If you want to keep track of all your GNU screen sessions, it's helpful to set the window title to the current machine you ssh'd into. One way to achieve this is to put this into your .zshrc (.profile should work too): # Set/reset hostname in screen window title SSH'd machine: if [ $TERM = "screen" … Continue reading GNU screen window title and SSH

Hi,

here’s a small summary of the 8th (coding) week. The last days I
was working on getting build support into the osc2 library. I just
checked in a BuildInfo and Builder class (+ testcases). Here’s a
brief example how they can be used:

# example how to use the Builder class
builder = Builder(su_cmd=Builder.SUDO, root='/var/tmp/build-root')
builder.rpmlist = '/path/to/rpmlist'
builder.dist = '/path/to/buildconfig'
builder.without = 'feature1'
builder.without += 'feature2'
builder.arch = 'x86_64'
# run the build:
builder.run('/path/to/osc.spec')
# this executes:
sudo /usr/bin/build --arch x86_64 --dist /path/to/buildconfig \
   --root /var/tmp/build-root --rpmlist /path/to/rpmlist \
   --without feature1 --without feature2 /path/to/osc.spec


Basically Builder is just a wrapper around the build script
(all options will be passed to the build script; if an option contains
a “-” character like “vm-type” it can be set like this:
“binfo.vm_type = ‘xen'” (a “_” will be replaced with “-“)).

Additionally here’s a small example how to utilize the BuildInfo
class:

# fname is a path to a spec file
binfo = BuildInfo('openSUSE:Tools', 'osc', 'openSUSE_Factory', 'x86_64',
                  filename=fname)
# print preinstall packages
for bdep in binfo.preinstall():
    print bdep.get('name'), bdep.get('version')
# save binfo xml in a file
binfo.write_to('/path/to/file.xml')


The next thing on my TODO is the fetcher and cachemanager code.

Marcus

Whatch this:  http://youtu.be/Jp04DMXH2Rg

The kernel was compiled with Clang (C frontend of LLVM)  and boots into a running openSUSE desktop!

Hi,

here’s a small summary of the 7th (coding) week. Last week
I was really busy with university stuff (it was the second
last week in the lecture period so I had to recap quite
some stuff) and didn’t manage to work much on the GSoC project.
I’m going work off the TODO this weekend.

Marcus

The program for GUADEC 2012 got published yesterday! Okay, it has been online for a week already, but there were some small adjustments to force the layout of the talks (due to some Indico bug, or maybe some misconfiguration on our side).

If you were still wondering if you should come, now you have no more excuse: great talks and cool keynotes (The History of GNOME will surely be full of fun stories!) during the core days, two slots of lightning talks, the Foundation AGM to get the latest update on the Foundation, our now traditional sport games (football, but possibly other sports too), and several BoF and hackfests... GUADEC will be quite busy!

So go check out the full GUADEC program! And many thanks to the sponsors who help us make this event happen: Canonical, Collabora, Google, Igalia, OpenShine, Open Innovation Network and the Linux Foundation.

I arrived this morning in Geneva, for the RMLL 2012, the biggest french-speaking community-oriented event every year. It's the first time the RMLL move out of France, and it's also my first time where I actually stay in Switzerland for a few days instead of being there just for a flight connection. Good to go to foreign countries and still speak French, but it'd be even better if we could use euro to pay ;-)

This year again, I'm co-chairing a Communities track with Michael Scherer. We wanted to restrict the track to two days, but we had to add a third day to accept all talks we wanted to see in. In this track, we obviously have talks related to several french-speaking-specific organizations or projects, but we also have talks about communities and freedom in general, as well as talks presenting some theoretical approaches to communities.

The first day is nearly over, and I'm pleasantly surprised by the content: it's even more interesting than what I expected, and there is good discussion between the audience and the various speakers. Some highlights:

• The presentation about Sigmah, for instance, showed some fascinating work in the world of NGOs.

• Learning more about the challenges faced by LinuxFr.org (very popular free software news website) was also eye-opening, as it reflects on the evolution of the free software community in general: difficulties to get people to contribute, people getting older, social issues, etc.

• I was also interested in what EnVenteLibre is doing: sharing the infrastructure needed for online shopping so that free software organizations don't have to each reinvent the wheel can make a big difference for those organizations.

Unfortunately, co-chairing a track has a side-effect: much less time to chat with people or stay in booths. If you want to discuss GNOME or openSUSE, though, just come and say hi!

Oh, and thanks to SUSE for letting me go to this event: it's really amazing to have an employer willing to help you contribute to the community world!

Hi

here’s a small summary of the 6th (coding) week. Last week I
continued working on the build module and developed a concept
for the package fetcher (and discussed some parts
with darix:) ).
The main idea is to modularize the fetcher code, verify code etc.
Thus we have a fetcher class which takes care of retrieving the
packages. The fetcher class utilizes a “cache manager” which takes
care of storing the fetched packages on the filesystem. The goal is
that at some point in time one can exchange the “simple” cache manager
with a more “clever” cache manager (which for instance cleans up the
cache from time to time or only allows exactly one version of a
package in the cache etc.). In order to achieve this no code in the
fetcher has to be touched – instead it’s sufficient to pass a different
cache manager object to the fetcher.
Additionally the fetcher provides some hooks like pre, pre_fetch,
post_fetch and post. For instance a post_fetch hook can be used to
verify the just fetched package etc.

TODO:
– write testcases and implement the concept from above

If you have questions, suggestions etc. feel free to contact me:)

Marcus

I am happy to announce the upcoming book of my dear wife. A must read for all interested in intellectual property, in access to copyrighted materials and in development issues.

This book originates from a PhD thesis defended at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. It has been awarded "summa cum laude" mention.

Check, please, with your libraries whether they know about the book and advise them strongly to purchase it for the biggest good of the humanity :)