See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

A new release of the GStreamer streaming-media framework, dubbed "Critical Mass", version 0.2.0 has been announced. "This release features a completely new scheduler, updated capabilities and autoplugging subsystems, a large number of new plugins, and a bunch of bug fixes."

GStreamer appears to be a very ambitious project, providing a broad framework for the development of many types of multimedia applications. Numerous flavors of Linux are currently supported along with FreeBSD. GStreamer is already being ported to several commercial Unix flavors, and more Unix versions are in the works. There are plans to make GStreamer work under MacOS X and Windows. The upcoming move from GTK+ to Glib 2.0 will allow for independence from a single windowing environment.

With the concept of generic audio and video sources and sinks, as well as the ability to route streams through filters, many types of multimedia functions can be implemented. GStreamer can be used to make mp3 players, DVD players, audio and video editors, mixing boards, and browser plugins, to mention a few possibilities. To get an idea of the breadth of this project, take a look at the GStreamer Status Tables.

The latest source code tar balls and RPMs are available from the GStreamer download page, Debian packages are being assembled.

Those who are interested in contributing to the GStreamer project should look at the developer information for a list of items that need attention. GStreamer is licensed under the LGPL and its plugins are typically released with GPL or BSD licenses.

It will be interesting to watch the development of GStreamer and its associated applications as they mature. If enough interest is generated, this critical mass may yet provide the focus for an explosion of new, cool applications on Linux and elsewhere.

Browsers

Mozilla 0.9.1. The latest version of Mozilla, version 0.9.1, has been released for testing. Updates include much better stability, an updated status bar that merges the old status and task bars, and improved LDAP support for Mozilla Mail.

Clusters

Sandia supercomputer program released to public. Sandia National Laboratories has released its Cplant (Computational Plant) system software for Linux machines. "A computer program that enables a collection of off-the-shelf desktop computers to rank among the world's fastest supercomputers has been released to the public by Sandia National Laboratories. The program, called Cplant[tm] system software, dramatically extends the capability of researchers to modularly assemble large blocks of off-the-shelf computer components." Cplant is being released with a GPL license.

Documentation

LDP weekly updates. This week's updates to the Linux Documentation Project have been posted. A new Initialization for IA-32 HOWTO is available and updates have been posted to the HOWTOs for modems, serial i/o, and text terminals.

Education

Linux in education report #46. This week's Linux in Education report discusses software for tracking exchange students, introductory Linux courses for colleges, and Avanti, a project for a platform independent automated library system.

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux Newsletter for June 7, 2001 (LinuxDevices). The weekly Embedded Linux Newsletter has been released for this week. Top stories include coverage of Ripley, a wearable computer and the Sharp Zaurus move to Linux.

Network Management

Ganymede 1.0 released. After years of development, version 1.0 of the Ganymede network directory system has been released. "Ganymede allows large groups of administrators to share administrative control over designated portions of a master network directory database, and provides transactional reliability and intelligent constraint management to keep network directories consistent."

Your Network's Secret Life, Part 2 (Linux Journal). This article from Linux Journal reviews EtherApe as a tool in watching local networks. "EtherApe is a graphical network monitor that lets you see the action taking place over your network connection. EtherApe displays live connections in a manner that lets you visualize which connections are busier than others. The nodes appear bigger as larger amounts of traffic go across your network."

Science

FreeGIS CD version 1.1.0. A new release of the FreeGIS software CD is now available. This CD contains various software to analyse and visualise spatial data to make maps, including GRASS, MapIT! and gpsman as well as other software.

Software Development

Release 1.2.0 of the GNU Visual Debugger. A new release of the Gnu Visual Debugger has been announced. Release 1.2.0 contains numerous new features including an enhanced breakpoint editor, a data window with zoom capabilities , a break on exceptions feature, and more. GVD supports the C, C++, and Ada languages.

Web-site Development

mnoGoSearch 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 released. Versions 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 of the mnoGoSearch web search engine have been released. The project history details the changes, which include bug fixes and support for the DMALLOC memory debugger under version 3.1.5. Version 3.1.6 includes fixes for potential cgi exploits in search.cgi and bugs when using lower case flags.

Mod_python 2.7.5 released. Version 2.7.5 of the mod_python Apache/Python integration software has been released. This version adds support for Python 2.1.

AxKit v1.4 released (use Perl). A new release of AxKit, the XML/XSL application server for mod_perl and Apache has been released. The new release contains a large number of changes since the last version.

Zope Weekly News for June 9, 2001. The June 9, 2001 edition of the Zope Weekly News features the latest developments in the Zope world. An announcement has been posted for the first European Zope conference, a new beta release of CMF1.1 is out, revisions proposals are discussed, and new Zope T-shirts are available.

Miscellaneous

Attorney Dan Ravicher on Open Source Legal Issues (Slashdot). Slashdot has posted an FAQ on Open Source and Free Software licensing issues written by attourney Dan Ravicher. Software developers might want to take a look.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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

Programming Languages

Ada

GtkAda 1.2.12 release. A new version of GtkAda, the Ada95 graphical toolkit based on Gtk+ has been announced. This version supports GVD 1.2.0 (see above), and features numerous updates and improved documentation.

APL

Sharp APL for Linux. Sharp has introduced a free verson of APL for Linux. Those familiar with APL know that it uses non standard glyphs instead of regular ASCII characters. To make life easier for the APL programmer, one company offers special APL keyboard decals. that stick onto a PC keyboard. (thanks to John McKown)

Caml

Caml Weekly News for June 6 through 12, 2001. The June 6 through 12, 2001 edition of the CAML Weekly News is out. Topics include the O'Caml Runtime Environment, a tutorial and survey on type theory, and a discussion on the lack of let mutable in O'caml.

Erlang

Erlang R7B-3 released. The R7B-3 release of Erlang has been announced. This release contains mostly bug fixes.

Java

Take control of the DOM, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks). Gary Cole and William F. Phillips discuss the writing of Java weblets in part 2 of a 3 part IBM developerWorks article. Part 1 in the series discusses the use of the Document Object Model (DOM).

Lisp

Recent additions to CLOCC. A number of recent additions have been added to the Common Lisp Open Code Collection (CLOCC) site. Included are a Lisp chess game, a graphical interface design tool, a unit testing environment, a library installation tool, and more.

Perl

Damian Opens YAPC with Perl 6 Overview (use Perl). Taking Larry Wall's place, Damian Conway opened the YAPC conference with an introduction to Perl 6. The design phase of Perl 6 is supposed to be completed by the end of 2001 and the software is scheduled to be released sometime in mid 2002.

CPAN updates (use Perl). The CPAN scripts index is working (again). Also there is now a CPAN update mailing list to keep you informed of new uploads to CPAN.

Perl 5 and 6 Porters for June 12, 2001. The June 12, 2001 issue of the Perl 5 Porters digest is out. Topics include removing dependence on strtol, regex negation, and a discussion on the need for more Perl committers. The June 12, 2001 edition of the Perl 6 Porters digest is also available, with discussions on unicode, properties and use strict, regular expressions, and more.

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for June 11, 2001. The June 11, 2001 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary is available. Topics include a new PHP release candidate: PHP 4.0.6 RC 3, and bugs involving PHP and the alpha version of Apache 2.

Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for June 11th, 2001. The Dr. Dobb's Python URL for June 11, 2001 has been published.. Discussions this past week ran from calls for more contributions to the Cookbook, to intelligent agents and the release of MapIt 1.0, a web based raster map navigator.

Python-dev summary. This week's Python-dev summary is out, with coverage of the demise of the strop module, dictionary performance improvements, and more.

Sketch 0.6.11, a vector drawing program. Sketch version 0.6.11 has been released. "Sketch is a vector drawing program for Linux and other unices. It's intended to be a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes. It has advanced features like gradients, text along a path and clip masks and is fully scriptable due to its implementation in a combination of Python and C." This version features bug fixes and an updated Spanish translation.

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for June 11th. This week's summary of the Tcl discussion groups is available from Dr. Dobb's. This past week saw some connectivity problems that prevented some postings to reach Google, but the information is available from alternative archives. Topics include a summary of the second European Tcl Users Meeting, Tcl and unicode, working with Roman numerals, Tk in embedded Linux, tclperl 2.3, and gnocl 0.0.3.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

Next: Commerce