See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

Version 3.1 of GCC, the Gnu Compiler Collection, has been announced. "In this release, we focused more on quality than new features; many bugs were fixed. We worked very hard to fix bugs that were introduced in GCC 3.0, but that were not present in previous releases of the compiler. We also worked hard to eliminate new bugs.

We have continued to improve the standards conformance in the C, C++ and Java compilers, added support for profile-directed optimizations, improved support for many chips used in embedded systems, added an Ada compiler, and added support for the x86-64 architecture."

The Changes document shows a long list of new features:

Caveats include deprecation of the -traditional option, and a change of the default debugging format from the stabs format to DWARF2.

Optimizer improvements include the contribution of the infrastructure for profile driven optimizations from SuSE and Red Hat. The tree in-lining infrastructure has been generalized, allowing more optimization opportunities. The back end of several targets now have support for data pre-fetching, and macros can now emit debugging information.

Many improvements have been added to the C, C++, Objective-C, Java, and FORTRAN compilers.

An Ada 95 front end has been added, work is still in progress.

New targets include the MMIX, the CRIS, and the SuperH. Other targets have had improved support. A number of old target architectures have been declared obsolete - Elxsi owners better speak up now if they don't want to lose support..

See the updated online manual for more information.

GCC 3.1 is available here. (Thanks to Pat Eyler.)

Audio Projects

Jack news. The latest news from the Jack low-latency audio server project includes a new FAQ entry on tuning Jack's performance, and rumors of an upcoming public release.

Databases

SAP DB Version 7.3.00.23 released. Version 7.3.00.23 of SAP DB has been announced. This is mainly a bug fix release, see the release information for all of the details.

Electronics

Icarus Verilog 20020519. A new development snapshot of the Icarus Verilog electronic simulation language compiler has been released. A number of bug fixes are included, see the release notes for the details.

Embedded Systems

Linux Devices Embedded Linux Newsletter. The May 16, 2002 edition of the Linux Devices Embedded Linux Newsletter looks at the SNOM 100 VOIP phone, the Rio Central digital audio center, the ELC's platform standard, NIC contest winners, and more.

Libraries

Override the GNU C library -- painlessly (IBMdeveloperWorks). Here is a developerWorks article on working around glibc return arguments. "What do you do if you don't have the source for your application and it's failing because a GNU Library for C (glibc) function is returning something bad to the application? Because glibc is open-source, you can of course get the source code, make your changes, rebuild, and install. This is not for the faint of heart, however, because although the API is well documented, the internal organization of the GNU C library is not. Finding the correct function prototypes is only the first of many challenges. It's a big package as well, so the first time you compile, it will take some time (glibc 2.2.2 has 8,552 files and 1,775,440 lines of code, including comments)."

Mail Software

Mailman 2.0.11 released. Mailman 2.0.11 has been announced. There are fixes for a couple of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in this release, so an upgrade is recommended.

System Administration

Poor Sysadmin's Guide to Remote Linux Administration (O'Reilly). O'Reilly is running an article by Kendall Clark that shows how to set up a Daemon Monitoring Daemon (DMD). " I suppose for many free software users, uptime mania is something of an occupational hazard. There is a kind of Zen-like sysadmin virtue which comes from implementing a clever, efficient, and inexpensive hack, but especially if that hack increases uptime and service quality."

Web-site Development

MnoGoSearch version 3.2.4. Version 3.2.4 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine is available. Lots of improvements and bug fixes are included - see the change log for the details.

Analog version 5.23. Version 5.23 of the Analog web log file analyzer is available. The What's New document lists the changes, which are mainly security related.

Zope Members News. The latest Zope Members News examines new releases of TextIndexNG, MySQL User Folder, and External Editor.

Using Zope With Apache (Developer Shed). Developer Shed looks at Zope/Apache integration. "While Zope is a remarkably full-featured solution, it's not always the best one for a live Web site or Web application. If you're developing a complex Web application with sophisticated business logic and lots of interconnected routines, Zope is a great sandbox to play in. If, on the other hand, you're merely putting up Grandma's chocolate chip cookies on the Web, you're going to find Zope way too complex for your relatively-simpler needs."

Miscellaneous

Guikachu 1.2.0: 'The Inevitable Return' released. A new version of Guikachu has been announced. "Guikachu is the premiere solution for creating PalmOS resource files on UNIX operating systems, and it is also available as Free Software, as defined by the GNU GPL." This version features support for string list resources, usability improvements, support for the eBookMan palmtop, better font support, and bug fixes.

OpenSSH 3.2.2 released. OpenSSH has released OpenSSH 3.2.2. Security fixes and other changes are available in this release.

O'Reilly's Linux DevCenter features an article by Noel Davis that looks at the new version of OpenSSH in addition to a few more security updates.

Schedutils 0.0.5 released. A new release of the schedutils suite of tools for manipulating the Linux scheduler has been announced.

Application Links
GIMP
Mozilla
Galeon
High Availability
ht://Dig
mnoGoSearch
MagicPoint
Wine
Worldforge
Zope

Open Source Code Collections
Berlios
Freshmeat
OpenSourceDirectory
Savannah
Le Serveur Libre
SourceForge
Sweetcode

Desktop Development

Audio Applications

AlsaPlayer 0.99.70. AlsaPlayer version 0.99.70 has been released. Changes include: "lots of bug fixes, brandnew libalsaplayer API, new FLAC input plugin, new JACK output plugin. XING header parsing, etc."

WaveSurfer version 1.4 released. A new version of the WaveSurfer audio file visualization and manipulation tool has been released. Version 1.4 features new pitch and formant tracking capabilities, bug fixes, and better documentation. See the changes file for more information.

Web Browsers

Galeon 2 beta coming soon (FootNotes). According to FootNotes, a new beta release of Galeon 2 is coming soon.

Mozilla Status Update. The May 16, 2002 Mozilla Status Update covers module updates for Necko, Imagelib, and XPCOM.

Netscape 7.0 Preview Release 1 (MozillaZine). MozillaZine has an announcement for a new version of Netscape. "Netscape today unveiled Netscape 7.0 Preview Release 1, the first beta of its successor to Netscape 6. The preview is based on the recent Mozilla 1.0 RC2 build and features most of the enhancements that have been added to Mozilla since Netscape 6.2 was released, including tabbed browsing, print preview, the ability to save complete web pages, email return receipts, message labels and S/MIME support."

Desktop Environments

Knoda 0.5.2 has been released. Version 0.5.2 of the Knoda relational database GUI for KDE has been released. This version features bug fixes and a newly rewritten grid widget, among other things.

KDE on Cygwin: 2.2.2 Beta 1 Release Available. Version 2.2.2 Beta 1 of KDE on Cygwin has been announced. "The KDE on Cygwin project, the project to port Qt and KDE to Windows, has announced the first beta release of KDE 2.2.2 for Cygwin and Cygwin/XFree86."

GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 5: "Reciprocity". The GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 5 release, "Reciprocity", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure!

This week's GNOME Summary. Here's the GNOME Summary for May 18. It looks at the fifth GNOME 2 beta, the upcoming Galeon2 release, Freedesktop.org, and numerous other topics.

Games

New stuff on PyGame. The PyGame site features new versions of Pyddr and Cog engine.

GUI Packages

FLTK news. The latest news additions on the FLTK site include a new version of fltdj, The Daily Journal 0.6.1, and a chooser design contest for FLTK.

Open Motif Call for Participation. There is a Call for Participation on the Open Motif site. "The OpenMotif team is looking for people to help define and develop OpenMotif 2.3! A lot of progress has been made since the original 2.2 release, but there is much more to be done."

Glade 1.1.0 released (FootNotes). The FootNotes site mentions a new release of the Glade GUI builder for GTK+ 2 and GNOME 2. Testers are needed.

Interoperability

Kernel Cousin Wine #123. Issue #123 of Kernel Cousin Wine covers the May 9 release of Wine, component owners, patch trading, global Wine configuration, WineLib, Cross-compiling Wine, and more.

Office Applications

AbiWord Weekly News #92. This week's AbiWord Weekly News is out, with the latest development news from the AbiWord word processor project. Bug fixing continues to be the main topic.

Languages and Tools

Caml

The Caml Weekly News. The May 21, 2002 edition of the Caml Weekly News covers C stubs, COM binding with CAMLIDL, Dynamic Caml v0.2, Surreal-0.0.3, and solutions for OCaml packaging problems.

The Caml Hump. This week's Caml Hump looks at Hevea - A quite complete and fast LATEX to HTML translator, Surreal - An exact real arithmetic library for objective Caml, Dynamic Caml - A high-level run-time code generation library for Objective Caml, and mlglade - A Glade to OCaml compiler.

Haskell

Haskell Communities and Activities Report. The second edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report has been announced. Check it out to see what the Haskell community has been up to in the last six months.

Java

Double-checked locking and the Singleton pattern (IBM developerWorks). Peter Haggar writes about pitfalls with Java's Double-checked locking. "The Java programming language contains several useful programming idioms. It also contains some that further study has shown should not be used. Double-checked locking is one such idiom that should never be used. In this article, Peter Haggar examines the roots of the double-checked locking idiom, why it was developed, and why it doesn't work."

Why Data Binding Matters (O'Reilly). Brett McLaughlin discusses the Java Data Binding API for XML. "OK, I know what you're thinking: 'So now I'm going to be told that I need another API for working with XML. Come on, give me a break!'"

Perl

The Perl You Need To Know - Part 3 (O'Reilly). Stas Bekman continues his series on Perl with Part 3. "This article is the third in our series talking about the essential Perl basics that you should know before starting to program for mod_perl.

You will hear a lot about namespaces, symbol tables and lexical scoping in Perl discussions"

Perl 6 Answers (use Perl). Use Perl has the answers to the questions that were asked in last week's online poll for Perl 6 questions.

PHP

Using Java objects in PHP scripts (Zend). John Coggeshall discusses the use of Java objects in PHP scripts in a two part article. See part 1 and Part 2 of the article.

Python

Py in Print (O'Reilly). Stephen Figgins talks about the Python technical journal, Py. "When Bryan Richard wrote me a few months ago to ask if I thought a Python magazine would make it, I told him it probably would, if it were a labor of love. I didn't think he would make much money off the venture, but it would sure be great to have something out there. Maybe it could take off the way The Perl Journal did. Bryan decided it was love, and a few months later, the first issue Py was mailed out to early subscribers."

The Daily Python-URL. This week, the Daily Python-URL looks at stackless Python, MoinMoin, Python's evolution, a new Python Business Forum, and wxHTML for beginners.

Ruby

The Ruby Garden. This week, The Ruby Garden looks at nested classes, a rand method for Enumerable, Perl's Parrot and Ruby, Ruby hashes, and more.

The Ruby Weekly News. The Ruby Weekly News for May 20, 2002 looks at the following Ruby projects: REXML 2.3.3, DBTalk 0.6, FXRuby-1.0.10, JRuby 1.6/0.5.0 beta, RubyRED 1.0 alpha, XML Serialization 1.0.pre3, and the RubyEclipse IDE.

Miscellaneous

Revenge of the Nerds. Paul Graham has expanded on his keynote on programming languages, with the paper entitled revenge of the nerds.

The pointy-haired boss miraculously combines two qualities that are common by themselves, but rarely seen together: (a) he knows nothing whatsoever about technology, and (b) he has very strong opinions about it.

Suppose, for example, you need to write a piece of software. The pointy-haired boss has no idea how this software has to work, and can't tell one programming language from another, and yet he knows what language you should write it in. Right: he thinks you should write it in Java.

Lisp programmers, in particular, should like this piece.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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