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See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects


Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 2.1 released. The Linux Standard Base project has announced the release of version 2.1 of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard - the important piece of the LSB that says where all the files are supposed to go. It is important to note that the FHS is not solely a Linux project. Members of other Unix operating systems (particularly the BSD-based groups) have also contributed strongly. This is good for two reasons. First, Unix contributors have been able to share their experience with potential pitfalls they've experienced over the years ... particularly with large, networked environments that share software across heterogeneous hardware. Second, this also means that the file system hierarchy used by Linux distributions will make sense to administrators migrating from supporting Unix systems. Although not the primary goal of the LSB, it is a worthwhile side effect, potentially saving much frustration and energy.

Linux Standard Base (Linux.com). Nicholas Petreley has written an article on the Linux Standard Base for Linux.com. "The least credible argument has been that Linux will fragment because UNIX did. This completely ignores the market dynamics that caused UNIX to fragment, and consequently why these dynamics do not apply to Linux. UNIX was a means to an end, and the end was to sell unique hardware solutions. Linux is the means to a completely different end: a free (as in free speech), reliable, scalable open source solution." (Thanks to Scott McNeil).

Cscope released under the BSD license. Cscope is a developer's tool for browsing source code. Although not specifically ported to Linux, we're told that it compiles cleanly on Linux. SCO's decision to release Cscope under an open source license is tremendously welcome. A bit of history: "Cscope began its origins in the early eighties at AT&T. The earliest change log entry is circa 1986, but cscope existed before then. Cscope was then passed onto UNIX Systems Laboratories (USL), which was acquired by Novell and then by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO)".

GNU Pth 1.3.5. A new version of the GNU Portable Threads library has been released. Note that the importance of the release is marked high, due to a nasty bug that was introduced in version 1.3.4.

First round Software Carpentry entries online. The first round entries in the Software Carpentry design competition are now online.

Browsers

Mozilla M15 released. A new milestone for Mozilla, Mozilla M15, has been released. From the talkback response, M15 appears to be a clear improvement on M14. However, the nightly builds, which are even newer than the latest milestone, are apparently even more stable. One downside: the TCP/IP memory leak is still present in M15.

Databases

PostgreSQL 7.0RC1. The first release candidate for PostgreSQL 7.0 is now available for download. (From dotcomma.)

Product comparison: relational database management systems. Linuxcare has put up a page comparing relational database systems (both free and commercial) for Linux. Readers may also enter their own reviews of the various systems.

Education

SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report. The latest SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report is now available.

Embedded Linux

RTAI 1.3 has been announced. This is the latest version of the Real Time Application Interface. RTAI is available under the LGPL. "RTAI now includes dynamic memory allocation, a /proc interface, an enhanced LXRT-Informed (LinuX RT) module and PERL bindings for soft real-time task development."

Games

Hexen (Open Game Source). The latest Open Game Source is now available. "This month focuses on the SDL port of Hexen. It includes a patch to convert the minotaur into the classic Eliza program." Hexen is one of two fantasy games from Raven software based on the original DOOM source code. (Thanks to Dennis Payne.)

Interoperability

Kernel-Cousin Samba. Last week's Kernel-Cousin Samba reports problems with the recently-integrated UTMP patch, the joys of short file-name mangling, reasons for using a different Netbios and Workgroup name for your server and much, much more.

Wine News. Wine Headquarters has a nice new look-and-feel. The April 17th edition of the Wine Weekly News is also out, reporting that Canvas 7's port to Linux is happily using Winelib and that CorelDraw 9 for Linux is ahead of schedule, due to Wine's "sterling progress".

Networking

OpenNMS Update v1.4. The latest weekly update from the OpenNMS network management project reports significant development progress and a number of companies and other organizations that also want to be involved.

Office Applications

AbiWord Weekly News. This week's edition mentions some significant bug fixes and a first step towards cooperation with the KWord project.

gPhoto 0.4.3: A Sneak Peek (AboutLinux). AboutLinux reviews gPhoto 0.4.3. "gPhoto shows immense promise; according to its home page it can now download from over 100 different digital cameras. Even though gPhoto is quite far from the magic 1.0 release version it is certainly usable for downloading images from your digital cameras."

Top 20 Influential People, Products and Companies in the Linux Graphics Marketplace. Michael J. Hammel looks at the top 20 players in the Linux graphics market. "Unlike most of the other open source projects I've seen, Gimp actually thrives without central authority. It is the first project I've seen where development by committee actually seems to work."

On the Desktop

An Interview with Ettore Perazzoli (LinuxPapers). LinuxPapers has published an interview with Ettore Perazzoli, one of the Gnome developers. He provides a less rosy opinion on the development of two Linux desktops, KDE and Gnome. "This "desktop war", as you call it, has been unhealthy from a practical viewpoint. We have incompatible libraries, incompatible object/component models, and porting between these platforms is a pain. For this reason, one of the main purposes of free software, which is the sharing of source code, is defeated in the desktop field, and this is sad."

Last week's GNOME summary. Here is last week's GNOME Summary, by Havoc Pennington. It covers the integration of Mozilla and Nautilus, and many other topics.

Mosfet's desktop. Mosfet has put up an updated version of his desktop, showcasing the new KDE2 look and feel. Other news this week from mosfet.org includes the merge of KDE developer Matthias Elter's changes to Kicker, the new KDE2 panel, more updates to pixie and the introduction of application lauch notification, courtesy of KDE developer Rik Hemsley.

Science

Linux in Science Report #4. This week's Linux in Science Report takes a look at a couple of existing roadblocks to the adoption of Linux in some scientific arenas, along with the usual reports on a selection of useful scientific software for Linux.

Website Development

Keeping Up with Apache's Bleeding Edge (LinuxPlanet). LinuxPlanet has a tutorial on Apache. "...suppose you want to keep up with the latest and greatest Apache developments (and bugs), without having to wait for a release? How would you do it? That's what this article is all about."

Midgard Weekly Summary #35. This week's Midgard Weekly Summary is "rather populated with major announcements", including the release of Midgard 1.4-beta3 and the creation of the nonprofit organization to promote and support Midgard development and usage, "The Midgard Project Ry".

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh


April 20, 2000


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Development tools


Qt 2.1 released. Trolltech announced the release of Qt 2.1 on April 15th. Here is a list of the changes in the latest version of this cross-platform C++ toolkit (on which KDE is based). (From dotcomma.)

Java

SAX2/Java final pre-release. David Megginson announced the availability of the final pre-release of SAX2/Java, along with a feature freeze. Barring unforeseen problems, the final version will be released on Friday, May 5th. "SAX2 is a new Java-based release of SAX, the Simple API for XML. A C++ version (at least) is planned as well. SAX2 introduces configurable features and properties and adds support for XML Namespaces; it includes adapters so that SAX1 parsers and applications can interoperate with SAX2." (From xmlhack.)

Jakarta - Tomcat 3.1. Version 3.1 of Tomcat, an implementation of the Java Servlet 2.2 and JavaServer Pages 1.1 Specifications, has been released, promising substantially improved documentation as well as a variety of bugfixes and new features.

Sun Ships Forte for Java (InternetNews). Sun started shipping Forte for Java this week, according to this InternetNews article. "The Forte for Java product family is Sun's attempt to deliver a complete set of development and integration tools for creating dot-com applications, from the simplest to the most complex."

Perl

What's New in Perl 5.6.0? (Perl.com). Simon Cozens takes a look at the new features in Perl 5.6.0. "If, like me, you remember the day that the combined might of Malcolm and Sarathy produced the last major release of Perl, you might be wondering what's happened since then. Allow me, then, to present to you the wonderful world of 5.6.0."

Processing XML with Perl (XML.com). Michel Rodriguez takes a look at processing XML with Perl.

Python

Last week's Python-URL. Last week's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL came out a bit late for the LWN weekly edition. It covers the usual array of topics in the Python development world.

Meanwhile, this week's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL reports on the great Starship Python disaster and other developments from the Python world.

PySol 4.10. Two versions of PySol have been announced in the past week, version 4.00 and now 4.10. Note that the number of solitaire variants supported jumped from 173 to 273 in a single week! We thought that might have been an error in one of the announcements, so we checked. The numbers are correct; they added support for 100 Mahjongg variants ...

O'Reilly announces Python Dev. O'Reilly announced their new Python Dev portal on April 14th.

Tcl/tk

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

 
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