See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

Version 3.0 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, has been announced. GCC, provides compilers for the languages C, C++, Objective C, Fortran, and now Java. GCC works on a wide variety of processor platforms. GCC is, of course, licensed under the GPL license.

The list of major new features in GCC 3.0 includes:

• a Native-code Java compiler for faster run times and freedom from proprietary compilers.
• Rewritten support for Intel and AMD 32 bit processors which provides faster run times on these common platforms.
• Support for the Intel IA-64 (Itanium) Processor which will allow code to be ported to this new architecture.
• Support for more CPU families including chips from Atmel, Motorola, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, and Sun.
• Improved C++ support with better ISO C++ standards compatibility and numerous bug fixes as well as a new Application Binary Interface (ABI) for C++.
• Improved documentation including automated generation of man pages from Texinfo documentation.

For a complete and detailed list of the new features, see the official GCC 3.0 New Features document.

ZD Net is running an article about GCC 3.0 by Stephen Shankland which looks at some of the history behind GCC. The article points out that even Microsoft, despite its recent criticisms of the GPL, has a project known as Interix which features GCC as one of the key components.

No doubt, it will take a while for GCC 3.0 to show up in the major Linux distributions. Recompiling all of the code that makes up an entire distribution will, no doubt, take some time and will reveal new bugs in the compiler and the source code. Progress marches on.

For those of you who want to get started playing with GCC 3.0, downloads are available here.

Audio

Ogg Vorbis decode RC 1. Release candidate 1 of the Ogg Vorbis decoder library has been released. "This release is a 100% feature complete implementation of the Ogg Vorbis decoder libraries." Ogg Vorbis is an open source audio compression scheme with capabilities similar to the popular MP3 format. Work is also progressing on the accompanying encoding tools.

Ecawave 0.4.0 released. Version 0.4.0 of the Ecawave graphical sound editing tool has been released. This is considered to be a stable release. This version features bug fixes, and no more dependency on Qt.

Databases

Types of JOINs (O'Reilly OnLamp). John Paul Ashenfelter discusses the details of database JOINs in an O'Reilly OnLamp article. "One of the fundamental challenges in understanding SQL is becoming comfortable with thinking about data in terms of mathematical sets and relational algebra. This is similar to the challenge procedural programmers face when making the transition to object-oriented languages -- things are just simply different and the old rules simply don't apply. Joins force you to think in a set-oriented way."

Documentation

LDP Weekly News. The Linux Documentation Project had a busy week, with 19 updated documents, including an updated Linux Installation HOWTO from Eric Raymond. Three new documents are also available, the GNU/Linux Post-Installation Checklist, the Home Electrical Device mini HOWTO, and the Linux Loadable Kernel Module HOWTO.

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux Newsletter for June 14th, 2001. The Embedded Linux Newsletter this week mentioned formation of an industry group to standardize embedded Linux for set top boxes. The formation of the new group, known as the TV Linux Alliance, is summarized along with many other stories in the weekly Embedded Linux Newsletter.

Interoperability

Wine Weekly News issue 22. Issue 22 of the Wine Weekly News has been published. Included is a discussion of getting ActiveX working with Konqueror, talk of building a Wine kernel module, and information on the applicability of the Stanford kernel checker to other projects, among other things.

Network Management

OpenNMS Update for June 20, 2001. The June 20, 2001 issue of the OpenNMS Update covers the announced delay of 0.7.6 due to bugs uncovered during the beta test of that release. Other project status information is also included.

Printing Systems

Omni Printer Driver version 0.3 released. Version 0.3 of the Omni Printer Driver has been released. This version features a number of new features that are documented in the Changelog.

Science

Stallman: Science must `push copyright aside' (nature). Nature.com is running an article by Richard Stallman in which he discusses copyright issues and dissemination of scientific literature. "The modern technology for scientific publishing, however, is the World Wide Web. What rules would best ensure the maximum dissemination of scientific articles, and knowledge, on the Web? Articles should be distributed in non-proprietary formats, with open access for all. And everyone should have the right to `mirror' articles; that is, to republish them verbatim with proper attribution."

Web-site Development

Zope Weekly News for June 17, 2001. The Zope Weekly News for June 17th, 2001 is available. This edition covers the upcoming EuroZope conference, a new Zope Developer's Guide, and Zope-cmf.

Midgard Weekly Summary. This week's Midgard Weekly Summary includes a note on case study plans and the new Nadmin Studio 1.4 interface.

New ZODB release. Andrew Kuchling has announced a new release of the Zope Object Database. The ZODB release contains just the object data store, without the rest of the Zope structure; it can be a most useful tool for people wanting to write Python applications with persistent objects, but who are not interested in the Zope web application framework.

mod_lisp 2.0 released. A completely rewritten version of mod_lisp, the Apache web server plug-in has been released. Mod_lisp is released under a FreeBSD style license and the code is considered to be beta level.

Window Systems

GTK+ 1.3.6 released. A new release of the GTK+ libraries is now available to developers. This release makes the set of four libraries included in the pre-2.0 line a single distribution which can be built with a single configure/make/make install sequence. Libraries included in this package include GLib, Pango (the new text rendering library), Atk (a new accessibility library) and GTK. Note that the API is mostly frozen at this point and no major API changes are expected before the 2.0 release.

Miscellaneous

IBM iSCSI and Itanium projects (IBM). IBM has published updated information for two development projects. The iSCSI project site provides CVS access to kernel updates and information on the SCSI-over-IP project.

The AlphaWorks site contains information on an updated Developer Kit for the Itanium processor with support for glibc 2.2 on Red Hat Linux 7.1 and Turbolinux..

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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Programming Languages

C

cURL 7.8 available. A new release of cURL has been announced. "Curl is a tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, GOPHER, TELNET, DICT, FILE and LDAP. Curl supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, kerberos, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication, file transfer resume, http proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks." A new version of the Python extension to the cURL library, pycURL, is also available.

Caml

Caml Weekly News for June 12 through 19, 2001. The June 12 through 19, 2001 issue of the Caml Weekl News is available. Topics include interfacing C threads with O'caml, ocamlweb 1.0, and several new English language introductions to O'Caml.

Haskell

Glasgow Haskell Compiler 5.00.2 released. Version 5.00.2 of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) has been announced. This release contains a number of bug fixes. Also, version 1.06 of the York Haskell Compiler (nhc98) has been released with its own set of bug fixes and some new features.

Java

Take command of your client/server apps (IBM developerWorks). Barry A. Fiegenbaum discusses Java client/server programming in an IBM developerWorks article. "The Java language, with its easy access to TCP/IP-based sockets and its ability to stream objects over them, makes it easy to exchange command messages between clients and their associated servers".

Lisp

cCLan News debut. The first edition of the Comprehensive Common Lisp Archive Network (cCLan) News has been announced. The cCLan site is just coming together, expect to see more as time passes.

Perl

New XML-RPC suite for Perl: RPC::XML (use Perl). The first full release of the Perl XML-RPC package has been announced. "The module includes a client class, a basic server class (that uses your choice of HTTP::Daemon or Net::Server as a transport layer) and a subclass of the basic server that hooks in as a mod_perl content handler."

PHP

PHP and Java (O'Reilly's onLamp). W J Gilmore looks at the Java extension for PHP in an O'Reilly onLamp article. "Do PHP developers ever sleep? I'm starting to wonder what these caffeine-entranced insomniacs are going to think of next. I'm asking this question because I can't seem to understand how PHP always seems to have just the right extension to accomplish the task at-hand."

Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for June 18, 2001. The June 18, 2001 issue of the Python-URL! has been published by Dr. Dobb's. Topics include version 0.3 of the Quixote Web development toolkit, a new ZODB and ZEO package, PyClimate 1.1 for looking at atmospheric and oceanic data, a post from Guido about GPL issues that have been fixed since Python 1.61, and a new tutorial on floating point.

Python 2.0.1c1 released. Guido van Rossum has announced Python 2.0.1c1. While this is mostly a bugfix release, the major news is that this version is now fully compatible with the GPL license. A plan to make a GPL compatible version of Python 2.1.1 was also mentioned. That release should show up within a month.

QuantLib-Python 0.1.9 released. Version 0.1.9 of QuantLib-Python has been announced. "QuantLib-Python is the SWIG Python wrap of QuantLib. QuantLib (http://quantlib.org) is a C++ open source library for quantitative finance."

Ruby

debut of the Ruby Garden news portal. A news portal for the Ruby language has been set up. Check out Ruby Garden for the latest happenings in the world of Ruby.

Smalltalk

Squeak News e-zine. Squeak News, a new interactive online e-zine that is dedicated to the use of the open source Squeak smalltalk compiler, has been announced.

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for June 18, 2001. This week's edition of the Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is now available. Topics include availability of papers from the second European Tcl/Tk users meeting, Tcl install shell version 1.2, and a Tcl implementation of a Turing Machine simulation language.

XML

3 myths of XML (O'Reilly xml.com). Kendall Grant Clark looks at some XML myths in an O'Reilly xml.com article:

• "The first myth rests on a confusion about the meanings of words like "free" and "open" when they are applied to XML-encoded information.
• The second myth is that XML is magical, that it has some unique properties that makes impossible things possible.
• The third is that technology, including XML, is more determinative of social relations and institutions than they are of it."

Miscellaneous

Unix's lessons for component architectures (IBM developerWorks). Peter Seebach discusses component architecture and code reuse in this IBM developerWorks article.
"Unix provides a beautiful example of an architecture that achieves many of the goals of component architecture, including portability and code reuse. Some of the key benefits include:

• Shell scripts are broadly portable among Unix systems. Programs in C or Perl are generally fairly portable, too.
• No other system has ever had a component used as broadly as grep.
• Code reuse is actually practical in a Unix environment.
• Ad hoc and scripting capabilities available for Unix support rapid prototyping and testing.
• Time is spent focused on solving problems, not filling out checklists of API features."

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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