This post is about the port bootstrap build ordering tool (naming suggestions welcome) which was started as a Debian Google Summer of Code project in 2012 and continued to be developed afterwards. Sources are available through gitorious. In the end of November 2012, I managed to put down an approximation algorithm to the feedback arc set problem which allowed to break the dependency graph into a directed acyclic graph with only few removed build dependencies. I wrote about this effort on our mailinglist but didnt mention it here because it was still too much of a proof-of-concept. Later, in January 2013, I mentioned the result of this algorithm in an email wookey and me wrote to debian-devel mailinglist. Many things happened since November 2012:

Processing pipeline instead of monolithic tools The tools I developed so far tried to accomplish everything by themselves, reusing functionality implemented in a central library. Therefor, if one wanted to try out even trivial new things, it mostly meant to hack some OCaml code. Pietro Abate suggested to instead develop smaller tools which could work independently of each other, would only execute one algorithm each and could easily be connected together in different ways to achieve different effects. This switch is now done and all functionality from the old tools is moved into a new toolset. The exchange format between the tools is either plain text files in deb822 control format (Packages/Sources files) or a dependency graph. The dependency graph is currently marshalled by OCaml but future versions should work with just passing a GraphML (an XML graph format) representation around. This new way of doing things seems close to the UNIX philosophy (each program does one thing well, data is stored as text, every program is a filter). For example the deb822 control output can easily be manipulated using grep-dctrl(1) and there exist many tools which can read, analyze and manipulate GraphML. It is a big improvement over the old, monolithic tools which did not allow to manipulate any intermediate result by external, existing tools. Currently, a shell script (native.sh) will execute all tools in a meaningful order, connecting them together correctly. The same tools will be used for a future cross.sh but they will be connected differently. I wrote about a first proposal of what the individual tools should do and how they should be connected in this email from which I also linked a confusing overview of the pipeline. This overview has recently been improved to be even more confusing and the current version of the lower half (the native part) now looks like this: Solid arrows represent a flow of binary packages, dottend arrows represent a flow of source packages, ovals represent a set of packages, boxes with rounded corners represent set operations, rectangular boxes represent filters. There is only one input to a filter, which is the arrow connected to the top of the box. Outgoing arrows from the bottom represent the filtered input. Ingoing arrows to either side are arguments to the filter and control how the filter behaves depending on the algorithm. I will explain this better once the pipeline proved to be less in flux. The pipeline is currently executed like this by native.sh.

Two new ways to break dependency cycles have been discovered So far, we knew of three ways to formally break dependency cycles:

• remove build dependencies through build profiles
• find out that the build dependency is only used to build arch:all packages and therefor put it into Build-Depends-Indep
• cross compile some source packages

Two new methods can be added to the above:

• if a dependency relationship is not strong (pdf), then a different installationset can be chosen
• if a depended upon package is Multi-Arch:foreign then a binary package of an existing architecture might be able to satisfy the dependency.

Dependency graph definition changed Back in September when I was visiting irill, Pietro found a flaw in how the dependency graph used to be generated. He supplied a new definition of the dependency graph which does away with the problem he found. After fixing some small issues with his code, I changed all the existing algorithms to use the new graph definition. The old graph is as of today removed from the repository. Thanks to Pietro for supplying the new graph definition - I must still admit that my OCaml foo is not strong enough to have come up with his code.

Added complexity for profile built source packages As mentioned in the introduction, wookey and me addressed the debian-devel list with a proposal on necessary changes for an automated bootstrapping of Debian. During the discussiong, two important things came up which are to be considered by the dependency graph algorithms:

• profile built source packages may not create all binary packages
• profile built source packages may need additional build dependencies

Both things make it necessary to alter the dependency graph during the generation of a feedback arc set and feedback vertex set beyond the simple removal of edges. Luckily, the developed approximation algorithms can be extended to support such changes in the graph.

Different feedback arc set algorithms The initially developed feedback arc set algorithm is well suited to discover build dependency edges which should be dropped. It performs far worse when creating the final build order because it only considers edges by itself and not how many edges of a source package can be dropped by profile building it. The adjusted algorithm for generating a build order is more of a feedback vertex set algorithm because instead of greedily finding the edge with most cycles through it, it greedily finds the source package which would break most cycles if it was profile built.

Generating a build order with less profile built source packages After implementing all the features above I now feel more confident to publish the current status of the tools to a wider audience. The following test shows a run of the aforementioned ./native.sh shell script. Its final output is a list of source packages which have to be profile built and a build order. Using the resulting build order, starting from a minimal build system (essential:yes, build-essential and debhelper), all source packages will be compiled which are needed to compile all binary packages in the system. The result will therefor be a list of source and binary packages which fulfill the following property:

• all binary packages can be built from the available source packages
• all source packages can be built with the available binary packages

I called this a "reduceded distribution" in earlier posts. The interesting property of this specific selection is, that it contains the biggest problem set of Debian when bootstrapping it: a 900 to 1000 nodes big strongly connected component. Here is a visualization of the problem: Source packages do not yet come with build profiles and the cross build situation can not yet be analyzed, so the following assumptions were made:

• the minimal build system can be cross compiled from nothing
• the reduced build dependencies harvested from Gentoo and supplied by Daniel Schepler, Patrick McDermott, Thorsten Glaser and Wookey are correct
• the current list of weak build dependencies can be dropped from any source package
• even when profile built, all source packages build all binary packages
• the 14 forcefully broken build dependencies do not significantly change the output in real life

The last point is about 14 build dependencies which were decided to be broken by the feedback arc set algorithm but for which other data sources did not indicate that they are actually breakable. Those 14 are dynamically generated by native.sh. If above assumptions should not be too far from the actual situation, then not more than 73 source packages have to be modified to bootstrap a reduced distribution. This reduced distribution even includes dependency-wise "big" packages like webkit, metacity, iceweasel, network-manager, tracker, gnome-panel, evolution-data-server, kde-runtime, libav and nautilus. By changing one line in native.sh one could easily develop a build order which generates gnome-desktop or really any given (meta-)package selection. All of native.sh takes only 80 seconds to execute on my system (Core i5, 2.5 GHz, singlethreaded). Here is the final build order which creates 2044 binary packages from 613 source packages.

1. nspr, libio-pty-perl, libmcrypt, unzip, libdbi-perl, cdparanoia, libelf, c-ares, liblocale-gettext-perl, libibverbs, numactl, ilmbase, tbb, check, libogg, libatomic-ops, libnl($), orc($), libaio, tcl8.4, kmod, libgsm, lame, opencore-amr, tcl8.5, exuberant-ctags, mhash, libtext-iconv-perl, libutempter, pciutils, gperf, hspell, recode, tcp-wrappers, fdupes, chrpath, libbsd, zip, procps, wireless-tools, cpufrequtils, ed, libjpeg8, hesiod, pax, less, dietlibc, netkit-telnet, psmisc, docbook-to-man, libhtml-parser-perl, libonig, opensp($), libterm-size-perl, linux86, libxmltok, db-defaults, java-common, sharutils, libgpg-error, hardening-wrapper, cvsps, p11-kit, libyaml, diffstat, m4
2. openexr, enca, help2man, speex, libvorbis, libid3tag, patch, openjade1.3, openjade, expat, fakeroot, libgcrypt11($), ustr, sysvinit, netcat, libirman, html2text, libmad, pth, clucene-core, libdaemon($), texinfo, popt, net-tools, tar, libsigsegv, gmp, patchutils($), dirac, cunit, bridge-utils, expect, libgc, nettle, elfutils, jade, bison
3. sed, indent, findutils, fastjar, cpio, chicken, bzip2, aspell, realpath, dctrl-tools, rsync, ctdb, pkg-config($), libarchive, gpgme1.0, exempi, pump, re2c, klibc, gzip, gawk, flex-old, original-awk, mawk, libtasn1-3($), flex($), libtool
4. libcap2, mksh, readline6, libcdio, libpipeline, libcroco, schroedinger, desktop-file-utils, eina, fribidi, libusb, binfmt-support, silgraphite2.0, atk1.0($), perl, gnutls26($), netcat-openbsd, ossp-uuid, gsl, libnfnetlink, sg3-utils, jbigkit, lua5.1, unixodbc, sqlite, wayland, radvd, open-iscsi, libpcap, linux-atm, gdbm, id3lib3.8.3, vo-aacenc, vo-amrwbenc, fam, faad2, hunspell, dpkg, tslib, libart-lgpl, libidl, dh-exec, giflib, openslp-dfsg, ppl($), xutils-dev, blcr, bc, time, libdatrie, libpthread-stubs, guile-1.8, libev, attr, libsigc++-2.0, pixman, libpng, libssh2, sqlite3, acpica-unix, acl, a52dec
5. json-c, cloog-ppl, libverto, glibmm2.4, rtmpdump, libdbd-sqlite3-perl, nss, freetds, slang2, libpciaccess, iptables, e2fsprogs, libnetfilter-conntrack, bash, libthai, python2.6($), libice($), libpaper, libfontenc($), libxau, libxdmcp($), openldap($), cyrus-sasl2($), openssl, python2.7($)
6. psutils, libevent, stunnel4, libnet-ssleay-perl, libffi, readline5, file, libvoikko, gamin, libieee1284, build-essential, libcap-ng($), lcms($), keyutils, libxml2, libxml++2.6, gcc-4.6($), binutils, dbus($), libsm($), libxslt, doxygen($)
7. liblqr, rarian, xmlto, policykit-1($), libxml-parser-perl, tdb, devscripts, eet, libasyncns, libusbx, icu, linux, libmng, shadow, xmlstarlet, tidy, gavl, flac, dbus-glib($), libxcb, apr, krb5, alsa-lib
8. usbutils, enchant, neon27, uw-imap, libsndfile, yasm, xcb-util, gconf($), shared-mime-info($), audiofile, ijs($), jbig2dec, libx11($)
9. esound, freetype, libxkbfile, xvidcore, xcb-util-image, udev($), libxfixes, libxext($), libxt, libxrender
10. tk8.4, startup-notification, libatasmart, fontconfig, libxp, libdmx, libvdpau, libdrm, libxres, directfb, libxv, libxxf86dga, libxxf86vm, pcsc-lite, libxss, libxcomposite, libxcursor, libxdamage, libxi($), libxinerama, libxrandr, libxmu($), libxpm, libxfont($)
11. xfonts-utils, libxvmc, xauth, libxtst($), libxaw($)
12. pmake, corosync, x11-xserver-utils, x11-xkb-utils, coreutils, xft, nas, cairo
13. libedit, cairomm, tk8.5, openais, pango1.0($)
14. ocaml, blt, ruby1.8, firebird2.5, heimdal, lvm2($)
15. cvs($), python-stdlib-extensions, parted, llvm-2.9, ruby1.9.1, findlib, qt4-x11($)
16. xen, mesa, audit($), avahi($)
17. x11-utils, xorg-server, freeglut, libva
18. jasper, tiff3, python3.2($)
19. openjpeg, qt-assistant-compat, v4l-utils, qca2, jinja2, markupsafe, lcms2, sip4, imlib2, netpbm-free, cracklib2, cups($), postgresql-9.1
20. py3cairo, pycairo, pam, libgnomecups, gobject-introspection($)
21. gdk-pixbuf, libgnomeprint, gnome-menus, gsettings-desktop-schemas, pangomm, consolekit, vala-0.16($), colord($), atkmm1.6
22. libgee, gtk+3.0($), gtk+2.0($)
23. gtkmm2.4, poppler($), openssh, libglade2, libiodbc2, gcr($), libwmf, systemd($), gcj-4.7, java-atk-wrapper($)
24. torque, ecj($), vala-0.14, gnome-keyring($), gcc-defaults, gnome-vfs($)
25. libidn, libgnome-keyring($), openmpi
26. mpi-defaults, dnsmasq, wget, lynx-cur, ghostscript, curl
27. fftw3, gnupg, libquvi, xmlrpc-c, raptor, liboauth, groff, fftw, boost1.49, apt
28. boost-defaults, libsamplerate, cmake, python-apt
29. qjson, qtzeitgeist, libssh, qimageblitz, pkg-kde-tools, libical, dwarves-dfsg, automoc, attica, yajl, source-highlight, pygobject, pygobject-2, mysql-5.5($)
30. libdbd-mysql-perl, polkit-qt-1, libdbusmenu-qt, raptor2, dbus-python, apr-util
31. rasqal, serf, subversion($), apache2
32. git, redland
33. xz-utils, util-linux, rpm, man-db, make-dfsg, libvisual, cryptsetup, libgd2, gstreamer0.10
34. mscgen, texlive-bin
35. dvipng, luatex
36. libconfig, transfig, augeas, blas, libcaca, autogen, libdbi, linuxdoc-tools, gdb, gpm
37. ncurses, python-numpy($), rrdtool, w3m, iproute, gcc-4.7, libtheora($), gcc-4.4
38. libraw1394, base-passwd, lm-sensors, netcf, eglibc, gst-plugins-base0.10
39. libiec61883, qtwebkit, libvirt, libdc1394-22, net-snmp, jack-audio-connection-kit($), bluez
40. redhat-cluster, gvfs($), pulseaudio($)
41. phonon, libsdl1.2, openjdk-6($)
42. phonon-backend-gstreamer($), gettext, libbluray, db, swi-prolog, qdbm, swig2.0($)
43. highlight, libselinux, talloc, libhdate, libftdi, libplist, python-qt4, libprelude, libsemanage, php5
44. samba, usbmuxd, libvpx, lirc, bsdmainutils, libiptcdata, libgtop2, libgsf, telepathy-glib, libwnck3, libnotify, libunique3, gnome-desktop3, gmime, glib2.0, json-glib, libgnomecanvas, libcanberra, orbit2, udisks, d-conf, libgusb
45. libgnomeprintui, libimobiledevice, nautilus($), libbonobo, librsvg
46. evas, wxwidgets2.8, upower, gnome-disk-utility, libgnome
47. ecore, libbonoboui
48. libgnomeui
49. graphviz
50. exiv2, libexif, lapack, soprano, libnl3, dbus-c++
51. atlas, libffado, graphicsmagick, libgphoto2, network-manager
52. pygtk, jackd2, sane-backends, djvulibre
53. libav($), gpac($), ntrack, python-imaging, imagemagick, dia
54. x264($), matplotlib, iceweasel
55. strigi, opencv, libproxy($), ffms2
56. kde4libs, frei0r, glib-networking
57. kde-baseapps, kate, libsoup2.4
58. geoclue, kde-runtime, totem-pl-parser, libgweather, librest, libgdata
59. webkit
60. zenity, gnome-online-accounts
61. metacity, evolution-data-server
62. gnome-panel
63. tracker

The final recompilation of profile built source packages is omitted. Source packages marked with a ($) are selected to be profile built. All source packages listed in the same line can be built in parallel as they do not depend upon each other. This order looks convincing as it first compiles a multitude of source packages which have no or only few build dependencies lacking. Later steps allow fewer source packages to be compiled in parallel. The amount of needed build dependencies is highest in the source packages that are built last.

Dear lazyweb. I remember that not so long ago someone on planet.debian.org shared info about he/she s talk about packaging Debian with link to both video of the talk and sources of presentation. Since I would like to prepare similar talk for some local Polish OpenSource conference I d be thankful if someone could remind me a link in comments. TIA.

My current employer as a benefit offers two days of paid volunteer time every calendar year. In September I decided to devote this time for Debian project. It wasn t easy to convince HR and my manager (hi Gloria ) that such activity can be considered as volunteering but I eventually did it! So last Thursday and Friday were days I could spent working on my packages and other stuff related to Debian Let s talk about effects. 5 packages updated, 16 bugs closed, more than 50 lintian warnings/errors solved. Here goes changelogs from updated packages:
calcurse (3.1.2-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* Package made from scratch (this was funny experience):
- uses new quilt source format
- uses new copyright format
- uses debhelper compatibility level 9 w/hardening options
- uses the newest Standards-Version
* New upstream version:
- supports UTF8 (Closes: #558671)
- hopefully fixes problem with accented characters (Closes: #466010) -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:51:08 +0100 httpie (0.3.1-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* Includes manual page (Closes: #673067)
Courtesy of Khalid El Fathi <khalid>. Thanks!
* New upstream version. (Closes: #693810)
- handles binary transfers properly (Closes: #689974) -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:27:59 +0100 skipfish (2.10b-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed).
* Various path fixes because of upstream changes.
* Added new libpcre3-dev build dependency.
* Totally rewritten copyright file to comply with new copyright standard. -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:59:36 +010 ipcalc (0.41-3) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* ACK previous NMU, thanks Christopher!
* Documents some missing features in the manpage (Closes: #588143)
Thanks Tanguy Ortolo <tanguy>!
* Fixes other minor problems in manpage (Closes: #688148)
* Description now says it's tool IPv4 only (Closes: #628955)
* Fixes lack of </table> tag when printing supernets (Closes: #600251)
* The following changes are courtesy of Jari Aalto <jari.aalto>:
- Remove deprecated dpatch and upgrade to packaging format "3.0 quilt".
- Update to Standards-Version to 3.9.3 and debhelper to 9.
- Add build-arch and build-indep targets; use dh_prep in rules file.
- Patch 03: update with "quilt refresh" to make it apply cleanly.
Thanks to these changes (Closes: #670737) -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:30:11 +0100 netw-ib-ox-ag (5.39.0-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* Uses Homepage header. (Closes: #615219, #615294, #615321, #615436, #645522)
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed).
* Switch to dpkg-source 3.0 (quilt) format)
* Fixes FTBFS on s390x and sparc64 (Closes: #639493)
* Fixes 29 (sic!) lintian warnings/errors thus many small changes
in packaging scripts. -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:38:29 +0200
Despite this I did something else. I sent end of the world joke-mail to debian-mentors mailing list stating (ignore the fact that my own server marked me as spammer; fixed already ;P) that I m going to review and try to upload every package that will be send to me during end-of-the-world day.
That action was quite successful although no package has been uploaded yet. I reviewed 4 of them and two more are yet to come. So it looks that these two days sponsored by Akamai motivated me enough to spent few more days or even months and help other people to contribute to Debian. Thank you Akamai!

It s quite funny than the only service that is fully accessible (at least that s my impression) through IPv6 is IRC which is usually considered as something deprecated/obsolete.

I really tried to find solution myself but I failed.
Please tell me that we have some player that s able to play videos through UPnP/DLNA *with* subtitles available in external file.

It rocks!

(doh, I nearly had it. I just got #690019, #690020 and #690022 for l10n stuff) Bartek Krawczyk reported Debian bug #690000 on Monday October 8th, against guake. And my friend Sylvestre Ledru, the package maintainer, now has to fix it instead of trying to promote the use of Scilab over proprietary alternatives in the French aerospace research organizations..:-) Bug #680000 was reported as of July 2nd: 3 months and 8 days for 10,000 bugs. This is a VERY significant drop in the bug reporting rate in Debian. Last time, I wrote: "How will the wheezy freeze affect this? We'll see in two months!". We have the answer: the wheezy freeze triggerred an important drop in bug reporting rate in Debian. My general feeling is somehow different: for whatever reason, I feel like the *overall* activity in the project has dropped significantly. I seem to have less mails to read, less bugs reported against my packages, even less heated discussions here and there, as well as several very quiet channels on IRC. Am I pessimistic when feeling that the overall momentum is sliding out of Debian? Maybe I am, so, folks, please make me optimistic and move you fingers out of the place where they are and help releasing that damn penguin. Apart from that, our next milestone (apart from the wheezy release!) will be bug #700000. Remember the bet?. It looks like the probability of Kartik Mistry winning it is now away (he bet for Now 8th 2012) and the best position is hel by David Pr vot (he bet for December 12th). On the other hand, my own chances are increasing if the bug rate drop is confirmed and if bug #700000 is reported in more than 3 months (I bet for February 14th 2013, guess why?). We'll see that in a few weeks!

Eventually after upgrade to kernel 3.6 I can without stress unplug power cable from my Zenbook.
It doesn t randomly die after that. Yay!

My current employer has some internal program that it allows employee to devote two days a year for volunteering work.
It doesn t matter what it is (work for hospice, planting trees, helping in some foundation) so I thought about devoting this time for the Debian project. Either fixing RC bugs or finally give my packages enough attention and take care of their updates. Anyway the employer needs the certificate that I took participation in such event.
So the question is if it is possible to get some official document/certificate that I devoted some time to work on Debian? Bureaucracy has to be fulfilled unfortunately.

Dear lazy web, The electronic devices are much cheaper in US than in Poland and I ve got an opportunity to get one without duty/taxes and all that crap. I wonder if Kindle Fire HD is the right choice for someone outside of US/UK?
We don t have access to all Amazon services but still this tablet specification looks interesting. Any other hints? I m looking for something under 300 bucks, so no fruits please

Please tell me that it s not truth and there are TVs capable to record video that came in from HDMI.
I m trying to find TV that would allow me to record video from my cable TV provider and he gives me router/cable modem that has HDMI output. Please tell me that there are some devices that are able to store signal going through it I can upload some handcrafted firmware if I have to.

I'm forty pages into a battered copy of "Complicity" by Iain Banks. I picked this copy up for the princely sum of 90p at Barter Books last weekend. For the uninitiated, Barter Books is a grand old bookshop situated in a disused train station in Alnwick, Northumberland. It has the dubious pleasure of being the originator of the "keep calm and carry on" fad. At the time that I bought it, I wasn't sure whether it was already in my swollen reading pile, but 90p wasn't a great loss if so. I could leave it in the book pile at my next hotel. (it was, and that's a sorry indictment of the state of my reading pile.) This gnarled paperback has character. There's a faded price sticker on the back revealing a first-hand price in Australian Dollars. The book started its post-sale life on the other side of the world. Where else has it been? I take some small pleasure in planning the next step in its future. To imagine this book with a long tail of readers having a free market value of 90p, or roughly the price of a posh chocolate bar, I'm struck by both wondering how publishers and writers like Mr Banks make a living (and yet they do) but also how the pricing of ebooks, completely lacking in this character I've written about and non-transferable, seems over inflated to the end user. I've been struggling to short list a selection of books to take on holiday. Most of my friends have responded "buy a kindle", with a complete lack of sympathy for my predicament. I'm borrowing one which means I can finally find out whether I'll "take" to it. I'm concerned I'll not be able to get sucked into a story in the same way I can with a paper book. I certainly won't rely on just the kindle for my reading needs. I don't want to prejudge my experiment too much but I suspect I won't be convinced. Where I can see technology supporting my reading is in addition to the paper book: particularly for non fiction, technical books, academic papers, more graphical-oriented things (photo books, graphic novels). I do have a small but growing collection of old, rare-in-print texts that I've only been able to source as PDFs. I think something like the Google Nexus 7 would do the job for these and fit into my life more readily than the kindle.

Correct me if I m wrong (and I really want to be wrong).
Is that whole LVM crap expects me to be forecaster/fortune-teller? I wanted to upgrade some squeeze based virtual machine to wheezy. Sounds nice, yeah?
So before the upgrade you should ensure that you have backup, right?
Assuming that whole system is LVM based all you have to do before upgrade is LVM snapshot.
I did it and I was quite surprised that I had to declare its size.
I did it basing on assumption that upgrade shouldn t take more than let say 5GB. Tada! Now I did upgrade redmine virtual machine and this is what I got: These attr flags mean Snapshot invalid and Invalid snapshot .
End of the story this is last time I actually tried that method of backup.
Happily I have also some traditional backup (mysqldump+rsync) but I m really surprised that LVM works this way.
There was plenty of free space to enlarge that volume and this is what you get in your logs: Unable to allocate exception? Did it really try to do it? I don t think so.

OASIS is a tool to integrate a configure, build and install system in your OCaml project. It helps to create standard entry points in your build system and allows external tools to analyse your project easily. It is the building brick of OASIS-DB, a CPAN for OCaml. This release takes almost 18 months to complete. This is too long and I will talk in another blog post on the way I am trying to improve this right now (esp. using continuous integration). This new release fixes a small bug (1 line) that prevents setup.ml to run with OCaml 4.00. If you have projects that was generated with a former release consider upgrading to OASIS 0.3.0. There are several big new stuff that comes with this release. It now supports Pack: field for libraries which allows to pack your library using -for-pack and so on. We are also compiling .cmxs (dynlink object for native) by default and we publish them in the META file. This feature was implemented in order to get more libraries to provide .cmxs and to help project like Ocsigen to take advantage of this. If you want to get rid of this at configure time, you can use ./configure --override native_dynlink false. We introduce two new default flags: --enable-tests and --disable-docs for configure. These are implicit flags that define if we will run Test sections or compile Document sections. They are especially useful to reduce the number of dependencies, because dependencies of Test will be excluded by default. We recommend to set Build$: flag(tests) to any Library or Executable sections that are only useful for tests. This allows you to really cut down the number of dependencies. The last change I want to introduce is about the old setup-dev subcommand which is now deprecated. It has been replaced by 2 different update schemes. I am pretty excited by this feature which in fact comes from OASIS user (esp. Lwt project). The former scheme was to have a big 'setup.ml' that always call the command oasis to update. This was complex and not very useful. We now have 2 mode: dynamic and weak. dynamic allow you to have a small setup.ml and to keep your VCS history clean but you need to install OASIS. weak need a big setup.ml but only need to call the command oasis if someone change something in _oasis. This mode is targeted to project that wants to be able to checkout from VCS an OCaml project without installing OASIS. The difference generated by weak mode doesn't pollute too much the VCS history because most the time they make sense. For example, you upgrade your package version number in _oasis and it produces a change with 6 lines where the version number changes in every META, setup.ml files and so on. This version has been tested on:

• Linux (Debian Sid and Debian Squeeze with GODI, OCaml 3.12)
• Windows Vista with MS Visual Studio 2008 toolchain, OCaml 3.12
• Mac OS X, OCaml 3.12 from GODI

You can download it here or use your favorite package manager: Debian (UPDATE: pending upload)

$ apt-get install -t experimental oasis

GODI

$ godi_console perform -build apps-oasis

odb.ml

$ ocaml odb.ml oasis

Here is the complete changelog: EXTREMLY IMPORTANT changes (read this)

• Fix bug with scanf %S@\n for ocaml 4.00. We were unfortunetaly using an undocumented tolerance of Scanf in the previous version. You should consider making new release using this version that fixed this.

PACKAGES uploaded to oasis-db will be automatically "derived" before OCaml 4.00 release (i.e. oUnit v1.1.1 will be regenerated with this new version as oUnit v1.1.1~oasis1). PACKAGES not uploaded to oasis-db need to be regenerated. In order not to break 3rd party tools that consider a tarball constant, I recommend to create a new version. Thanks to INRIA OCaml team for synchronizing with us on this point. Major changes:

• Handle the field Pack: true to be able to create packed libraries. It also installs .mli files for documentation into the target directory. The pack option is only supported for OASISFormat: 0.3, you will need to update the version of your _oasis file to match it.

• Introduce --enable-tests to disable tests and docs at oasis level. It seems a very common pattern to have a Flag tests to turn off by default the tests. This is now define as a standard var and you should remove you previous Flag tests but you can continue to use flag(tests) where needed.

You can now have the following example:

     ...
     Executable test_exec
       Install: false
       Build$: flag(tests)
       MainIs: testExec.ml
       BuildDepends: oUnit
     
     Test main
       Command: $test_exec
       TestTools: test_exec
     ...

The Run$: flag(tests) is implicit for the section Test main. The default value is false for tests. If all the executable for test are flagged correctly (Build$: flag(tests)), you'll get rid of the dependency on oUnit. It works the same for documentation, however the default is true. (Closes: #866)

• Allow to define interdependent flags

In order to allow interdependent flags, we transform back lazy values into unit -> string functions. This allows to change a flag value on the command line and to update all the dependent values. (Closes: #827, #938)

• Deprecate the subcommand oasis setup-dev in favor of oasis setup -setup-update none weak dynamic

It defines different ways to manage the auto-update of setup.ml:

• none: this is the default mode, and the one you should use when distributing tarballs. No update are performed at al.
• weak: the update is only triggered when something change in _oasis , we keep all files generated
• dynamic: the content of 'setup.ml' is ultra small (<2kB) and we only keep a small setup.ml, Makefile and configure.

The choice between weak and dynamic depends on your need with regard to VCS and to the presence of oasis. The weak allow to checkout the project from VCS and be able to work on it, without the need of installing 'oasis' as long as you don't change the file _oasis. But it clutter your VCS history with changes to the build system each time you change something in _oasis. The 'dynamic' mode gives you no VCS history pollution but makes mandatory to have installed oasis libraries.

• Don't copy executable in ocamlbuild

Avoid copying executable to their real name. It helps to call ocamlbuild a single time for the whole build rather than calling it n time (n = number of executable sections) and copying resulting exec. This speeds up the build process because ocamlbuild doesn't have to compute/scan dependencies each time. The drawback is that you have to use $foo when you want to call Executable foo, because $foo will be '_build/.../main.byte'.

• Change the way we parse command line like option (CCOpt, CCLib and the like). We have implemented a real POSIX command line parser, except that variables are processed by Buffer.add_substitute (except if correctly escaped, using Buffer.add_substitute escaping).

For example:

CCOpt: -DEXTERNAL_EXP10 -L/sw/lib "-framework vecLib"

Will be parsed correctly and outputed according to target OS.

• Minimize the dependencies of the project.

In order to ease building oasis, we have minimize the number of dependencies. You only need to install ocamlmod, ocamlify and ocaml-data-notation for a standard build without tests. Dependencies on pcre, extlib and ocamlgraph has been dropped. The remaining dependencies are hidden behind a flag tests.

• Implement proposal for handling plugin in META, using "plugin" extra directives

OASIS now produces .cmxs file by default and add them to META. Now a META looks like:

     ...
     archive(byte) = "oasis.cma"
     archive(byte, plugin) = "oasis.cma"
     archive(native) = "oasis.cmxa"
     archive(native, plugin) = "oasis.cmxs"
     ...

This will ultimately help to generate automatically .cmxs for all oasis enabled projects. We hope that this new feature will improve dynamic linking use in OCaml (esp. for project like Ocsigen). Other changes

• Produce only subcommands specific helps when asked (Closes: #783)
• Use pager for long textual output (Closes: #782)
• Give the help summary directly when running just "oasis" (Closes: #781)
• Remove pwd filename prefix to avoid too long command line on Windows (Closes: #1007)
• Install required .cmx when installing libraries (Closes: #686, #885)
• Retain blanks at the beginning of line in freeform (Closes: #811)
• Allow PreConfCommand to create setup.data with any variables inside (Closes: #823)
• Allow to use setup.data in shell script and Makefile (Closes: #982)
• Fix execute permissions (Closes: #980)
• Drop extra version in ocaml version (Closes: #964, #888)
• Always output info messages on stderr (Closes: #785)
• Fix interversion in version comparator lexer (Closes: #808)
• Document the fact that setup.data is mandatory (Closes: #946)
• configure translates getopt command line to Arg (Closes: #778, #804)
• Generate valid META when there are line breaks in synopsis (Closes: #933)
• Keep owner of generated files (Closes: #793)
• Set -I +threads for ocamlfind ocamldoc in ocamlbuild (Closes: #949)
• Exclude VCS directories by default (Closes: #847)
• Print the configure summary in the "normal" order.
• Merge findlib virtual containers with the same name
• Synchronize plugin data for section
• Improve documentation
• Verify validity of input when parsing in quickstart (Closes: #797)
• Fix stack overflow when there are twice the same library (Closes: #1130)
• Parse license examples for DEP5 specification (Closes: #1102)
• Be ultra-liberal regarding version syntax (allow '_' and ' ' in the version).
• Allow to add extra content to META files (XMETAExtraLines)
• Allow to use executable name that contains "-" as a variable (replacing "-" by "_").

Thanks to Anil Madhavapeddy, Pierre Chambart, Christophe Troestler, Jeremie Dimino, Ronan Le Hy, Yaron Minsky and Till Varoquaux for their help with this release. Also thanks to all the testers of the numerous release candidates. This was a long work and each time a tester has downloaded oasis has helped me to know that I was working for someone.

She s awesome!

So, I m taking vacation this week and next. Here s a (partial) list of tasks that are left to do:

• Visit BC for NANOG 55
• Work with Threshold Communications to verify interop is working as well as it seems to be
• Make sure the UTC has acknowledged receipt of our 2012 filing
• Complete move of storage from old chassis to new-ish hot-ish-ness
• Bring one of these chassis online to handle VoIP for the wireless L2 segment
• Bring a 1600 online at our Bartel POP
• Take the disk image created for the above and duplicate it 3x for California-based 44Net nodes
• Bring the VMs whose storage was being provisioned via iSCSI back online
• get the ATA and DSLAM online and hook up the customers who are demanding service.
• Call CenturyLink and explain to them that I WILL report them to the consumer protection department of the Utilities and Transportation Commission if they do not take action to correct their failure in regard to contract negotiation and accounting.

That s probably enough, if not too much. Here s some of the bits I ve done this week:

• Re-establish IPv6 connectivity for many of my hosts
• Twiddled quite a few bits on the BIG-IPs
• Set up a home brew provisioning server for some 1120E hardware SIP phones I ve got laying around (DHCP + TFTP + a bunch of twiddly firmware bits and config files ping me if you want them)
• Did a lot of updates to the DNS infrastructure. We have slave DNS servers in all of our DCs now
• hung out on IRC a lot
• Started accepting IPv4 HTTP requests for web.colliertech.org in Bothell instead of Tukwila
• Put together some perl & php for the WA NGB to help with their online recruiter finder
• Reduced size of SAN base OS (squeeze) to something that fits on a CF
• Moved disks from old SAN chassis to the new one.
• Booting from CF now instead of first partition of first disk in array
• Discovered small (~3k bytes) disk error on one of the RAID members
• Made complete backup of entire array using dd
• Replaced failing disk and began recovery, with great thanks to the linux-raid list

  md0 : active raid5 sdg2[6] sdc2[4] sdb2[3] sdd2[2] sdf2[1] sde2[0]
        4864240640 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/5] [UUUUU_]
        [=========>...........]  recovery = 46.9% (456668928/972848128) finish=1461.9min speed=5884K/sec
  

• Brought up 802.11g AP for wireless VoIP service
• Configured asterisk to accept 24 SIP lines from GrandStream ATA
• Brought GrandStream ATA online. Currently sending SIP/RTP calls over OpenVPN tunnel to avoid NAT issues. This will be corrected when the new asterisk server is brought online. I ll have it connect to the core with IAX, and it will be on the same physical L2 as the GrandStream and 1120Es
• recovered RAID-1 array on laptop
• made sure KE7KMO is still functioning

And probably some other stuff ;-)

To whom it may concern. I ve just uploaded new upstream version of dibbler (portable DHCPv6 client/server) to unstable.
The resolvconf patch needed some changes to apply on that version so whoever actually uses dibbler, please test it ASAP so we could address any issues. This version amongst other things fixes nasty Debian bug #659476.

Enjoy burp 1.3.6 in unstable!

Just for reference cause I had to figured it out again after upgrade from Mint Lisa to Mint Maya (which in Mint world means reinstalling whole system). This is the way to create cowbuilder environment with Debian Sid/unstable under Linux Mint Maya or any Ubuntu based system:
sudo sed -ie 's/MIRRORSITE.*/MIRRORSITE=http://ftp.debian.org/debian/g' /etc/pbuilderrc
sudo apt-get install debian-archive-keyring
sudo cowbuilder --create --distribution sid --debootstrapopts --keyring=/usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg


Since my yesterday upload sshfs is now comaintained with Dmitry Smirnov and in fact he prepared the latest upstream version which is 2.4.
If anyone else would like to join and help improve the package further then Dmitry created Git repository for that purpose.