I'm still running upgrade testing of the Lenny Gnome and KDE Desktop, but have not had time to spend on reporting the status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118. I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else can see if anything should be changed. This is for Gnome: Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude

apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0 libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2 libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7 libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr zip

Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude

arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0 libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim

Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get

gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs

Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get

[nothing]

This is for KDE: Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude

autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++ libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex ttf-sazanami-gothic

Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude

amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts

Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get

dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod

Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get

kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror

About six years ago, I spent a chunk of my very first salary on a portable music player, the iRiver H140, a relatively bulky and large hard-disk based player, with a capacity of 40G. Uniquely for music players before or since, the iRiver features both digital and analogue line ins and outs. It also has (more common) recording facilities and an FM tuner, the latter of which I used a great deal (and rules out just about all the iPods). This remarkable player has lasted nearly six years of moderate daily use. For the majority of that time, I've ran the rockbox open source firmware on the player, which has provided me with really wide codec support and excellent recording facilities. In the last month I finally had to replace the iRiver. I bought a Sansa Fuze player, featuring 8G of flash storage and a microsd expansion slot. The Fuze is also capable of running rockbox. This year, 32G microsd cards have arrived. Adding one of those brings the capacity of the new player right back up to 40G. For those who are curious: yes, a Sandisk 32G microsd does work in the Fuze, at least with rockbox, for playback. At the moment, rockbox cannot write to storage on the Fuze, so you need to either use the original firmware or an external reader/writer to manipulate the contents of the microsd. However, I am not sure how well the original firmware can handle the 32G. Whenever I boot it, I see a "refreshing your media" message which lasts longer than my patience. I will write an update once I've established further the degree of support. I kept a canonical copy of my music library on a desktop computer and used rsync to keep the iRiver up-to-date. I can use almost exactly the same procedure for the new player (with some small changes to cope with the split-storage) I now have a 40G player running rockbox exactly as I had before, albeit at a fraction of the size and weight (and cost: approximately half as expensive), and with a nicer display including colours, album art, etc. They both can even play doom (although the controls are even more awkward than iPhone Doom).

Can anyone recommend some videos to me which explain the ins-and-outs of the chef and puppet configuration management tools? I have some familiarity with configuration management, having worked on cfengine (version 2) for a few years. However I haven't managed to evaluate the newer tools effectively. The barrier to entry (setting up at least a master and a slave VM...) has been too high (or I haven't given it enough time!) If there are any good screencasts/videos that cover not just how they work but their individual advantages, that would be excellent: I have some upcoming time in which I can absorb material like that (but not the kind of time in which I could get hands-on).

You may have been using the repository as described on a previous blog post. You may also have noticed that despite a lack of announcement, all beta releases but 4.0beta6 have been subsequently made available on that repository (moreover, within 24 hours of the upstream release). I just made a change to that repository which will most likely make your APT complain, but all the necessary instructions are given on the repository itself.

On Thursday, I gave a packaging tutorial for Debian-Women. The logs are now available on the Debian wiki, and also on the meetbot site. This was similar to the Ubuntu Developer Week sessions I've participated in the past. Giving these tutorials is fun. It's also a great way to share your knowledge and skills. While most of the session is going to be uni-directional, with the teacher speaking and everyone else listening, IRC is an interactive medium, so whenever there is something unclear, the students can ask questions or make comments. And that's what makes these sessions different from people just reading a web page on their own: the chance to interact with the teacher. It would be great to see other Debian people do their own sessions. There are a lot of topics, and they don't even have to be about teaching. For example, a session where the Debian kernel team answers questions from the audience might be nice. Or the X team, or the DPL, or whoever. Debian's done these things for DPL elections on several years. The election sessions are hectic and pretty stressful for the participants, but that's because they're elections, not because of the sessions themselves. Any other Debian people up to this?

One in the obvious, now that you mention it category. The package description is good enough:

incron is an "inotify cron" system. It works like the regular cron but is driven by filesystem events instead of time events. This package provides two programs, a daemon called "incrond" (analogous to crond) and a table manipulator "incrontab" (like "crontab").

Where filesystem events is anything that is reported by inotify; see the inotify(7) manpage. I didn't test and/or use it since I stumbled on it while searching for something completely different, but it sure sounds useful. The important feature not mentioned in the package description: can it limit how often an event triggers a script execution? Reading the manpage, it doesn't appear so, but there's IN_NO_LOOP to ... disable monitoring events until the current one is completely handled (until its child process exits). Which obviously opens up all kinds of race conditions. So I guess this tool needs to be used with care. Still, I guess a good candidate is monitoring /etc/aliases to run newaliases on change.

Which mail server administrator hasn t tested his servers using telnet on port 25, speaking SMTP himself? And which of them made a typo and had to retype everything due to missing readline support of telnet? If you want to check SMTP over SSL aka SMTPS, you had to use openssl s_client -connect yourserver:465 . And what did you use to check TLS support on port 25? Just forget about those hassles and use swaks (Debian package), the Swiss Army Knife for SMTP. It does all the annoying stuff (using the correct syntax, typing fast enough, SSL, TLS, etc.) for you while still giving you full control over the SMTP session, especially showing you all input and output:

$ swaks -t abe@noone.org -s sym.noone.org -q RCPT
=== Trying sym.noone.org:25...
=== Connected to sym.noone.org.
<-  220 sym.noone.org ESMTP Postfix (Debian/GNU)
 -> EHLO nemo.deuxchevaux.org
<-  250-sym.noone.org
<-  250-PIPELINING
<-  250-SIZE 10240000
<-  250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
<-  250 8BITMIME
 -> MAIL FROM:<abe@nemo.deuxchevaux.org>
<-  250 2.1.0 Ok
 -> RCPT TO:<abe@noone.org>
<** 450 4.2.0 <abe@nemo.deuxchevaux.org>: Sender address rejected: Greylisted, see http://postgrey.schweikert.ch/help/noone.org.html
 -> QUIT
<-  221 2.0.0 Bye
=== Connection closed with remote host.

Since the moment I discovered swaks, I never telnetted to port 25 anymore.

I still have some social life with non-geek friends who keep using MSN for instant messaging. I m currently using Finch, which is a libpurple-based IM. If you re in a similar situation, so you probably came to this post due to a certificate error message from Microsoft servers when trying to start your Finch (or Pidgin). All you need is download the following updated certificates from Pidgin website and replace them into your purple installation dir (probably in /usr/share/purple/ca-certs): http://developer.pidgin.im/viewmtn/revision/downloadfile/cd236baf6d00f3e1561a40974ce1828b793ea187/share/ca-certs/Microsoft_Secure_Server_Authority_2010.pem http://developer.pidgin.im/viewmtn/revision/downloadfile/cd236baf6d00f3e1561a40974ce1828b793ea187/share/ca-certs/Microsoft_Internet_Authority_2010.pem

Hey, one more week !

• #418377 ping & closed (default X resolution for etch?! installation).
• #419960 ping & closed (submitter screen apparently does not support DPMS).
• #409337 ping (Xorg/Gdm vertical refresh config).
• #389030 closed (boot with no usb mouse now work !).
• #309226 ping (xnest crash, seams fixed now).
• #397438 ping (dual monitor on old ati driver).
• #414275 ping, user can t test it any more, so closing.

Well my UDD query report 879 bugs today not a great improvement since last week if more bugs are opened than I can close, I m not going to make it alone ! The X Strike Force (still) needs you ! You can have a look at the X Strike Force Bug Closing Procedure and check XSF unstable bugs sorted by date.

Next article highlighting some new features which will come in phpMyAdmin 3.4 is about relations export. This feature is not much known anyway, so if you have not seen it in phpMyAdmin, just try it out on our demo server or configure phpMyAdmin configuration storage in your copy. In previous versions, it was possible to export database relational schema into PDF format. The 3.4 release comes with modular system for exporting schema adding SVG, Dia, EPS or Microsoft Visio. Especially SVG and EPS are useful for embedding schema into other documents. This feature was implemented by Muhammad Adnan during Google Summer of Code 2010.

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The bug webinterface of the Universal Debian Database currently knows about the following release critical bugs:

In Total:	707
Affecting Squeeze:	271
Squeeze only:	71
Remaining to be fixed in Squeeze:	200

Of these 200 bugs, the following tags are set:

Pending in Squeeze:	12
Patched in Squeeze:	36
Duplicates in Squeeze:	22
Can be fixed in a security Update:	17
Contrib or non-free in Squeeze:	5
Otherwise fixed in Squeeze:	27

Ignoring all the above (multiple tags possible), 123 bugs need to be fixed by Debian Contributors to get Debian 6.0 Squeeze released. However, with the view of the Release Managers, 157 need to be dealt with for the release to happen. Please see Interpreting the release critical bug statistics for an explanation of the different numbers.

Cython is now considering options where to move the main (mercurial) repository, and Robert Bradshaw (one of the main Cython developers) has asked me about my experience with regards to Google Code and GitHub, since we use both with SymPy.

Google Code is older, and it was the first service that provided free (virtually unlimited) number of projects that you could easily and immediately setup. At that time (4 years ago?) that was something unheard of. However, the GitHub guys in the meantime not only made this available too, but also implemented features, that (as far as I know) no one offers at all, in particular hosting your own pages at your own domain (but at GitHub's servers, some examples are sympy.org and docs.sympy.org), commenting on git branches and pull requests before the code gets merged in (I am 100% convinced that this is the right approach, as opposed to comment on the code after it gets in), allow to easily fork the repository and it has simply more social features, that the Google Code doesn't have.

I believe that managing an opensource project is mainly a social activity, and GitHub's social features really make so many things easier. From this point of view, GitHub is clearly the best choice today.

I think there is only one (but potentially big) problem with GitHub, that its issue tracker is very bad, compared to the Google Code one. For that reason (and also because we already use it), we keep our issues at Google Code with SymPy.

The above are the main things to consider. Now there are some little things to keep in mind, that I will briefly touch below: Google Code doesn't support git and blocks access from Cuba and other countries, when you want to change the front page, you need to be an admin, while at GitHub I simply add push access to all sympy developers, so anyone just pushes a patch to this repository: https://github.com/sympy/sympy.github.com, and it automatically appears on our front page (sympy.org), with Google Code we had to write long pages (in our docs) about how to send patches, with GitHub we just say, send us a pull request, and point to: http://help.github.com/pull-requests/. In other words, GitHub takes care of teaching people how to use git and figure out how to send patches, and we can concentrate on reviewing the patches and pushing them in.

Wikipages at github are maintained in git, and they provide the webfrontend to it as opensource, so there is no vendor lock-in. Anyone with github account can modify our wiki pages, while the Google Code pages can only be modified by people that I add to the Google Code project, which forced us to install mediawiki on my linode server (hosted at linode.com, which by the way is an excellent VPS hosting service, that I have been using for couple of years already and I can fully recommend it), and I had to manage it all the time, and now we are moving our pages to the github wiki, so that I have one less thing to worry about.

So as you can see, I, as admin, have less things to worry about, as github manages everything for me now, while with Google Code, I had to manage lots of things on my linodes.

One other thing to consider is that GitHub is only for git, but they also provide svn and hg access (both push and pull, they translate the repository automatically between git and svn/hg), I never really used it much, so I don't know how stable this is. As I wrote before, I think that git is the best tool now for maintaining a project, and I think that github is now the best choice to host it (except the issue tracker, where Google Code is better).

The documentation on ld's symbol versioning syntax is a little bit vague on "dependencies", which it talks about but doesn't give many details on. Let's construct a small example: In words, we create two libraries; a version 1 and a version 2, where we provide a new version of foo in the version 2 library. The soname is set in the libraries, so v1 and v2 can distinguish the correct library to use. In the updated 2.ver version, we say that VERSION_2 depends on VERSION_1. So, the question is, what does this mean? Does it have any effect? We can examine the version descriptors in the library and see that there is indeed a relationship recorded there. Looking at the specification we can see that each version definition has a vd_aux field which is a linked list of, essentially, strings that give "the version or dependency name". This is a little vague for a specification, however it appears to mean that the first entry is the name of the version specification, and any following elements are your dependencies. At least, this is how readelf interprets it when it shows you the "Parent" field in the output above. This implies something that the ld documentation doesn't mention; in that you may list multiple dependencies for a version node. That does work, and readelf will just report more parents if you try it. So the question is, what does this dependency actually do? Well, as far as I can tell, nothing really. The dynamic loader doesn't look at the dependency information; and doesn't have any need to it is looking to resolve something specific, foo@VERSION_2 for example, and doesn't really care that VERSION_1 even exists. ld does enforce the dependency, in that if you specify a dependent node but leave it out or accidentally erase it, the link will fail. However, it doesn't really convey anything other than its intrinsic documenation value.

Mwahahahaa, just a few moments ago, my local copy of gnash actually got past the RTMP handshake, and got a response from iPlayer. I need to be at work in around 8 hours, though, so no time to push this until tomorrow... and it needs some cleanup. Obviously, no audio has yet been played. Don't be silly.

About this time last year, I spent a while talking about how Barnes and Noble were failing in their GPL obligations. It took them about two months to release some source code that didn't actually correspond to the hardware - they finally provided it in March, more than three months after shipping the device.

The Nook Color is now shipping. Guess what Barnes and Noble aren't providing yet?

The flood of generic Chinese Android devices with no source code makes it very easy to think that GPL adherence is something that's only problematic with devices sourced from countries with poor records in IP enforcement. In reality, it's a problem everywhere. Barnes and Noble are a US company and the contractors for the Nook were based in Canada. They're aware enough to include the GPL notice in their documentation, but not concerned enough to make sure that they actually posses the source code that they're legally obliged to provide.

I'm glad to see that the Linux Foundation are providing resources to ensure compliance, but it's likely that this is going to continue being a problem until we start engaging in more visible efforts to educate companies about their legal obligations. The idea that a company like Barnes and Noble would ship copies of Windows without paying the appropriate license fees is pretty implausible, but they seem perfectly happy to engage in for-profit copyright violation if nobody's going to chase them down. It'll be interesting to see if this trend continues, or if we start making a sincere effort to remind vendors of their obligations.

In other GPL violation news - Fusion Garage have promised me that they'll provide the source code to their GPLed components on Monday. Given that the device has been end of lifed this is obviously pretty inept. Investors should realise that they're putting money into a company that has knowingly been engaging in criminal behaviour for over 6 months. We'll see how they manage compliance for their Android devices.

The upcoming 3.4 release will bring lot of new functionality. Some of that has been developed by core members, but many contributions were made thanks to Google Summer of Code program, where five students were working on improving phpMyAdmin. If you want to try new features, you can do that on the phpMyAdmin demo server. And I will introduce them in series of blog posts. One of long requested features was ability to change configuration for each user. And phpMyAdmin now has it. If you have configured the phpMyAdmin configuration storage, settings are permanently stored in the database, otherwise in session and optionally in web storage in your browser. You can configure any aspect of phpMyAdmin not affecting security or server performance, like confirming DROP queries, default export settings, user interface tweaks and so on. This feature was implemented by Piotr Przybylski during Google Summer of Code 2010.

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I did just yesterday ! I was hacking on fluxbox and rebuilding the package to test directly on my system.
When I was happy with my changes I thought, I should write a patch for this
But guess what ! With format 3.0 (quilt) it was already there, in the debian/patch directory, just waiting to be renamed and completed with a nice DEP-3 header ! It is a lot more easy to contribute with those tools! So thank you debian folks !

I got a fair bit of feedback from my latest post about the Boxee Box, none of it particularly favourable about the GMA500/Poulsbo chipset, so regretfully, I won't be buying a Boxee Box. Too bad, it looked cute, and was cheap. A David H rdeman dropped me an email, and brought to my attention the ASRock Core 100HT-BD I was nearly going to buy the wrong thing off Amazon (there's also an NVIDIA ION-based variant), but I found a non-BluRay variant on NewEgg for about $100 less than the BluRay version. It's certainly more expensive than something like a Boxee Box, but hey, if it's going to work... I think if I had the choice, I'd get an SSD for it, but I can see how this goes with a rotating disk. The current MythTV box has a rotating disk in it (just not for storage of recorded content) and it seems sufficiently quiet. The other nice thing about this box is it has VGA and HDMI, so I can totally try this thing out on the current TV before replacing it. Now the question is, do I place an order today...?

Most Debian packages are managed with a version control system (VCS) like git, subversion, bazaar or mercurial. The particularities of the 3.0 (quilt) source format are not without consequences in terms of integration with the VCS. I ll give you some tips to have a smoother experience. All the samples given in the article assume that you use git as version control system. 1. Add .pc to the VCS ignore list .pc is the directory used by quilt to store its internal data (list of applied patches, backup of modified files). It s also created by dpkg-source so that quilt knows that the patches are in debian/patches (and not in patches which is the default directory used by quilt). For that reason, the directory is kept even if you unapply all the patches. However you don t want to store this directory in your repository, so it s best to put it in the VCS ignore list. With git you simply do:

$ echo ".pc" >>.gitignore
$ git add .gitignore
$ git commit -m "Ignore quilt dir"

The .gitignore file is ignored by dpkg-source, so you re not adding any noise to the generated source package. 2. Unapply patches after the build If you store upstream sources with non-applied patches (most people do), and if you don t build packages in a temporary build directory, then you probably want to unapply the patches after the build so that your repository is again in a clean status. You can do this by adding unapply-patches to debian/source/local-options:

$ echo "unapply-patches" >>debian/source/local-options
$ git add debian/source/local-options
$ git commit -m "Unapply patches after build"

svn-buildpackage always builds in a temporary directory so the repository is left exactly like it was before the build, this option is thus useless. git-buildpackage can also be told to build in a temporary directory with --git-export-dir=../build-area/ (the directory ../build-area/ is the one used by svn-buildpackage, so this option makes git-buildpackage behave like svn-buildpackage in that respect). 3. Manage your quilt patches as a git branch Instead of using quilt to manage the Debian-specific patches, it s possible to use git itself. git-buildpackage comes with gbp-pq ( Git-BuildPackage Patch Queue ): it can export the quilt serie in a git branch that you can manipulate like you want. Each commit represents a patch, so you want to rebase that branch to edit intermediary commits. Check out the upstream documentation of this tool to learn how to work with it. There s an alternative tool as well: git-dpm. Its website explains the principle very well. It s a more complicated than gbp-pq but it has the advantage of keeping the history of all branches used to generate the quilt series of all Debian releases. You might want to read a review made by Sam Hartman, it explains the limits of this tool. 4. Document how to review the changes One of the main benefit of this new source format is that it s easy to review changes because upstream changes are kept as separate patches properly documented (ideally using the DEP-3 format). With the tools above, the commit message becomes the patch header. Thus it s important to write meaningful commit messages. This works well as long as your workflow considers the Debian patches as a branch that you rebase on top of the upstream sources at each release. Some maintainers don t like this workflow and prefer to have the Debian changes applied directly in the packaging branch. They switch to a new upstream version by merging it in their packaging branch. In that case, it s difficult to generate a quilt serie out of the VCS. Instead, you should instruct dpkg-source to store all the changes in a single patch (which is then similar to the good old .diff.gz) and document in the header of that patch how the changes can be better reviewed, for example in the VCS web interface. You do the former with the --single-debian-patch option and the latter by writing the header in debian/source/patch-header:

$ echo "single-debian-patch" >> debian/source/local-options
$ cat >debian/source/patch-header <<END
This patch contains all the Debian-specific
changes mixed together. To review them
separately, please inspect the VCS history
at http://git.debian.org/?=collab-maint/foo.git
<put details="details" here="here" more="more">
END

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