, TMX, TRADOS and WordFast.

Another pending task for quite a while was the CVS migration to SVN, it is now done, with a new layout. Commits to the CVS were disabled and every single script or resource depending on CVS should be changed to use SVN. For now, we are publishing (via HTTP) the status files generated by the pseudo-urls robots until we can fix the scripts to re-enable the commit of the files. You can find them here: http://i18n.debian.net/debian-l10n/status/

We are pretty happy with the changes and results of the work during those days, but we still have some items pending on our TODO list:

• More advertisement and usage information about PO Compendiums
  There are two use cases are identified:
  
  • Filling new PO files.
  • QA work to find inconsistent translations.
  Maybe Eddy would love to do that? :-)
• Extend the duration of the statistics history. (Nekral)
• Debian packages of the services running on churro
  • DDTP (Grisu)
  • DDTSS (Martijn)
  • dl10n (Nekral)
• DDTP: add some scripts to handle packages with version in the description (e.g. kernel and kernel modules) (Martijn)
• DDTP: Standard generation of the translation tarballs (faw)
• DDTP: document the bracketed stats on the main page (faw)
• DDTC: should be updated to match the current features. Documentation to ease integration with procmail. (Nekral - low priority)
• Implement mail service for translation teams with their own robots (e.g. Dutch) (faw)
• Collect data from http://www.debian.org/devel/website/stats/ (Nekral)
• http://www.debian.org/intl/l10n/po/,
  http://www.debian.org/intl/l10n/po-debconf/
  are built based on the churro material. It would make more sense to build these statistics on churro (Nekral)
  • We could "fork" the page and add some fancy new features on these pages (Nekral)
  • Add information from the coordination page to indicate that a translation is ongoing. (Nekral)
• Pootle: missing review indication. Hard with PO back-end. (Friedel)

There are a couple more reports to be sent but they are more focused on i18n specific questions, tools and plans for 2008. So, probably those will be sent only to debian-i18n mail list. If you are interested, please, stay tuned. :-)

Posted on d-d-a: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/01/msg00002.html
And a big thanks to Nicolas François (aka nekral), he helped me a lot making notes, preparing the text and reviewing it; and was patient enough to wait for the report while I was solving some personal problems.

An article by Sam Varghese appeared on ITwire today, entitled linux.conf.au: What is Novell doing here?:

A GNU/Linux system does not normally load modules that are not released under an approved licence. So why should Australia’s national Linux conference take on board a sponsor who engages in practices that are at odds with the community? What am I talking about? A company which should not be in the picture has poked its nose in as a sponsor. Novell, which indicated the level of its commitment to FOSS by signing a deal with Microsoft in November 2006, will be one of the supporting sponsors for the conference.

Novell was also a minor sponsor of the 2007 conference, and Sam wrote an article in January expressing similar thoughts, which included this quote from Bruce Perens:

“I’d rather they hadn’t accepted a Novell sponsorship. It wasn’t very clueful of them, given Novell’s recent collaboration with Microsoft in spreading fear and doubt about Linux and software patents,” Perens said.

Ultimately, I think that’s a mistaken view. Linux.conf.au is what it is thanks to the contributions of four groups:

the organisers

who create the conference, get a venue, organise a schedule of events, help the speakers and attendees to get there, and generally make it easy for everyone to just get immersed in cool Linux stuff

the speakers

who provide the core of the schedule, the reason for attendees to go, and a core depth of awesome technical knowledge and ideas

the attendees

who fill in the organisational/content gaps that the organisers and speakers miss, who make for fascinating corridor and dinner conversations, who make side events like the miniconfs, the hackfest or open day interesting, and who pay the rego fees that lets the conference happen

the sponsors

who provide a chunk of money to fill out the conference budget letting us commit to venues and events earlier (when we might otherwise have to wait to see how many people come), and let us do extra things that registration fees alone wouldn’t cover

Obviously sometimes you have to exclude people from participating, but that’s mostly only if they’re actually causing trouble for the event. For sponsors, that pretty much means trying to interfere in the conference itself, or not paying on time. Otherwise, if you’re contributing to the conference, and not causing problems, you certainly should be recognised for that, as far as I can see. For me, the same thing would apply if Microsoft was offering to sponsor the conference – if they’re willing to contribute, and not cause problems, I’m all for it. If they happen to not be doing anything constructive in Linux-space anywhere else, well, it seems perfectly fine to me to start contributing by helping make linux.conf.au awesome. In Microsoft’s case that would be hard, because all the people going “oh my gosh, Microsoft, Linux! Wolves, sheeps! Hell, snow!” along with possible mixed messages from Microsoft and our long-term major sponsors HP and IBM about the future of Linux and whatnot could really distract us from all the cool technical stuff the conference is fundamentally about. I don’t think there’s anything Microsoft could offer to justify that much disruption, but having more of the world’s software companies involved in free software would probably be worth a bit of hassle, if the disruption could be minimised. Ultimately, I guess my disagreement comes down to these couple of comments from Sam’s article:

Asked whether it was right that Novell should be allowed to be a sponsor for a conference such as this - which, in my view, is a privilege - […] […] Novell, obviously, is hoping that, as public memory is woefully short, it will be able to wriggle its way back into the community. Providing such leeway is, in my opinion, a big mistake.

In my opinion, the ability to contribute to open source isn’t a privelege, it’s something that should be open to everyone, including people who’ve made mistakes in the past: and that’s precisely what the “free” in free software is all about. OTOH, if you want to see who’s been participating most in the Linux world lately, you’re much better off looking at the list of speakers than sponsors. Novell (or at least SuSE) folks giving talks in the main conference this year seem to include John Johansen and Nick Piggin. Interestingly, the count of HP folks seems a bit low this year, with only two that I can see, which leaves them not only merely equalling Novell/SuSE, but beaten by both Intel and Catalyst. Tsk! I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that changes when we can see the list of attendees’ companies in the booklet this year…

thank you lazyweb; A number of folk have written to me pointing out Netem. One in particular, Yusuf Goolamabbas even provided a set of wrapper scripts for Netem that I'm going to be digging into next week. Netem is built around various lower level tools like tc, which is good (tc is what I was using year ago). I'm hopeful it will be really easy to use, and will blog something when I've used it in anger :)

It's been a while, but a new update to DebTorrent is available in unstable. There is also a new version of the helper apt-transport-debtorrent (0.2.0) to go with it, which was mostly the cause of the long delay (due to a pending apt transition to testing). It is now highly recommended to install both, read below for new reasons why. One of the previous problems with debtorrent was the incorrect status updates displayed by apt, due to it not being aware of pieces of large files that have already downloaded. Using these new versions together will help to improve the update status messages shown during a download. Now, apt-get update will display a status at the bottom that will look something like:

DebTorrent: 837MiB left at 319 KiB/s (46m03s)

You may not be able to see it all if there are multiple updates to different mirrors under way. In aptitude, the status will appear on a line by itself at the bottom of the list of downloaded files. The status line will update about once per second, and should give a good indication of how much time is really left. The other (incorrect) status information presented by apt/aptitude will still be there but you can ignore it. I've only tested apt and aptitude, so I'm not sure how (or if) synaptic, adept or gnome-apt will display these messages, though they are general apt status messages, usually used for displaying the status while logging into an FTP server. This should also fix another problem that debtorrent can have with downloading large files (usually on slower connections). Since apt can't see the download happening for a long time, the connection would sometimes time out. With these status updates the connection is constantly active, so the timeouts shouldn't be a problem when downloading large packages (although they may still occur when doing an apt-get update, as there are no status updates during that process). I did implement a better solution, as suggested by Micha Politowski on the wiki. This solution uses the creation of sparse files to let apt know how much of a file has actually been downloaded. However, apt doesn't understand how a single process can download multiple files in prarallel, so it only follows the last file that was started, and complains when a file finishes that was not the last one that started. I've disabled that for now while I see if it's possible to modify apt to work better in this situation. Here are the changes for debtorrent:

• Update to support apt debtorrent transport version 0.2
  • send piece downloaded status messages (currently disbaled due to apt not liking it)
  • send general status update messages
• Fix some minor packaging issues
• Upgrade to standards version 3.7.3 (no changes)
• Remove the unneeded binary-arch rule
• Changes the XS-Vcs-* headers to Vcs-*
• Moved Homepage from description to Source package fields

And for apt-transport-debtorrent:

• Upgrade transport version to 0.2
  • Create sparse files based on status messages (102) from DebTorrent
  • Send general status updates to apt (103) from DebTorrent
• Remove support for Range headers as they may confuse the sparse file allocation
• Fix typo in long description
• Upgrade to standards version 3.7.3 (no changes)
• Changes the XS-Vcs-* headers to Vcs-*
• Moved Homepage from description to Source package fields

My son Jean-Baptiste turns 20 today and I have this strange feeling of big pride and seeing time flowing around me. I still see that little thing I discovered on Jan 10th 1988 and compare it to the current young man who conducts his life pretty well (no gf as of now, I'm always surprised that none discovered the gem JB is....). This year will anyway be a year of big pride with Sophie turning 18 (age of majority, driving license, french 'baccalaureat'....) and Magali turning 16. So, well, I just wanted to share this with people who're still not bored with that blog.

It s been a long time since I ve written about our local unconferences, but a neat one coming up is DemoCamp CUSEC 2. It s attached to the Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference, which is being held in Montr al again. Last year, I did a demonstration on how to cook an omelette, with it being a metaphor for software engineering. This year, I m going to do something more prosaic and run a round of Powerpoint karaoke, under the guise of getting people to practise their presentation skills. Or it will be a convincing argument against its use. Show up if you can! Present something you ve been working on! (There are still some slots left.) It ll be exciting. DemoCamp CUSEC 2
Thursday, 17 January 2008
19:00 21:00
Centre Mont-Royal
2200 rue Mansfield
Free admission ( Sign up Google Maps )

Dear lazyweb, In bzr development we are now working primarily on network performance. One of the key things about being sure we have improved things is automated, repeatable benchmarks. And for that to be useful in networking environments we need to control latency and bandwidth and packet loss. I know this isn't a new problem, but it was about 5 years ago that I last did this sort of thing. What are the best tools today (for linux :)). Ideally I'd be able to bring up a bunch of local addresses like 127.0.1.1 or 127.0.0.2, with different properties - such that traffic from 127.0.0.1 to 127.0.0.2 will simulate being uploaded over adsl, and 127.0.0.2 to 127.0.0.1 will simulate being downloaded over adsl.

Porte os greeted the new year by fleeing the city as fast as gridlocked roads could take them. January is the month Buenos Aires takes its summer vacation, and the destination of choice is Mar del Plata, a seaside resort I have never visited. Given my love for crowds, heat and strangers' children it sounds it would be my own personal Mordor. "You can't even see the sand for all the people! It's an absolute madhouse!" Argentine friends tell me in horror, as they pack up their cars to head down there.

-- from Idle Words Makes me glad that I'll be there in the August chill for DebConf 8. I hope.

I just went to our Institute's yearly ceremony of rosca de reyes. What's that? Well, according to the tradition, on January 6 the tres reyes magos (boringly translated to English as three wise men - It should be something like three wizard kings) payed a visit to the newborn baby Jesus. In Mexico, the tradition mandates that every family, group of friends, or whatnot should gather and eat rosca de reyes, a round, sweet bread, usually some 10cm wide. The rosca has some plastic babies hidden in it, remembering how baby Jesus had to be hidden and smuggled out of his birthplace. And, according to the Mexican tradition, if you cut your piece of rosca and get the baby, you are expected to buy tamales for everybody on February 2, d a de La Candelaria. (why? Don't ask me!)Anyway... An image is worth ~10Kb of UTF8 (so it's still better to describe it, as it weighs around 63K, but what the hell):

Two babies?! I was abused by the Three Wizard Kings! (at least it does not sound as sad as "I was abused by three wise men"!) I'll have to buy tamales for everybody on La Candelaria twice, even if they are no longer hungry!

emacs git modes. Apparently, they are already available in Debian package git-core, /usr/share/doc/git-core/contrib/emacs/. In Fedora Core they are in an independent package emacs-git, and in Fink they are in the package git-mode. I just added the following lines in .emacs to try it out, and they seem to be working somehow. Great.

You are probably using DHCP on the machine currently in front of you. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is a way for your computer to obtain an Internet address from a pool of available addresses, and to return it to the pool when you no longer need it. Basically every Internet service provider uses DHCP, or something similar. As a network operating system, Linux has DHCP support (and had it for ages). In true Unix fashion, Debian sports at least four DHCP clients. Debian s default is dhcp3-client, also known as dhclient. The theory is that the client requests an address lease from the server and periodically renews it. This process yields a number of events, to which the operating system can react. For instance, initially, the client issues a PREINIT event to get the interface into a state where it can talk on the network, and a BOUND event as soon as it acquired a lease, or FAIL if it, uh, failed. After a certain period of time, the client tries to renew the lease. If it succeeds, it issues a RENEW event; if it fails, it yields EXPIRE. So much for the theory. It seems that dhclient is rather stupid, which I tried to document in bug #459813 it does things differently: given a lease, after a certain period of time, it just issues an EXPIRE event, which causes the operating system to deconfigure the interface and take down connectivity. Then, the client spits out a PREINIT event, followed by BOUND or FAIL, as appropriate. I have not quite investigated what all this means, but this much is for sure: periodically, your machine goes offline, only to come back online a second later. If this were Windows, one would probably knock on wood and be glad that it works at all. But we re on Linux here, Debian even, so this cannot be. I d love to be proven wrong, so if you have a minute, please try to verify. One way of doing so is to insert

echo "$(date) got $reason" >> /tmp/dhclient-script.reasons

towards the top of /sbin/dhclient-script and monitor the output file. Once your client renews, it should read:

Wed Jan  9 11:53:27 CET 2008 got RENEW

but instead you ll see

Wed Jan  9 11:53:27 CET 2008 got EXPIRE
Wed Jan  9 11:53:28 CET 2008 got PREINIT
Wed Jan  9 11:53:33 CET 2008 got BOUND

and if you look closely enough, your interface will be unconfigured those seconds between EXPIRE and BOUND. I only spent about 2 hours with dhclient last night, as part of my efforts on netconf, but I already found bug #459813 and bug #459818, two bugs which don t suggest that dhclient is quality software. If I find more, I ll have to consider a different client, hoping that there are others which separate the DHCP client from the operating system calls in a similar way as dhclient does. NP: The Flower Kings: @Live Recording, Uppsala City Theatre, Sweden, 10 February 2003

Some people have been asking about the weather in Melbourne in late-January in terms of what to wear for Linux.Conf.Au. It is probably impossible to predict weather for a particular day this far ahead. But predicting a range for the week is not difficult. I think that you should expect at least one day that is really hot with a peak of 37C or more and reasonable humidity with a possibility of another two days the same or similar. A day with a peak of 42C or more is not unlikely over the course of a week. You should expect a range of temperatures, one or two days that are reasonably cool with a maximum of 25C would not be unexpected. Some heavy rain in short bursts is a possibility (based on the past few weeks - prior to that there was little rain and it’s possible that there may be some time without rain again), there is probably no need for a rain-coat if you have the option of waiting ~30 mins for the rain to pass before going outside. I expect that if there is any rain at a time when conference delegates are about to go out somewhere then things will be delayed. I suggest that you wear jeans while on the plane but expect to wear shorts for your entire time in Australia. A t-shirt is a reasonable option but if you plan to be outside much then wear a long-sleeved shirt. As I don’t expect to be doing much work in traditional offices in the near future I’m wearing business shirts when I go outside, long sleeves with a collar is good for protecting against sun-burn and as they are light they keep me cool (t-shirts are tighter and thicker and keep you hot). However when at LCA I will be wearing t-shirts that I designed (which should be well suited to being inside and I don’t plan to do much outside during that week). A Scott e Vest [1] is a good thing to wear. It has heaps of pockets for your electronic gear, is reasonably light, and can be worn on top of a t-shirt. The Scott company also sells a TEC shirt which is a long-sleeved shirt with plenty of pockets. I’ve had a Scott e Vest for a number of years and I might have to get myself a TEC shirt.

• [1] http://www.scottevest.com/

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2007 was a busy year, here is where I managed to live/stay/visit:

• Auckland - January and February
• Dublin - February, photos
• Hamilton - March
• Miri - April, photos
• Sarikei - April, photos
• Kuching - April, photos
• Kota Kinabalu - April, photos
• Singapore - April, photos
• Dubai - April
• London - April, photos
• Dublin - May onwards, photos
• Galway - June
• Cork - June, photos
• New York - July, photos
• Cambridge - July, photos
• Belfast - August, photos
• Luxembourg - September, photos
• Paris - November, photos
• Whistler - November, photos
• San Francisco - November/December, photos
• Bratislava - December, photos
• Bad Gastein - December, photos
• Salzburg - December, photos
• Vienna - December, photos

18 cities, 5 towns/villages and a total of approximately 101,216km travelled in the air!

At the end of the month we are having linux.conf.au (one of the best Linux conferences in the world) in Melbourne. Here is some quick advice for people who are attending: If you have not yet booked a hotel then www.wotif.com is a good option to try, it’s a hotel booking web site that is aimed at last-minute bookings and offers significant discounts over the list price. A quick search on WotIf reveals that there are currently 5 hotels that are available for $140 per night or less for the time period of LCA. The rate listed is an approximation as the hotel may offer several rates for different types of rooms (it’s usually one of the cheapest options available from the hotel). I believe that some hotels don’t offer their rooms on WotIf until close to the day in question, so some more rooms may become available between now and the start of the conference. However the Australian Open [1] Tennis tournament ends on the 27th of January, if you plan to attend the LCA mini-confs then you will want to arrive on the 27th, so booking a hotel for that night at the last minute would be a risky strategy. If you want to stay somewhere that is comfortable but not overly expensive then you might want to read my post about hotel apartments [2]. My post about public transport in Melbourne [3] has some information that can save you some money. One possibility to consider is that if you use 10 * 2 hour tickets and don’t completely use them up then you could sell them to locals. I would be happy to buy some partially used tickets for the full value of the unused part on the last day of the conference to save people wasting the unused value. Note that my documents blog contains posts that will be updated whenever I have more information and the time to write it down (this blog is generally write-once). I will be updating the post about public transport significantly in future.

• [1] http://www.australianopen.com/


• [2] http://doc.coker.com.au/travel/hotel-vs-apartment/


• [3] http://doc.coker.com.au/melbourne/public-transport-melbourne/

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In rough chronological order, with capsule reviews. I don’t think I’ve missed any, but it is possible that I have. If you look through the list (behind the cut), you’ll see I read mostly Baen books nowadays. There’s a simple explanation: Baen is (almost) the only publisher that does real e-books, and I tend to avoid the inconvenience of paper books where I can. Still, there’s about a hundred titles on the list. (more…)

Chris, buildd hosts keep those time and space usage statistics in a database, which can be queried...

Script started on Sat Jan  5 19:54:15 2008
wouter@country:~$ ssh kiivi.cyber.ee
Linux kiivi 2.6.18-4-mac #1 Fri Mar 30 23:05:11 CEST 2007 m68k
No mail.
Last login: Sat Jan  5 20:41:16 2008 from d51532c45.access.telenet.be
wouter@kiivi:~$ avg-pkg-build-time -s -t   head -n 20
boost:			2015312k (2015312k lastest)
iceweasel:		1846628k (1846628k lastest)
iceape:			1674172k (1674416k lastest)
icedove:		1624848k (1624848k lastest)
xulrunner:		1611880k (1611880k lastest)
mesa:			1230432k (1230432k lastest)
koffice:		1208062k (2115156k lastest)
gcc-snapshot:		1191866k (1207164k lastest)
gcc-4.1:		1185620k (1185620k lastest)
gtk+2.0:		1148634k (1208684k lastest)
k3d:			1145580k (1145580k lastest)
ardour:			1077800k (1077800k lastest)
lyx:			924876k (924876k lastest)
gcc-4.2:		909488k (909488k lastest)
gcc-3.4:		892015k (571084k lastest)
glibc:			891408k (891408k lastest)
linux-2.6:		725961k (744700k lastest)
kdebase:		720618k (1106804k lastest)
kdelibs:		716376k (1150372k lastest)
kdepim:			711858k (784356k lastest)
wouter@kiivi:~$ avg-pkg-build-time -t   head -n 20
gcc-snapshot:		220:52:14 (2 entries, sigma 27:38:21)
axiom:			216:27:57 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
gcc-4.1:		193:47:30 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
k3d:			177:22:10 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
gcc-3.4:		171:40:28 (4 entries, sigma 25:10:55)
boost:			141:13:38 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
koffice:		140:40:23 (2 entries, sigma 53:48:58)
ace:			130:04:14 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
linux-2.6:		129:36:19 (3 entries, sigma 10:12:24)
qt-x11-free:		105:00:32 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
xulrunner:		97:03:38 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
iceape:			96:23:13 (2 entries, sigma 03:12:58)
kdepim:			96:06:54 (2 entries, sigma 19:09:39)
icedove:		94:35:48 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
iceweasel:		93:56:26 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
gcc-4.2:		91:08:32 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
glibc:			91:01:58 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
kdevelop3:		84:27:21 (2 entries, sigma 02:47:35)
kdeedu:			82:09:55 (3 entries, sigma 10:59:18)
vtk:			81:44:20 (3 entries, sigma 00:46:32)
wouter@kiivi:~$ logout
Connection to kiivi.cyber.ee closed.
wouter@country:~$ ssh arrakis
Linux arrakis 2.6.12-1-amiga #1 Sat Aug 13 22:59:59 CEST 2005 m68k
The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please read "links2 http://nefud/info.txt"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No mail.
Last login: Sat Jan  5 18:48:58 2008 from hahn.os.localnet on pts/5
wouter@arrakis:~$ avg-pkg-build-time -s -t   head -n 20
wxwidgets2.6:		1648020k (1648020k lastest)
qt4-x11:		1601086k (1753532k lastest)
gcj-4.1:		1135772k (1135772k lastest)
k3d:			1094345k (1159204k lastest)
kdebase:		1087375k (1087368k lastest)
python-kde3:		1018144k (1018144k lastest)
ghc6:			991524k (991524k lastest)
gcc-3.3:		988690k (990244k lastest)
glibc:			814536k (855720k lastest)
lyx:			804672k (804672k lastest)
bouml:			729888k (729888k lastest)
kdelibs:		685565k (1142304k lastest)
freedroidrpg:		673988k (673988k lastest)
mozilla:		663066k (636896k lastest)
ardour:			647580k (691128k lastest)
mozilla-thunderbird:	591384k (591384k lastest)
omniorb4:		576288k (576288k lastest)
subversion:		568764k (624768k lastest)
xorg-server:		527520k (527520k lastest)
mozilla-firebird:	498896k (502692k lastest)
wouter@arrakis:~$ avg-pkg-build-time -t   head -n 20
enlightenment:		198842:37:14 (3 entries, sigma 344403:17:35)
axiom:			164:43:54 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
ghc6:			159:20:15 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
k3d:			145:18:35 (3 entries, sigma 57:08:46)
python-kde3:		126:39:34 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
qt4-x11:		121:26:11 (2 entries, sigma 03:07:35)
gcj-4.1:		116:05:34 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
gcc-3.3:		108:45:19 (3 entries, sigma 02:01:50)
qt-x11-free:		99:12:17 (4 entries, sigma 14:12:32)
wxwindows2.4:		90:26:51 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
openscenegraph:		74:37:21 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
ardour:			63:44:55 (2 entries, sigma 07:23:05)
bouml:			62:01:16 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
gcc-snapshot:		61:10:07 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
mozilla-thunderbird:	60:47:29 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
mico:			60:15:15 (1 entry, sigma 00:00:00)
kdebase:		58:41:04 (5 entries, sigma 08:00:17)
glibc:			58:04:26 (6 entries, sigma 40:01:12)
mozilla-firebird:	52:47:13 (2 entries, sigma 11:31:07)
zeroc-ice:		52:34:03 (2 entries, sigma 28:12:19)
wouter@arrakis:~$ logout
Connection to fremen-os.dyndns.org closed.
wouter@country:~$ exit
Script done on Sat Jan  5 22:28:46 2008

"avg-pkg-build-time" is a script that queries the statistics database. It's quite CPU-intensive, so I don't like to run it too often (certainly not from cron); but, hey, here you go. In case you didn't know, "arrakis" and "kiivi" are both official m68k/unstable buildd hosts, and especially arrakis has been for quite a long time, although it's been reinstalled once or twice since. Oh, and yes, it does appear as though some bits of the data are invalid, but most of the idea should be alright. (oh, and before you ask, no, it didn't take two and a half hours to run those commands -- I just needed to go while the last one was running, and had only come back several hours later)

Version 0.9.0 of QuantLib was released a couple of days ago on Christmas Eve; as usual, Debian packages for QuantLib were uploaded right away following a few earlier pre-releases. As QuantLib is approaching its 1.0 release, a few API changes requires updates to basically all of RQuantLib's C++ source files. Luckily most changes were minor. At the same time, we also generalised the Binary (aks Digital) option pricer to allow for a 'binType' argument (with values 'cash', 'asset' or 'gap' for CashOrNothing, AssetOrNothing or Gap digitals) as well as an 'excType' argument to switch between European and American exercise. Dominick made a small change to the DiscountCurve object to seamlessly pass a switch variable indicating whether we have 'flat' curves or not. Another change was the addition of formal unit tests using the RUnit from CRAN (which we happened to have added to Debian recently in the wave of new RMetrics packages). We use the scheme initially proposed by Gregor Gojanc and extended by Martin Maechler for RMetrics that allows the unit tests to be run from both the source and the installed package which is nice. As QuantLib itself has a massive amount of unit tests in its code; I am hoping to add more and more of those into RQuantLib itself as we add more functionality. On that front, more exciting news: RQuantLib is now hosted on R-Forge. Potential contributors are encouraged to register at R-Forge and to get in touch -- this is a great way to learn about combining C++ and R. To wrap up, the new version 0.2.8 is currently in the queue at R's master CRAN host and should hit the CRAN mirrors shortly; likewise the Debian package has been uploaded and should also propagate to Debian mirrors in due course. As usual, source are also available locally on my site.

I'm going to be giving a reprise of the Laptop Liberation talk I gave at Cornell University in November at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in the Kansai region of Japan on January 7th. If you around, please feel free to show up. If you are in Osaka, Kyoto or Nara and would like to have lunch or dinner, please email me and we can try to arrange something. Details on the talk is online here in English and Japanese (thanks Mika!) although the talk itself will be in English.

Welcome to 2008. This year, I'd like to hack more on gadgets (input devices). I've neglected it too much.

Ok, cool! Time to post again: Like these mega interesting random TOP 10 lists people prepare every December and January, some love to speculate if the current year will be or not the year of Linux on desktop.

Please permit me state the obvious and argue that there will be no year of Linux on desktop, like there was never a year for Microsoft Windows or one being prepared for Apple Mac OS X! It is a evolving process, as dumb as it sounds. In 20, 30 years for historic reasons, some will call the 90s the decade of Linux rise and I agree. I believe that some history books (books?) will not omit the Linux impact (including of course some other key open source software) on Internet availability for the masses.

Do people really believe that "the year of the linux" will be the one when it reach a bigger domestic user base than Windows? Great, what about Linux usage through Internet? It's Linux on desktop and on steroids including - get ready - portability and tons of buzzwords I can't even keep up with. Don't get me wrong, I care about Linux usage on the real hardware that end users are using at home and not only through the Internet but come on, let's stop running in circles.