Search Results: "Sam Hocevar"

17 August 2016

Charles Plessy: Who finished DEP 5?

Many people worked on finishing DEP 5. I think that the blog of Lars does not show enough how collective the effort was. Looking in the specification's text, one finds:
The following alphabetical list is incomplete; please suggest missing people:
Russ Allbery, Ben Finney, Sam Hocevar, Steve Langasek, Charles Plessy, Noah
Slater, Jonas Smedegaard, Lars Wirzenius.
The Policy's changelog mentions:
  * Include the new (optional) copyright format that was drafted as
    DEP-5.  This is not yet a final version; that's expected to come in
    the 3.9.3.0 release.  Thanks to all the DEP-5 contributors and to
    Lars Wirzenius and Charles Plessy for the integration into the
    Policy package.  (Closes: #609160)
 -- Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>  Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:48:55 -0700
and
debian-policy (3.9.3.0) unstable; urgency=low
  [ Russ Allbery ]
  * Update the copyright format document to the version of DEP-5 from the
    DEP web site and apply additional changes from subsequent discussion
    in debian-devel and debian-project.  Revise for clarity, to add more
    examples, and to update the GFDL license versions.  Thanks, Steve
    Langasek, Charles Plessy, Justin B Rye, and Jonathan Nieder.
    (Closes: #658209, #648387)
On my side, I am very grateful to Bill Alombert for having committed the document in the Git repository, which ended the debates.

23 July 2015

Elena 'valhalla' Grandi: A Makefile for OpenSCAD projects

A Makefile for OpenSCAD projects

When working with OpenSCAD to generate models for 3D printing, I find it convenient to be able to build .stl and .gcode files from the command line, expecially in batch, so I've started writing a Makefile, improving it and making it more generic in subsequent iterations; I've added a page on my website http://www.trueelena.org/computers/howto/makefile_for_openscad_projects.html to hosts my current version.

Most of my projects use the following directory structure.



Running make will generate stl files for all of the models; make gcode adds .gcode files using slic3r; make build/object1.stl and make build/object1.gcode also work, when just one model is needed.


# Copyright 2015 Elena Grandi
# This work is free. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
# terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License, Version 2,
# as published by Sam Hocevar. See http://www.wtfpl.net/ for more details.

BUILDDIR = build
CONFDIR = conf
SRCDIR = src

SLIC3R = slic3r

VPATH = $(SRCDIR):$(BUILDDIR)

STL_TARGETS = $(patsubst $(SRCDIR)/%.scad,$(BUILDDIR)/%.stl,$(wildcard $(SRCDIR)/*.scad))
GCODE_TARGETS = $(patsubst $(SRCDIR)/%.scad,$(BUILDDIR)/%.gcode,$(wildcard $(SRCDIR)/*.scad))

.PHONY: all gcode clean
all: $(STL_TARGETS)

gcode: $(GCODE_TARGETS)

$(BUILDDIR)/%.stl: %.scad $(SRCDIR)/lib/*
mkdir -p $ BUILDDIR
openscad -o $@ $<

$(BUILDDIR)/%.gcode: %.stl $ CONFDIR /basic.ini
$ SLIC3R --load $ CONFDIR /basic.ini $<

clean:
rm -f $ BUILDDIR /*.stl $ BUILDDIR /*.gcode



This Makefile is released under the WTFPL:


DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, December 2004

Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <sam@hocevar.net>

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified
copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
as the name is changed.

DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

23 February 2015

Enrico Zini: akonadi-build-hth

The wonders of missing documentation Update: I have managed to build an example Akonadi client application. I'm new here, I want to make a simple C++ GUI app that pops up a QCalendarWidget which my local Akonadi has appointments. I open qtcreator, create a new app, hack away for a while, then of course I get undefined references for all Akonadi symbols, since I didn't tell the build system that I'm building with akonadi. Ok. How do I tell the build system that I'm building with akonadi? After 20 minutes of frantic looking around the internet, I still have no idea. There is a package called libakonadi-dev which does not seem to have anything to do with this. That page mentions everything about making applications with Akonadi except how to build them. There is a package called kdepimlibs5-dev which looks promising: it has no .a files but it does have haders and cmake files. However, qtcreator is only integrated with qmake, and I would really like the handholding of an IDE at this stage. I put something together naively doing just what looked right, and I managed to get an application that segfaults before main() is even called:
/*
 * Copyright   2015 Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>
 *
 * This work is free. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
 * terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License, Version 2,
 * as published by Sam Hocevar. See the COPYING file for more details.
 */
#include <QDebug>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
 
    qDebug() << "BEGIN";
    return 0;
 
QT       += core gui widgets
CONFIG += c++11
TARGET = wtf
TEMPLATE = app
LIBS += -lkdecore -lakonadi-kde
SOURCES += wtf.cpp
I didn't achieve what I wanted, but I feel like I achieved something magical and beautiful after all. I shall now perform some haruspicy on those oscure cmake files to see if I can figure something out. But seriously, people?

25 February 2012

Russ Allbery: Copyright format 1.0 published

Four and a half years after Sam Hocevar started a draft proposal on the Debian Wiki, we've published revision 1.0 of the machine-readable format for debian/copyright files. The format (as DEP-5) has been in widespread use for some time, but there have been multiple versions of the format and multiple transitional versioned URLs. Everyone can now update to the same version of the document and use a stable format URL. Below is the text of the annoucement that I just sent to debian-devel-announce. Version 1.0 of the machine-readable format for debian/copyright files (the culmination of the DEP-5 process) has now been published. The canonical URL (and also the URL to use in the Format field in such files) is:
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
For those who have adopted various iterations of the DEP-5 format for your packages, please consider updating to this format the next time you revise your package. Use of this format in Debian packages is optional. Thanks to all of the people who have contributed to this work over its long evolution. Particular thanks go to Steve Langasek, Charles Plessy, and Lars Wirzenius, who kept this document moving through its extended DEP discussion process, and Sam Hocevar, who started this work in 2007. The copyright format specification is now being maintained as part of the debian-policy package and will follow the same update process that's used for other parts of Policy. See:
http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess
for that process. For this specification, we're trying something new for Debian technical policies. This document is versioned, and older versions of the specification will be maintained to not invalidate older references in copyright files that have not been moved to newer versions. This is similar to the way that specifications are handled by some other projects, particularly the freedesktop.org standards. The plan, going forward, is that informative changes (changes that do not change the requirements or the contents of compliant copyright files) will be made following the same relaxed procedure as other informative changes to Policy, and new versions will only informative changes will be published with the same version number. So the existing 1.0 document may receive further improvements in wording, examples, or similar changes that don't modify its meaning. Normative changes (changes that change requirements for compliant files, which includes addition of new standardized license short names) will follow the normative Policy change process, including formal seconds. Once normative changes are accepted, the next release of this specification will receive a new version number (1.1, for example). The previous version, prior to the normative changes, will be frozen, and from that point forward will not be changed except as required to continue to publish it. This includes further informative changes. We will continue publishing these frozen older versions of the standard on www.debian.org and in the debian-policy package for some time: possibly forever, and at least as long as they're still referred to by packages distributed by the project. The hope is that this will provide a good balance between specification stability, editing for clarity, and specification changes to meet changing requirements, while not invalidating the URLs in older files and while continuing to provide the information required to interpret older files.

19 November 2011

Dominique Dumont: Debian SDL packaging team revival

Hello Most SDL packages are outdated, people are complaining in the BTS, and the team is mostly inactive. That s bad news for my project. What can I do ? Well, it s Debian project, I just have to step up. Thanks to Sam Hocevar, I m now admin on Debian Alioth SDL packaging project. I d like to revive the team. (Note that I don t have the bandwidth to be the team all by myself). Here are the first steps I plan (mostly inspired by the way Debian-perl team is working): Now, there are some ground rules I wish to push forward: If you don t agree with the above points, now is the time to say it. Feel free to join by:
  1. Creating an account on Alioth
  2. request to join sdl-team
  3. Last but not least, send a short introduction mail to pkg-sdl-maintainers AT lists.alioth.debian.org so we can know each other.
See you soon :-)

21 August 2011

Chris Lamb: Timezone bingo in debian/changelog files

Tim pointed out that it's worth travelling simply for the new timezone in your debian/changelog entries. We can use AptFs to work out who has collected the most so far:
import os
import glob
import itertools
import collections
from dateutil.parser import parse
from debian.changelog import Changelog
data = collections.defaultdict(set)
for package in glob.glob('/apt/*'):
    if os.path.islink(package):
        continue # Consider source packages only
    try:
        changelog = Changelog(open('%s/debian/changelog' % package))
    except:
        continue # Ignore invalid changelogs
    for entry in changelog:
        try:
            data[entry.author].add(parse(entry.date).strftime('%z'))
        except ValueError:
            pass # Ignore invalid dates
fn = lambda x: len(x[1])
top = sorted(data.items(), key=fn, reverse=True)
for k, g in itertools.groupby(top, key=fn):
    print "\n%d timezone(s):" % k
    for author, timezones in sorted(g):
        print " * %s (%s)" % (
            author.encode('utf8', 'ignore'),
            ', '.join(sorted(timezones, reverse=True)),
        )
14 timezone(s):
 * Bdale Garbee <bdale@gag.com> (-0800, -0700, -0600, -0500, -0400, -0300,
   +1300, +1100, +1030, +0900, +0300, +0200, +0100, +0000)
12 timezone(s):
 * Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> (-1000, -0900, -0800, -0700, -0500, -0400,
   -0300, -0200, +0300, +0200, +0100, +0000)
11 timezone(s):
 * Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> (-0400, -0300, +1300, +1100, +1000, +0930,
   +0900, +0800, +0200, +0100, +0000)
9 timezone(s):
 * Barak A. Pearlmutter <bap@debian.org> (-0700, -0600, -0500, -0400, +0500,
   +0300, +0200, +0100, +0000)
 * Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> (-1000, -0700, -0300, +1100, +1000,
   +0300, +0200, +0100, +0000)
 * Martin Pitt <mpitt@debian.org> (-0800, -0700, -0600, -0500, -0400, +0300,
   +0200, +0100, +0000)
 * Sam Hocevar (Debian packages) <sam+deb@zoy.org> (-0700, -0500, -0400, -0300,
   +0930, +0300, +0200, +0100, +0000)
Full output. However, something tells me we aren't going to see widespread gamification of Debian development.

13 March 2011

Lars Wirzenius: DPL elections: candidate counts

Out of curiosity, and because it is Sunday morning and I have a cold and can't get my brain to do anything tricky, I counted the number of candidates in each year's DPL elections.
Year Count Names
1999 4 Joseph Carter, Ben Collins, Wichert Akkerman, Richard Braakman
2000 4 Ben Collins, Wichert Akkerman, Joel Klecker, Matthew Vernon
2001 4 Branden Robinson, Anand Kumria, Ben Collins, Bdale Garbee
2002 3 Branden Robinson, Rapha l Hertzog, Bdale Garbee
2003 4 Moshe Zadka, Bdale Garbee, Branden Robinson, Martin Michlmayr
2004 3 Martin Michlmayr, Gergely Nagy, Branden Robinson
2005 6 Matthew Garrett, Andreas Schuldei, Angus Lees, Anthony Towns, Jonathan Walther, Branden Robinson
2006 7 Jeroen van Wolffelaar, Ari Pollak, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Towns, Andreas Schuldei, Jonathan (Ted) Walther, Bill Allombert
2007 8 Wouter Verhelst, Aigars Mahinovs, Gustavo Franco, Sam Hocevar, Steve McIntyre, Rapha l Hertzog, Anthony Towns, Simon Richter
2008 3 Marc Brockschmidt, Rapha l Hertzog, Steve McIntyre
2009 2 Stefano Zacchiroli, Steve McIntyre
2010 4 Stefano Zacchiroli, Wouter Verhelst, Charles Plessy, Margarita Manterola
2011 1 Stefano Zacchiroli (no vote yet)
Winner indicate by boldface. I expect Zack to win over "None Of The Above", so I went ahead and boldfaced him already, even if there has not been a vote for this year. Median number of candidates is 4.

29 October 2010

Rapha&#235;l Hertzog: Nice OpenOffice.org template for Debian presentations

OpenOffice.org Impress Template for Debian Presentations While preparing for the upcoming mini-debconf Paris, I noticed that we don t have any good presentation template for OpenOffice.org Impress. I spent a few hours browsing Debian presentations put online by many speakers and was unable to find one that would suit me. This situation was clearly unacceptable and I decided to spend a few hours to fix this. I selected a very nice wallpaper created by Alexis Younes, used The Gimp to add a translucent white box so that the text can still be read, and combined all this in a OpenOffice.org Impress template. Click here to download the template. You can also get the Gimp XCF file for the background image. By the way, the same wallpaper has been used by Sam Hocevar to create nice-looking Debian business cards. PS: I contacted Alexis Younes by mail and he agreed to put the wallpapers under GPL-2+. It has been clarified on his webpage.
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1 April 2010

Sam Hocevar: Attention everyone

Today, the Internet will be full of bullshit.

1 April 2009

Sam Hocevar: Mark my words

2009 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.

3 October 2008

Christian Perrier: Why I think Foss.in/2008 is missing its target..

(long post, you've been warned) With his his 'Omelette Post' about FOSS.IN/2008 Call for Participation, Atul Chitnis, the FOSS.IN team 'leader' indeed sent an strong sign. For those who aren't aware of it, FOSS.IN is the longstanding major FLOSS event in India and, still (just like our beloved Debconf) only run by volunteers. Last year, along with Sam Hocevar, I had the chance to attend the event and share the groove of that big, huge, conference, with over 2,000 participants. Some other Debian fellows also made it in the past (Jaldhar, Bdale...). During the Debian Project Day as well as regular conference days, we had the great opportunity to meet with the people who currently participate in Debian (and Ubuntu) in South Asia, as well as first meeting some major contributors from other projects. For me, and, I think, of all people I met up there, this was a great *and productive* event. Maybe not productive at the moment it happened, but productive in terms of mutual awareness, knowledge and friendship. All people who attended such conferences (should I say "Debconf" or "FOSDEM"?) know what I'm talking about. The conference was still quite focused on "real" FLOSS contribution more than evangelizing or politics. And I think it succeeded in it quite well. This year, I already planned to not attend...mostly because such event, with the associated long travel time, is something I can't really fit in my real life right now. Also, because it conflicts with a planned Extremadura work session, indeed. Still, I would indeed not have attended it. Atul's post makes it clear: the even will only be about coding. The point is to put focus on people who code and we do 'real' code. Bug fixing is not coding. Translation effort is not coding. Work on support for complex languages is not coding. Actually, what FOSS.IN/2008 organizers are trying to do is a kind of big Debcamp. I'm afraid it won't work this way. From what I have seen in years of participation to Debian, things just don't come up this way. People don't sit down and code because they're invited to. And, still, are only "people who code" the only people that matter in a project? Debian is sometimes seen as one of the biggest FLOSS projects all around (probably shared with the Linux kernel). How many people in Debian just "sit down and code"? What about those people who maintain our web site, our archive, setup our infrastructure, our new maintainer queue, our communication channels? What about those dozens of people who nicely maintain packages and keep the link with upstream developers, or fix bugs.... Those people do not seem welcomed at FOSS.IN/2008. "Not only bug fixing" is said in this announcement. This, I don't get it. At all. Why would "bug fixing" be second class work? Why would it be more noble to "code" new stuff? Maybe Atul did not mean to say this. He wants to have Indian contributors in FLOSS to be more visible....but I don't share this. Indian contributors in Debian *are* visible. Giridhar Appaji Nag is visible, "my" translator crew is visible, Kartik Mistry is visible (he once was too visible, even, by maintaining a little bit too many packages...). Bug fixing is the most noble task I see in FLOSS development. This is what we need the most. I recently blogged about how I feel APT to be 'poorly' maintained (once again, that was not targeted to current APT maintainers). What I would respect deeply is to see a bunch of Indian contributors stand up and take this task over. Atul, that would certainly not be "outsourcing code/package maintenance" and, no, these are not things one can get involved with instantly. Really, I don't buy this vision and that saddens me. That saddens me mostly because I know the folks there. I know the FOSS.IN organizers and I have deep respect for them. I just think they're missing the target and are too ambitious: one cannot change an event so drastically by just saying it has to change..:-) And, really, I'm even more sad to see localization work be called a low-hanging fruit from a country where there are 22 official languages. Or take words such as "talk is cheap, show me the code" as $ DEITY 's Holy Word just because it was once said by Linus Torvalds (who said many stupid things). Code is just one part of FLOSS development. Certainly one of the important parts but still one part. What would have happened to FLOSS if only "coders" had been working on it all over those years? It would be something used by about 10,000 people all around the world, that's all. We should not make an opposition between those who code and those who don't. By the way, do *I* code? When I'm sitting at 07:00AM on a Saturday morning, hacking on Samba packages and try to have Samba 3.2.4 built with the set of patches we have on Debian....do I code? I'm not *producing* code....the code was produced by those wonderful Samba Team folks. Does Karolin Seeger code when she's releasing samba with such a precise and constant schedule as she's doing since early 2008? Or Ana Guerrero when she (not alone!) compiles dozens of KDE packages and organizes and bumps the maintenance of KDE in Debian for the best of our users. Or Miriam Ruiz when she picks up each and every possible free game and tries to get it in Debian, talks with upstream developers, help them to fiw their code to suit the severe requirements of the Debian policy? Or Clytie Siddall when she translates about every major FLOSS in Vietnamese (nor URL here, sorry)? All these folks are part of the FLOSS game. You want Indians to be part of FLOSS game? Then allow the potential Karolin, Ana, Miriam or Clytie to be part of Indian FLOSS game and don't try to make FOSS.in the place where you seek the future Indian Linus Torvalds and only him her. Talk is cheap, show me the contribution.

15 April 2008

Sylvain Le Gall: Debian accounts and keyring

Even if i don't like talking about this in public, Lucas Nussbaum blog entry decides me to write this, because I, too, agree that the Debian accounts and keyring situation is severely hurting Debian, and that a solution needs to be found RSN. I wish to be more clear on some of my positions concerning this. First of all, I am actually being hit by a "GPG key expired" status that prevents me to vote and upload packages. It is a little bit my fault because 1) i set an expiration date on my GPG and 2) i only update this expiration date in keyring.debian.org less than 1 month before it expires -- but it was more than 3 months ago... I have pinged different people since then to get the keyring updated without success. I have reuploaded my key without expiration date, and now i know that things can take a long time inside Debian (2nd rank after waiting for my own Debian account creation). Another point is concerning DM (Debian Maintainer). I was against the proposal when it was voted, because i was thinking it will create a "sub" status of Debian Developper (i.e people which are in between debian users and debian developers). I have changed my mind concerning this point the DM process is lightweight and everything seems to be faster with it. This is a really good points for DM (and jetring). I am also considering to sponsor myself to apply to DM, in order to have a non-expired GPG key somewhere. Last but not least, i met several French NM at DebConf 7 (Kibi, Goneri...). At that time, i didn't know them. Since DC7, I have seen them working on different parts of Debian. I think it is a shame to make them wait so long. It is really the best way to make their motivations disappear. Looking back at my own situation, i realize that i was more active before my account creation. This is probably because it takes a long time to process, and i loose hope in a possible account creation. I am now more active in Debian, but still not doing as much as i want to. I don't know the best solution to solve this problem. I tend to think that some key people should delegate their work to other DD (within a team ?). Last year at DC7, Sam Hocevar was already discussing this problem with the people involved in Account Creation. I don't know what was the result of this discussion... Hope, this post will help to show that this problem is important.

24 February 2008

Sam Hocevar: Bits from the DPL: FTP assistants, marketing team, init scripts, elections

Not going to FOSDEM Hello, dear developers. I suppose many of you are currently at FOSDEM, but unfortunately I could not attend the event this year. Here are some news for you anyway! FTP assistants I am very pleased to let you know that yesterday Peter Palfrader (weasel) added Kalle Kivimaa (killer) and Thomas Viehmann (tviehmann) to the list of FTP assistants. I still hope that more people can be added soon to this team, but this is definitely good news. Marketing team At the various conferences I attended I have paid much attention to how other distributions and FOSS projects were promoting their work, and despite us often having t-shirts, stickers and posters like the others, we really miss a few things which would make Debian as appealing as other, dynamic projects. I would like to set up a Debian Marketing Team, whose work would be to organise all the promotional stuff (logos, t-shirt designs, wallpapers, etc.) so that the project can officially endorse good designs, and to make the ultimate decision on visual stuff such as CD covers, splash screens, etc. This team would have official DPL delegation, but I hope that it can also work with non-Debian-developers, as many packaging teams already do, because the non-DDs know better than us how to draw people to Debian. So please let me know if you are interested, even if you are not a DD, and especially if you are not a programmer! I also would like to spend some Debian money on a contest, similar to the FreeBSD logo contest, to create a friendly mascot for the Debian project (in a similar way to the Linux penguin or the GNU gnu) that we can use where the logo is not enough. More on this in a few days. Development news Last month Petter Reinholdtsen (pere) gave some news about his project of improving the init system. This is almost as simple as adding LSB headers to your init scripts, and work is advancing towards this goal, though not as quickly as desirable. If your packages have init scripts, or if you wish to help, I urge you to have a look at the proposal so that we can have it in Lenny. DPL elections The new DPL term is in almost 2 months, but campaign starts next month. I have already stated that I would not run again, and haven't changed my mind. As many, many Debian developers are attending FOSDEM, I hope you can use some real-life meeting time to discuss the people you think would make good DPLs and tell them. Maybe they haven't thought of running (or re-running). Being DPL does have an impact on your real life. If you are still wondering whether to run, or have any personal questions, feel free to ask me, I'll gladly share my experience.

1 February 2008

Ian Wienand: Compare and Swap with PIC

Our Dear Leader Sam Hocevar has previously blogged about PIC and inline ASM. Today I came across a sort of extension to this problem. Consider the following code, which implements a double word compare and swap using the x86 cmpxchg8b instruction (for a bonus you can lock it to make it atomic).
#include <stdio.h>
typedef struct double_word_t  
	int a;
	int b;
  double_word;
/* atomically compare old and mem, if they are the same then copy new
   back to mem */
int compare_and_swap(double_word *mem,
		     double_word old,
		     double_word new)  
	char result;
	__asm__ __volatile__("lock; cmpxchg8b %0; setz %1;"
			     : "=m"(*mem), "=q"(result)
			     : "m"(*mem), "d" (old.b), "a" (old.a),
			       "c" (new.b), "b" (new.a)
			     : "memory");
	return (int)result;
 
int main(void)
 
	double_word w =  .a = 0, .b = 0 ;
	double_word old =  .a = 17, .b = 42 ;
	double_word new =  .a = 12, .b = 13 ;
	/* old != w, therefore nothing happens */
	compare_and_swap(&w, old, new);
	printf("Should fail -> (%d,%d)\n", w.a, w.b);
	/* old == w, therefore w = new */
	old.a = 0; old.b = 0;
	compare_and_swap(&w, old, new);
	printf("Should work  -> (%d,%d)\n", w.a, w.b);
	return 0;
 
This type of CAS can be used to implement lock-free algorithms (I've previously blogged about that sort of thing). The problem is that the cmpxchg8b uses the ebx register, i.e. pseudo code looks like:
if(EDX:EAX == Destination)  
    ZF = 1;
    Destination = ECX:EBX;
 
else  
    ZF = 0;
    EDX:EAX = Destination;
 
PIC code reserves ebx for internal use, so if you try to compile that with -fPIC you will get an error about not being able to allocate ebx. A first attempt to create a PIC friendly version would simply save and restore ebx and not gcc anything about it, something like:
  __asm__ __volatile__("pushl %%ebx;"   /* save ebx used for PIC GOT ptr */
		       "movl %6,%%ebx;" /* move new_val2 to %ebx */
		       "lock; cmpxchg8b %0; setz %1;"
		       "pop %%ebx;"     /* restore %ebx */
	    	       : "=m"(*mem), "=q"(result)
		       : "m"(*mem), "d" (old.b), "a" (old.a),
		         "c" (new.b), "m" (new.a) : "memory");
Unfortunately, this isn't a generic solution. It works fine with the PIC case, because gcc will not allocate ebx for anything else. But in the non-PIC case, there is a chance that ebx will be used for addr. This would cause a probably fairly tricky bug to track down! The solution is to use the #if __PIC__ directive to either tell gcc you're clobbering ebx in the non-PIC case, or just keep two versions around; one that saves and restores ebx for PIC and one that doesn't.

6 December 2007

Sam Hocevar: Bits from India

Incredible !ndia As Christian already stated, we are currently in this lovely city with friendly people whom we French people have great trouble understanding, totally insane traffic and colourful taxis you find nowhere else, and dangerously spicy food. And no, it s not Mexico City. My first talk at FOSS.IN/2007 in Bangalore, India (Giving back to the community: how does Debian perform?) was an attempt at explaining to upstream developers what Debian did with their software, and where to proactively find information about the changes we do, the bugs that are reported, etc. I did this talk because Bangalore has this incredible ratio of software developers per square kilometer, while at the same time we have so few Indian DDs despite the 1.12 billion inhabitants. So I expected to find people doing much development but not necessarily familiar with Debian. With Christian s two other talks about translation works in Debian and how to contribute to Debian, we did quite a thorough coverage of Debian for a novice audience. My second talk, in the main conference track, will be on Saturday and will be an even more general presentation of Debian. Of course, my slides are not ready yet, what did you expect? Debian business cards There has been great interest in my Debian business cards, so I m providing their SVG source (to be loaded and printed in Inkscape, for they make extensive use of the blur effect which is an Inkscape extension) for anyone interested. They use the Sexsmith and Sans Condensed Uralic fonts, available in Debian packages ttf-larabie-straight and ttf-uralic. Sam s Debian business card Sam s Debian business card (back) Sam s Debian business card (sample) I don t know enough about SVG scripting and object cloning, so to do the text shadow you will have to edit the same object twice. Sorry about that. Here are the files: background image (PNG), generic DD front (SVG), custom DPL front (SVG), back (SVG). The background image was cropped from Ayo s Debian Expo wallpaper. The rest of the design should be considered public domain. Just a note about the different languages I ve been using at the back: I know I could have used more fancy languages with beautiful glyphs to show how truly universal our system is, but I did not know which to choose. So I just put the languages I personally vaguely understood.

1 December 2007

Christian Perrier: Heading to FOSS.in

Tomorrow morning, I'll leave for Bangalore to attend FOSS.in, the major FLOSS event in India (for BLR people, my arrival time is 07:30 on Monday). That will be my first time in India, so probaly a lot to discover and learn. Also, of course, many online friends to meet in real life, which is always something one enjoys. I'll have two talks (in a row!) there. One is my first time talking about "Contrbuting to Debian". I hope I will make it interesting for attending people. The main goal is explaining that there are much much more ways to contribute to Debian than one would imagine, and roughly say that becoming a DD is far from being the only way to contribute. The other talk is my standard i18n talk, slightly more focused on localization for languages from India (yes, with the maps, of course). Sam Hocevar is also coming and giving talks. I cross fingers for people there to not be bored about our damn French accent. I'll be really delighted to share this with Sam who is someone I really appreciate (and, actually, even more since he is doing good job as DPL). Of course, I know that the most interesting will be BOFs and informal discussions as well as booths visits and the like. Everybody knows that India is the paradise for people working in i18n: so many languages to cope with! I already know it will be too short, I'm afraid, but see you in BLR !

21 November 2007

Christian Perrier: I got my pink paper! Sam, read this...

First step of the ultimate organization steps of the trip to India for FOSS.IN, I went today to the Embassy of India in Paris to leave my visa application. I left home at 06:20 to get one of the few trains running because of our strikes. Got two buses relatively easily from the station to the Embassy, then I arrived there 8:30 with already about 40 people before me in the queue. Discussion with fellow people in the queue...and I learned that there was no certain chance that I could actually *enter* the embassy to leave the form, my passport, my photos and the 50 bucks^W euros needed for a passport to India. I entered the embassy at....11:00 when their doors opened (we've been told that strikes in French transport are the reasons for the employees to be late.....I really wonder *how* *we* got there, indeed. Apparently, all people applying for visas live in Paris 16th. Then I got a nice ticket with a number on it (215 for the record) and began waiting in a small romm packed with dozens of people. First number called: 170. Three hours later, I finally got the pink receipt which gives me the right to worry about my passport getting lost and, hopefully, get it back on Monday with a visa for India on it. It's 14:45 while I'm writing this and I'm simply on my way back home after losing a full work day for a stupid administrative piece of paper. Have to be back on Monday 16:00 to get the visa back. Someone was saying in the queue that some days, you can wait up to 23:00 to get your passport back. It is terribly sad that this visa system still exists in some countries (not even blaming India for this: we (European Union) do exactly the same for citizens of India, forcing them to visit the French/spanish/German/whatever Schengen country in Dehli or Mumbai, to get a visa for EU. And I can really imagine what mess it can be as well. It was however interesting to see that all this crap was happening with laughs, good stories and friendly atmosphere with all the other French people waiting. Who says that French people are harsh and rude? Or is it already the influence of India on us? Anyway, Sam Hocevar told me yesterday he plans to come tomorrow for his application. Good luck, Sam and don't forget any of the requirements as well as a good coat, something to read (or your laptop to hack, with some spare batteries....and, no, no hackable WiFi around). Note that the 50 euros *have* to be cash money. So, India, here I am....nearly..:-)

18 November 2007

Sam Hocevar: Bits from the DPL: officialising delegations

Hi there! There are a few delegations that I need to confirm or make official, so that we don't end up 5 years from now wondering when or how they happened. First, Kalle Kivimaa (killer) was delegated Debian Auditor by the DPL last year and it was not completely obvious that delegation was to survive the end of Anthony's term. I am hereby confirming it is a permanent delegation (until resignation or future DPL decision). Second, Peter Palfrader (weasel) was added to the team of Debian System Administrators (DSA). This is to be considered a normal delegation by the DPL. And finally, Anibal Monsalve Salazar (anibal) was added to the Debian Maintainer Keyring team under the rules of the DM GR ("Changes to the team may be made by the DPL under the normal rules for delegations").

6 November 2007

Christian Perrier: See you in BLR

The talks I proposed for FOSS.in, the major FLOSS conference in India, have been accepted for the Project Days, in the Debian-Ubuntu sessions. Thanks to the event organizers who will sponsor my travel to Bangalore, I'll probably leave as of Sunday Dec. 2nd and attend the entire conference from Dec. 4th to Dec. 8th. During earlier weeks, Sam Hocevar, the Debian Project Leader, also agreed to come to the conference and give two talks there. And, this morning, I had the nice surprise to discover that Lucas Nussbaum, one of our most tireless QA animators in Debian, will also come and give a talk about QA in Debian. So, that should make three French DD attending and, therefore, bring a strong Debian representation in this conference, which is something I definitely find interesting as I invested quite a lot of time and energy last years to increase the Debian presence in South Asia. This will certainly be a great occasion for us to give credit to the few people who contribute to Debian (and related projects) in India, and of course meet them in person. Please check the list of talks to get an idea of talks. Now for the challenge: the organizers expect our slides....by 7 days as of now. I don't know for Sam and Lucas but I have just begun working on one of my two talks (the i18n one, of course...you know: the one with the cute maps....). Would someone have a ready "How to contribute to Debian" talk somewhere? :-)

3 November 2007

Sam Hocevar: Bits from the DPL: DSA and a few other things

I have been rather quiet during the last few months. Not really because I wasn t doing anything, but because most of what I have been doing was done by private e-mail. Apparently people are expecting the DPL to disappear around the middle of their term, because I did not get many complaints. But yes, I know that sucked. And well, I now have a reason to regain motivation. \o/ DSA++ \o/ Bananas 1Bananas 2Bananas 3 I am very, very pleased to let you know that this morning Phil Hands (fil) added Peter Palfrader (weasel) to the adm group. Which means that the DSA team now has a new member! The first since, wow, quite some time. I am grateful to everyone who made this possible, for bearing with my insistance, for making concessions, for being patient, and I hope this is only the first step to bigger and better teams in Debian. Of course the path is still long but I must admit this is truly refreshing. I wish great success to Peter for the thankless job that awaits him. Nexenta After meeting Michael Man and several Sun people at Debconf and seeing Michael s great talk I got really convinced that the technology present in OpenSolaris could benefit Debian in many ways. And the shortest path to there seemed to be Nexenta. I am currently discussing the possibility of having a Nexenta machine accessible to Debian developers to port and test their packages. I also suggested the Nexenta people to submit patches directly to Debian and try to join friendly packaging teams. Please be nice to them! Conferences Last month I attended Encuentro Linux 2007 in Arica, Chile where I gave a talk about the history and organisation of Debian and how to help and become a member of the project. Due to various issues (such as my passport being stolen when I was 2000 km away from the conference) I did not have the time to give my other planned talk about attracting developers who do not speak English to Debian and FLOSS projects. Fortunately I was able to discuss it with members of the local communities. My goal is to understand why such a large Spanish-speaking area has so few Debian developers, and what we can do about that. One of my observations was that two very important documents (the Debian Policy and the Debian Developer s Reference) were not translated into Spanish, while for instance there is a French translation of the latter. Any volunteers?

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