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See also: last week's Development page.

Development tools


Java

The latest status reports on the JDK 1.2 from blackdown.org indicate that the JDK 1.2 is running on Intel and PowerPC platforms, though currently only with native threads. Ports to SparcLinux and other platforms are underway. Current estimate is a release date "in less than a month from now". No date for "now" is listed, but the page indicated that it was last modified on January 11th.

J.P.Lewis announced his network file synchronization utility, version 1.1., developed with Blackdown jdk1.1.7a.

Kirk Hutchinson posted a note voicing his opinion that the jdk 1.2 was released way too early and suffers with many problems as a result. Other comments confirmed this opinion, though there were indications that 1.2 contains some significant speed improvements. Hopefully as Sun's code becomes more and more open, we can expect to see some better initial releases, or at least fast fixes for reported problems.

In response to many people who offered to help test the Linux port of JDK 1.2, Steve Byrne explained that they are not legally allowed to put out pre-release versions until they pass the JCK (Java Compatibility Kit). Getting the Linux port to pass the JCK is exactly where they are working now.

Marcel Ruff posted some hints on running VisiBroker on Linux and a minor update to the hints came from Ron Resnick.

On another note, it appears that the java-linux mailing list may be looking for a new home.

Perl

The Java Review Service is looking for developers to volunteer as judges for new sections on their web site, including a new section on Perl.

An introduction to Perl Tutorial is being held in Boulder, CO from January 26th through the 28th and still has a few openings.

  • Puppet::Body, a new module to manage dynamic has-a relations between objects
  • DbFramework, version 1.06, a collection of classes for manipulating Mysql databases

Python

Guido van Rossum has released IDLE 0.2, the latest pre-release of his Tkinter-based IDE for Python. The latest version has a long list of changes, including the ability to write and configure your own IDLE extension modules. See extend.txt in the new release for more details. Separately, he has released ScriptBinding.py to fix a reported problem in the new release.

Oliver Andrich has updated his RPM Python distribution, see his note for details.

For another report on the Seventh International Python Conference, see this article in the current Dr. Dobbs Journal.

And, of course, this section wouldn't be complete without this week's Python-URL.

Smalltalk

GTK Squeak Smalltalk, otherwise known as GTalk, is a fork in the Squeak source code which "uses the object engine of Squeak 2.1 and binds the GTK+ widget set to Squeak". GTalk uses only native widgets, is highly experimental and far from complete. However, the homepage for GTalk (linked above) provides all you need to get started.

VisualWorks 3.0 for Linux has been released. Here is the press release. Some fun points to note, they comment that the port to Linux took less than ten minutes, ran without a hitch and with an immediate speed improvement ...

Tcl/tk

This week's Tcl-URL! is now available. It contains some good pointers to excellent information postings on topics such as how to write daemons in Tcl, advice on color palettes and more.

January 14, 1999

   

 

Development projects


GNOME

Version 0.99.3 of GNOME, called the "Profiling Bonobo Release", is now available. It appears to contain lots of bug fixes, code cleanup, and some speed improvements.

Version 0.3.2 of gwp, the GNOME word processor, has been announced.

ht://Dig

Geoff Hutchison wrote in with some notes on ht://Dig. First, he's called for a feature freeze for the upcoming 3.1.0 release at midnight, Friday, January 15, 1999. With the freeze and a few weeks to squash some bugs, the new release should be the most stable yet. Geoff also mentioned that they just brought up a new, dedicated server for htdig.org and will be slowly adding new services. Anyone interested in helping out with any aspect of development should check out the htdig web pages.

Mozilla

As always, for the latest Mozilla news, we recommend the MozillaZine. Their most amusing item this week is Music to Code By, selections of music currently being listened to by Mozilla developers ...

Linuxconf

An Aussie Linuxconf mirror site is now available.

Wine

Wine-990113 has been released and is now available at Wine Headquarters.

Douglas Ridgway is the New Maintainer for the Wine FAQ, replacing Dave Gardner, who has done an excellent job for so long.

Zope

Digital Creations has announced the release of the source code for DCOracle, their Python extension module for Oracle. It sounds like their staff is expanding as well, so expect to see more announcements from them over the coming year.
 
 

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