Planet Fink

So I've been slack in posting to my blog, for any number of reasons, but I've been busy busy with lots of crazy stuff.

First, I've been spearheading the OpenNMS involvement in Summer of Code. Aside from one unfortunate incident things have been going well. I'm really looking forward to getting to know our students and seeing what they can come up with. It will be a learning experience for all of us. =)

We're also starting to gear up towards another beta on the road to OpenNMS 1.6. We've already got a bunch more bugs finished off, but also plenty to do still.

If you haven't noticed, my blog looks a little bit different. I'd been limping along with pretty much unchanged templates from upgrade after upgrade of Movable Type since version 3.1 or so. It's a testament to their software that everything's worked swimmingly without any major surgery for all of that time, but I've been itching to take advantage to the much cleaner HTML and CSS they're using in newer default templates, and other spiffy features which I have not been able to use without a ton of work. So I finally took the plunge and exported all of my existing data, and started over, making a CSS theme and only very small changes to the default templates. There's a bit more to do, but in all, I'm very happy with how it's gone. I should be future-proofed for another 6 years of blogging now. ;)

What's next? More OpenNMS bugfixing, to start with. I also have some Fink packages to update, as well as a few Rails-related packages to release (Mongrel and it's supporting cast of characters). It's also time to pick up my on-again off-again work on KDE/Mac, they're working towards and alpha of 4.1 and I still have a number of things I'd like to do before releasing somewhat stable packages.

Ah, well, a geek's work is never done. ;)

Now that KDE 3.5.9 is out, I've updated all of the Fink KDE/X11 packages to match it. Nothing new specific to Mac OS X or Fink, just a version bump with some bugfixes and a significantly updated kdepim.

It also includes a few things that are updated to understand Chris's new libflac package.

As always, let me know if you run into any issues.

FYI, the "finkproject.org" domain name is down -- turns out it had expired and we didn't catch it. We're working on getting it fixed, just wanted to get the word out. Fink Is Not Kaput ;)

Figured it'd been a while since I did a general "status" post about what's been going on.

First and foremost, as I mentioned before, much of my spare time has gone into fixing up the Fink package database. It's now much easier on our web server, and uses a combination of PHP and a really spiffy Lucene-based full-text search engine called "Solr."

Also, I did some work on making Fink play nicer with the new Xquartz releases. It's still in testing, but in the meantime, their 2.1.1 release provides a workaround to allow Fink users on Leopard to run without issue.

I've also been wearing my OpenNMS.com hat recently, and am working on some spiffy customer-management tools for keeping track of our support work better. I'm a big fan of Ruby on Rails, and am mocking it up in that -- on top of JRuby, of course.

In the process, of getting my development system set up to do rails development, I updated all of the Fink packages for rails 2.0 and related stuff, as well as taking over rubygems from the previous maintainer. They're now all up-to-date, and I've been doing my rails development with a purely fink-based ruby/rails install, which is nice.

Plenty of other stuff got updated or added as well:

• ack
• cairo
• mediatomb (fixed on Leopard)
• net-snmp-unified (fixed on Leopard)
• opennms (finally updated to 1.3.9)
• postgis
• postgresql
• radlib

If you haven't noticed, the Fink package database is back up, and the server seems to be handling the load alright. I've fixed all of the bugs that I'm aware of, but if you notice anything strange in queries or other behavior you don't expect, please let me know.

Also, one thing I hadn't mentioned earlier is that in the process of reworking the PDB, I added a pretty major feature: RSS support. Any query you make through the browse interface has an equivalent query through the RSS interface. For example, if you have a query for unstable x86 packages in the "kde" section, excluding splitoffs, you can replace "browse.php" with "rss.php" and get an RSS feed with the results that match that query (in order of their last modification date in CVS).

Woot!

As of last night, the new PDB seems to be working alright with the (few) testers it's gotten from fink-devel yesterday evening, so I'd like to open this up to a wider audience.

Please, give the new test code a whirl and let me know if you see any issues.

I've got a new kdelibs release for Fink (kdelibs3-unified 3.5.8-1023) which fixes the issue with the ~/.DCOPserver file having sub-directories in it, and also with starting up KUniqueApplications which wanted to fork. Please test it out and let me know how it works, and I'll try to get it pushed to stable as soon as possible.

If you're interested, the fix is to use _NSGetArgc() and _NSGetArgv() to pull out the arguments passed to the program, so that you can do a fork-and-exec afterwards (passing a flag to not fork the next time around).

Just wanted to give a quick update on a mix of Fink and Leopard issues.

First of all, if you get the error, "Failed: Can't fix GCC after Repair Permissions" it's because the XCode installer decided not to bother erasing your /usr/sbin/gcc_select even though it shouldn't be there anymore. It should be safe to erase it, but if that scares you, you can upgrade to 0.27.8 and your problem should go away as well... (Fink does not use gcc_select anymore on 10.5 as of 0.27.8.)

Also, people have been coming out of the woodwork hitting the OpenGL bug ("ld: cycle in dylib re-exports with /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.dylib") so I want to mention it here specifically for search engines to make it easier for people to find the fix.

The fix is to add the following line to your linker command: -Wl,-dylib_file,/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/libGL.dylib:/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/libGL.dylib

It should be a perfectly safe no-op on older Mac OS X releases, but makes sure that the XCode 3.0 linker doesn't get confused and try to be too smart about finding the correct libGL.dylib.

I've also been trying to solve a new-on-leopard issue where they no longer allow CoreFoundation code to be called across a fork (presumably mach port messiness). The error is:

The process has forked and you cannot use this CoreFoundation functionality safely. You MUST exec(). Break on __THE_PROCESS_HAS_FORKED_AND_YOU_CANNOT_USE_THIS_COREFOUNDATION_FUNCTIONALITY___YOU_MUST_EXEC__() to debug.

...it seems to hit KUniqueApplications specifically. The fix is most likely to re-exec after kdeinit does it's thing, using execve() but I'm not entirely sure. I need to play around with it some more first. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. ;)

Also, I updated fontconfig2-dev -- it's at 2.4.1 in 10.4 now, and no longer has conflicting configuration stuff that expects Apple's to be there. On 10.5, it's a dummy package that symlinks into the fontconfig 2.4.1 in /usr/X11, so there's no issues of conflicts on leopard.

On an unrelated note, yes I am working on a new KDE/Mac snapshot, and have been making good progress on it. I'd say I'm probably 95% of the way through a full clean build working. Of course, KDE/Mac on Leopard has the same problem that KDE/X11 does, so whatever I solve in one will need to be ported to the other. Whee.

I think that's it... If you have any questions, as always, let me know. I'm trying to work my way through everything, but there's lots of stuff to fix still.

If you've missed it, David posted to the Fink news that we have initial Leopard support.

Thanks to apple keeping C++ binary compatibility this release (phew) it is most definitely the easiest upgrade yet! For most people, you can just do a "fink selfupdate-rsync" (or "fink selfupdate-cvs") to get the fink 0.27.7 tool, and it will automatically convert your fink installation to be Leopard-compatible. If you're doing a fresh fink install, you'll have to install XCode 3 off the Leopard DVD, and then bootstrap from the 0.27.7 tarball, but it's a very painless procedure. A binary installer is on the way.

The best part is, increased POSIX compliance and better overall system headers in 10.4 has paid off in most Fink packages working out of the box on 10.5 (minus the stupid linker bug which apple did not fix in time for 10.5.0) and what's left will get updated as problems arise. The transition (as compared to the 10.3 -> 10.4 gcc-3.3 to gcc-4.0 move) has been considerably less painful.

Since Leopard is still very new, and not many maintainers have had the chance to upgrade, if you find issues with packages (or missing packages) and wish to report a bug, please CC the fink-devel list for the next few weeks so we can find someone to help fix it, even if the maintainer can't test bugfixes yet.

I just released KDE 3.5.8 to Fink unstable.

There are a ton of little bugfixes in this release, as well as a few Fink-specific changes, mostly related to Leopard-compatibility... (A newer CUPS and a workaround for a stupid linker bug that won't be fixed in time for 10.5.0.)

As always, please let me know if you have any issues, or if it works for you. We're going to try to fast-track the update to stable so we're ready for Leopard. (Only 10 days to go!)

Sure, it may seem quiet, but oh man, there's been a lot going on.

First of all, a little off topic... Hockey season has started again. Go 'Canes! <grin>

Second, as you might or might not be aware, a new kitty is coming to town soon. While David Morrison has done the majority of the work, I've been trying to help clean up some loose ends in getting things ready in Fink -- validator fixes, working around compiler issues, and other misc stuff.

Third, I and a few other folks have been working on finally getting GNOME up to 2.20 (including GTK+ 2.12) in Fink, which is a metric TON of work. GTK+ 2.8 introduced a dependency on Pango's Cairo backend, which has to bubble up into build-time dependencies for literally hundreds of Fink packages. Through a combination of brute force and some automation, this is now to the point where it's time for brave users to help us find the kinks, test upgrades, and other fun stuff. Expect an announcement sometime this weekend with details.

Fourth, I've been working on getting KDE4 moving again, including KDE4/X11, and starting to package KDE4 beta3 for Fink. This means Qt4/X11 and Qt4/Mac in Fink as well, which I've just gotten working. A little more testing and I'll put those out in unstable. As for KDE4 itself, I'm stymied at the moment by a bug in Strigi that is causing meinproc to fail, so I can't get through kdelibs, but vandenoever is aware of the issue and hopefully we'll get something worked out soon.

Oh, and, I've started using Twitter. I'm still not entirely sure why, but it is fun. :)

Anyways, as always, busy busy! I'll try to keep things up-to-date here.

First of all, I want to point out that OpenNMS 1.3.7 is out, and it's full of awesomeness. Big speed improvements, my SmokePing clone, and lots of other cool stuff. I finally finished up the last of the packaging updates today; 1.3.7 is now in Fink, has Debian packages, and RPMs. I also spent a lot of time updating the installation instructions (Yum, Debian) so please, try it out, and if you run into any issues, let me know, and I'll make sure the docs get fixed.

In other news, I've actually started spending some time getting Fink stuff up-to-date again. PostgreSQL has bugfix releases coming up for all supported releases, and I have some KDE updates coming as well.

In addition, I need to catch up on the KDE/Mac stuff, I'm going to start working on a new build this week.

A few weeks ago I finally released KDE 3.5.7 to Fink unstable, as well as KOffice 1.6.3. Both seem to be pretty solid and I've not really had any reports of issues, so it's looking pretty good.

In addition, I finally updated Fink stable to include the KDE 3.5.6 release that has been in unstable for months, as it's had no major reports against it.

I'll give 3.5.7 a few more weeks to make sure there are no major issues with it, and then move it over as well.

There is also another KDE4 release pending, API freeze is coming up Any Day Now, so I will try to refresh my binaries as well with the new code if I get the chance.

OpenNMS 1.3.5 is now in Fink 10.4 unstable.

It's mostly a bugfix release, with a few changes to notifications and thresholding. For a general idea of what's changed, see the New and Noteworthy page at the OpenNMS wiki. For more details, see the full release notes.

If you have not seen the announcement yet, OpenNMS 1.3.3 was released. It includes lots of bugfixes, as well as a start on separating out the native C code so that packaging a pure-java release of OpenNMS will be easier. We hope to have that wrapped up by the 1.3.4 release.

I've released 1.3.3 into 10.4 Unstable, as well as the new iplike package for PostgreSQL. Unfortunately, I had to remove OpenNMS from 10.3 because the 1.3 series requires Java 1.5. I will probably go back and revert 10.3 to the latest 1.2 version, just so that something is available still.

I also spent some time reworking the OpenNMS front page to be more useful for finding information. It was a pretty big mess of random links without much navigation to help people get to the info they need. There's still more to do, but it's definitely easier to figure out where to go now. The only problem is, enough people can actually see the link to the demo site that the demo site is hitting tomcat's maximum connection limits. <grin> Hopefully that will get fixed up shortly, but hey, at least people are taking the chance to try it out now. :)

I finished packaging the latest OpenNMS in Fink over the weekend. It's now split into 2 packages -- opennms (the main OpenNMS code), and opennms-pgsqlXX (the PostgreSQL database-specific code).

You can now use OpenNMS with any version of PostgreSQL you like, just install the proper pgsql entry (after optionally dumping and migrating your data), start up the proper version of postgresql, and you're set.

Also, I spent some time figuring out how the Debian packages are built, and updated them to 1.2.9 in the OpenNMS APT repository.

So I started my new job with OpenNMS monday, and after the requisite "help us clean up the support ticket queue" work that any newbie should be forced to go through (grin), I've been trying to get the latest OpenNMS release working in Fink.

I must admit, despite the fact that 1.3.2 came out in January, I'd been putting off updating it because they it had been converted to maven. Now, maven is awesome. However, it's not very compatible with the "build offline" way that packaging works in Fink -- not to mention a number of other packaging projects.

I've figured out the magic to make maven treat a downloaded tarball of dependencies as a repository, and have everything building/working now. (Yay) I'll put it in Fink tomorrow, after some testing, but it's looking good.

Apple has been kind enough to give a number of folks in the open-source community (including us Finksters) tickets to WWDC for the last few years, and this year I will finally have the opportunity to take them up on it.

If you're gonna be there, let me know and we'll figure out how to meet up. It's always great being able to meet people In Real Life that you've known online for years. ;)

Last night I finished a new build of KDE/Mac which includes Amarok, building on the great work the Amarok team's done on Amarok 2.0 porting.

In theory, sound should work (I've added GStreamer and kdemultimedia's phonon-gst backend to the mix) but in practice it doesn't. Now that I have a solid build working, I'm going to try digging into figuring out why that is the case.

As always, please bang on it, and let me know if you see any major issues.

Also, I've started working on packaging kde4 for fink. For now it is the X11 version, but as I get things cleaned up, I'll add the Qt/Mac version to the mix. I'll put a note up when there's something useful along those lines...

So if you've followed my blog for a long time, you might have noticed me mention that I have, on occasion, written music.

I've finally found some time to really work on getting everything set up again so I can write more music (and, in fact, I've got a guitar on the way as a birthday present from my wife!). This past month, I've worked really hard to do something I've meant to do for a long time: release an album.

Now, my music has always been freely available, it's a part of the demoscene culture, not to mention my open-source roots, working with OpenNMS, Fink, and tons of other stuff. One thing that's very hard to do, however, when writing tracked music, is get that "finished" sound.

I've spent the last month going through my catalog, dumping everything to Garage Band and ProTools, and re-mixing, remastering, and all-around cleaning up my tracks.

Without further ado, I announce my first single, Pointillize, available immediately on Amazon MP3 download, and soon on iTunes, Rhapsody, and other music download services.

On May 20th, my album, Finally, will be available as well.

Full versions of the songs from Pointillize and Finally are available for preview on last.fm. Just click on the album and hit play.

It's been a long time coming. If you like it, tell your friends; if you don't, um... well, don't tell anyone! Special thanks to Cynthia for putting up with me obsessively listening to these songs, over and over again, and spending way too much time mixing and remixing them. ;)

Now that KDE 3.5.9 is out, I've updated all of the Fink KDE/X11 packages to match it. Nothing new specific to Mac OS X or Fink, just a version bump with some bugfixes and a significantly updated kdepim. It...

FYI, the "finkproject.org" domain name is down -- turns out it had expired and we didn't catch it. We're working on getting it fixed, just wanted to get the word out. Fink Is Not Kaput ;)...

Fink project has launched the new Package Database (aka PDB) interface. Looks neat

Better late than never. I’ve released updated lighttpd packages for MacOS-X’s Fink. It is Lighttpd 1.4.15 this time. Also, I added memcached support to mod_cml and mod_trigger_b4_dl.

As usual, if you have any good or bad feedback — let me know