General Development Archive

So, you downloaded the free .NET SDK and compiler but you don't have a good and free IDE for your C# programming? The open source SharpDevelop 0.89 was just released and is available for download: "This release completes a major restructuring of the infrastructure and source code tree. Projects support backend bindings that are not targeting compilers, the object browser has much more functionality than before, folding was re-integrated and a new XML formatting strategy added (for details, see the Changes section). Our feature preview this time: a Windows Forms Designer. Take a look at the tech note and source code - if you have time to spare, help us make it a great open source implementation of a forms designer!"

Here is an overview of assembly language from a PowerPC perspective that contrasts examples for three architectures: ia32, ppc, and ppc64. This article assumes a basic understanding of computer design and of operating systems (system calls, exceptions, process stacks). It contains information that will be useful to PowerPC programmers unfamiliar with assembly as well as programmers who already know IA32 assembly and want to broaden their knowledge.

This GCC release is based on the GCC 3.1 sourcebase, and thus has all the changes in the GCC 3.1 series. In addition, GCC 3.2 has a number of C++ ABI fixes which make its C++ compiler generate binary code which is incompatible with the C++ compilers found in earlier GCC releases, including GCC 3.1 and GCC 3.1.1.

So, you want to write an operating system. We discussed earlier a generic set of considerations that are important, from my experience, for this type of adventure. We proceed to look at solutions to the problem of actually getting started with writing your system: how to do it when you know you don't know what you're doing, making it work before making it work fast, and what to do when things go wrong.

"The ability to share disks, directories, and files over a network is one of the most significant advances in modern computing, reducing local disk space requirements and making it easy for users to collaborate without ending up with hundreds of versions of the same files. Personal computers running Microsoft Windows and Apple's MacOS and Mac OS X inherently support sharing disks and directories with other systems of the same types. Linux and Unix systems traditionally use the NFS network filesystem in order to do the same sort of thing." Read the article at LinuxPlanet.

"Borland Software Corporation today announced Borland Delphi 7 Studio, featuring full support for new and emerging Web Services, integrated model driven development, and preview capabilities for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Using Delphi 7 Studio, the estimated one million Delphi developers can begin developing their skills for .NET and preparing applications for .NET without abandoning their existing work and skills on the Windows platform." Read the rest of the press release at Borland USA.

Say you've got a big computation task to perform. Perhaps you have found a way to cure cancer, or you want to look for aliens. All you need is a few super computers to work out some calculations, but you've only got the one PC on your desk. What to do? A popular solution is the "distributed computing" model, where the task is split up into smaller chunks and performed by the many computers owned by the general public. This guide over at Kuro5hin shows you how.

GCC 3.1.1 has just been released. This release is a bug fix release relative to GCC 3.1. The next release of GCC will be GCC 3.2. This release will be available very soon (within days or a week). The only changes in GCC 3.2 relative to GCC 3.1.1 will be changes to the C++ ABI.

Perl 5.8.0 is a major new release of the Perl 5 language. It incorporates all development and maintenance changes since the last major release, 5.6.0, including all the changes of 5.6.1.

"Developing the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for a Python application is often a tedious, time-consuming, and opaque process. This is the exact opposite of how Python programmers would describe most other aspects of software development using Python. So what is it about GUI applications that causes them to be so hard?" Read the technical article at OnLamp. Two more Python articles can be found at developerWorks at IBM, here and here.

In this article, Daniel Robbins (President/CEO, Gentoo Technologies, Inc.) shows you how to use the latest filesystem technologies in Linux 2.4 and gives an update on the status of the XFS, ReiserFS, and ext3 filesystems. He shares implementation advice, performance information, important technical notes, as well as an outline of how these various filesystems will continue to improve over the next year. You can also view his previous article in this series, which shows you how to get XFS up and running.

Not everyone's happy with the default look and feel of MacOSX. So the Unsanity LLC guys have come to fullfil feature requests from many MacOSX users. They have written applications that are basically "hacks" (Unsanity prefers the word "haxies"), that they change MacOSX, sometimes in a pretty fundamental way. We tested three of their products, Fruitmenu, WindowShadeX and Xounds.

Remember the Pepper competition on OSNews two months ago? This is a quick note to let you know that Pepper, the popular Windows/MacOS editor, is now available on FreeBSD and Linux (x86/PPC).

If there was a single application making someone use MacOSX full time, that application would be Watson. This application is possibly the most awarded in the MacOSX world, and it is the best idea for an application that I saw the last few years. Despite the idea being dead simple, and even seem redundant at first, Watson is an excellent, original and handy tool. I would like to initiate an open source project for a multi-platform clone of Watson (Karelia say that they have no plans for any ports - with only a remote possibility for a Windows port). I will start by putting $100 USD on the table while readers are most welcome to co-sponsor the project as well. What we really need though, is willing and capable C++ developers.