General Development Archive

Version 1.3 of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure is now available. LLVM is a open-source system that focuses on providing compiler components to build all kinds of compiler-related programs, including traditional static compilers, JIT compilers, profile systems, debuggers, script engines, etc. Release 1.3 provides many new features, including new beta support for PowerPC code generation and improvements to the C/C++ compiler's optimizer.

PHP 5.0.1 is a maintenance release which adds many non-critical bugfixes and new Unix and Windows installation documentation which is auto-generated from the PHP Manual. Gambas 0.97 is now compiled with gcc 3.4. A new class, Settings, allows you to manage configuration files. The divide operator now behaves exactly as in other BASIC languages; it returns the whole floating point result, and not the integer part only. FOX 1.2.9 back-ports an FXTopWindow placement patch and fixes a bug in inquireDNDTypes(). FOX 1.3.8 (development) adds an FXSplashWindow class, an FXMemMap class for memory mapped files, and some missing APIs to FXFileSelector and FXFileDialog.

"A couple of years ago I wrote a paper about what I'd do if I were asked to design a window system today. I never published it other than to hand it around to a few friends. So now, it's here," Java's James Gosling writes.

Absoft Corporation has announced immediate availability of its new high performance Pro Fortran tool kit version 9.0 for Macintosh OS X. Absoft’s Pro Fortran Compiler Suite is the most complete Macintosh Fortran tool kit available from any vendor and includes: Fortran 95 and C/C++ compilers, a powerful Integrated Development Environment, the market-leading Fx2™ Debugger, and free graphics libraries.

Perl is one of the most popular languages out there, and is used for everything from mission-critical projects to Web applications to "glue." It is not, however, often used for GUI programming and prototyping. The author thinks it should be, and you probably will too -- after this look at some of the more complex widgets available for Perl/Tk.

I first started programming C in high school. Most of what I learned was from a book I bought myself. The class itself wasn't very good. The book I had on C didn't teach me everything a beginning programmer needs to know.

This Freshmeat article proposes a new technique for how desktops can integrate console applications.

What follows in the article is an analysis of the "dependency hell" problem in Linux and the issues surrounding software installation. I make a proposal of my own and critique the suggested "solutions" to these problems and point my finger at "the" (my perception) source of these problems.

If you're a programmer who's become fed up with software bloat, then may you find herein the perfect antidote. This document explores methods for squeezing excess bytes out of simple programs.

Learning how to use the API for OpenSSL -- the best-known open library for secure communication -- can be intimidating, because the documentation is incomplete. Fill in the gaps, and tame the API, with the tips in this article. After setting up a basic connection, see how to use OpenSSL's BIO library to set up both a secured and unsecured connection. And learn a bit about error detection as well.

Most of us that work in the IT industry have been around for a long time. We started out in our parents basement writing code in some BASIC environment, ussually Commodore BASIC or QBASIC. Do you remember how thrilling it was? Your first program and it was something extremely basic but the point was it worked. Some of us got hooked right away and kept trying to solve problems and added more and more pushing the capabilities of whatever language we used. As we got older the environments progressed and the programming tools progressed and got more complicated.

OOVM produces a virtual machine that allows programmers to hook in remotely and modify code on the fly without needing to reboot the environment: which is very useful indeed. It makes software updates transparent to the user.

For many developers, there's usually more than one dynamic language that they use to do their jobs. It's also ActiveState's job with its latest IDE release for professional developers using open source dynamic languages, Komodo 3.0. Dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl and XLST are all part of the Komodo IDE, which strives to make developers lives easier by offering a common interface and toolset to develop in multiple languages.

Service Pack 4 (SP4) allows existing eVC4 users to target Windows CE 5.0 based devices. In addition to supporting the new Windows CE 5.0 platform, SP4 is cumulative in nature and includes support for Windows CE 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 based platforms as well. This download must be installed on top of existing eVC4 installations (the full eMbedded VC++ 4.x is free to download).