General Development Archive

As a system administrator, you run across numerous challenges and problems. Managing users, disk space, processes, devices, and backups can cause many system administrators to lose their hair, good humor, or sanity. Shell scripts can help, but they often have frustrating limitations. This is where a full-featured scripting language, such as Python, can turn a tedious task into an easy one. Python is a scripting language that looks like it was made for system administrators.

Recently, Free Pascal (FPC) version 2.2.0 was released. This open source Pascal compiler has - since its initial release in 1993 - grown to be one of the most sophisticated open source compilers available today. Daily, more programmers discover FPC and develop their applications in Object Pascal. Specifically, the development of Lazarus has contributed to this phenomenon: Lazarus is a graphical open source IDE for FPC, with an extensive tool kit to design graphical (GUI) applications.

Python 3.0, 'Python 3000', has reached its first public release. This version will be followed by beta releases throughout 2008, and the final release is scheduled for August 2008. "Python 3000 ('Py3k', and released as Python 3.0) is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed."

Bruno Souza, the NetBeans Community Manager for Sun, wrote: "As you all know, we are working hard for the release of NetBeans 6.0. The new release will bring exciting technical features and this is a great time to consider what else can we do to empower the NetBeans Community. As a result of requests from the comunity, we are considering the potential adoption of a new license model. We are considering releasing a future early access version of NetBeans 6.0 under a dual licensing scheme of CDDL and GPL v2 with Classpath exception. A move like this would be well received by many of the NetBeans contributors, and will benefit the community at large."

"This article describes how to easily create a user interface using Python bindings, Edje, Embryo, and Animations. The application will be a small application launcher and the actual interface will be written using edje and animations. The python part doesn't have any knowledge of the interface, where the icons are placed, how they should move, nor if they are using some kind of effect, like for instance pulsing. All it does is listen for 'selected' signals."

Oracle's TechCast crew interviewed Chris Mason on Btrfs. A kind-of transcript is available here. Btrfs is a new filesystem for Linux developed by Oracle. It features: "extent based file storage (264 max file size); space efficient packing of small files; space efficient indexed directories; dynamic inode allocation; writable snapshots; subvolumes (separate internal filesystem roots); object level mirroring and striping; checksums on data and metadata (multiple algorithms available); strong integration with device mapper for multiple device support; online filesystem check; very fast offline filesystem check; efficient incremental backup and FS mirroring."

Jeroen van der Zijp, the author of Fox Toolkit, has kindly given kerkythea.net an interview. The Fox Toolkit is a platform independent GUI that has matured over the last years to become one of the fastest and well structured APIs.

Firefox add-ons, or extensions, are small programs that run inside the browser in order to customize some behaviors. In theory, it is possible to develop and maintain a multilingual, multiversion and multiOS Firefox add-on. In practice, there are many obstacles to overcome in order to create and to maintain a working Firefox add-on in one language for one Firefox version and for one OS.

This article demonstrates the art of using powerful Eclipse wizardtry that that automates the creation of classes, interfaces, projects, other resources. Eclipse wizards are a great way to define repeatable templates for file types when the built-in template functionality won't suffice. After working through the information, you will be able to implement your own speed wizards in Eclipse to create enhanced functionality very quickly.

On June 2nd 2007, a new version of GNU Emacs has been released. Emacs version 22 includes GTK+ toolkit support, enhanced mouse support, a new keyboard macro system, improved Unicode support, drag-and-drop operation on X, as well as many new modes and packages including a graphical user interface to GDB, Python mode, the mathematical tool Calc, the remote file editing system Tramp, and more.

"A startup in Alameda, Calif. plans to release a kind of holy software grail the third or fourth week of June. Lina said its dual-licensed Lina virtual Linux machine will run more or less normal Linux applications under Windows, Mac, or Linux, with a look and feel native to each."

"Hoard is a scalable memory allocator (malloc replacement) for multithreaded applications. Hoard can dramatically improve your application's performance on multiprocessor machines. No changes to your source are necessary; just link it in. Hoard scales linearly up to at least 14 processors. The supported platforms include Linux, Solaris, and Windows NT/2000/XP."

To celebrate the 1000th article of the magazine Obligement, Carl Sassenrath returns through this long interview on its origins at Amiga Inc. in the 1980's (Manager of AmigaOS and Amiga CDTV system development, among others), the bankruptcy of Commodore, its passages at Apple Computer and Viscorp, Amiga NG, or on its new revolutionary language REBOL. A classic name in the Silicon Valley!

"When you're designing and developing new software systems, it is often hard to see how all the pieces are suppose to fit together. Unified Modeling Language is one tool that allow developers and architects to ease the process and create a big picture before committing to a particular technology."