Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: 3 September 2007For a long time people using (X)Emacs looked at app-vim/gentoo-syntax and had strong feelings of envy as the support for writing ebuilds with their favorite operating system was quite limited. Last year Matthew Kennedy and Diego Petteno started with a simple ebuild-mode, which provided syntax highlighting for basic ebuilds and eselect modules. The Emacs project (which gathers GNU Emacs and XEmacs in Gentoo) has added support for many eclasses (java*, games*, all scm-related as git.eclass, etc) and you can call the ebuild command for the ebuild you are working on with the key combination Ctrl+c Ctrl+e. Just emerge app-emacs/gentoo-syntax or app-xemacs/gentoo-syntax and enjoy the new possibilities. MIPS keywords Stuart Longland wrote an interesting post on his Planet blog discussing the hard work that the MIPS team is doing and about his own todo list. Several keywording tasks are on his list: KDE, after having tested the latest stable version for several months without incident, avahi, which he has been using for some time now, several GNOME packages, after having them fail completely while compiling, as well as dbus-1.0 and nss-mdns. Stuart has also started looking into other packages for ~mips candidates, really concentrating his efforts on packages that turn an otherwise useless MIPS box into a useful workstation. He stated that he would love feedback on what people are actually using their MIPS boxes for and how Gentoo MIPS can be better tailored for their needs. If you have some suggestions, join #gentoo-mips on irc.freenode.net. Russia: Gentoo Summer Camp 2007 On August 11th - 12th, 2007, the Russian Gentoo Linux Community held a meeting called Gentoo Summer Camp 2007. The event took place (between Moscow and St. Petersburg) near the town of Bologoe. A camp of five tents was constructed on the isthmus of two lakes. Developers took advantage of the outdoors by enjoying some swimming and fishing in the nearby lakes. Of course the conversation quickly turned towards discussing the most vital issues with using Gentoo Linux, chatting about proprietary software, OpenSource software, and the imperfection of the patent system. All this was followed up with the traditional fresh mushroom soup! The meeting touted a friendly atmosphere and a good time was had by all. The photos of the event are available on the Russian Gentoo Community website. The OpenExpo kicks off in two weeks in Zurich, Switzerland. The Gentoo booth hopes to draw interest by showcasing the diversity of Gentoo. This is a great opportunity to meet Gentoo developers from across Europe. The Expo floor is open September 19th - 20th. Contact Tiziano Muller or check out the OpenExpo site for more details. A recent Linux.com article featured how an email marketing company, Gold Lasso, was able to better leverage themselves in the marketplace through the use of open source software. From the article: "Cofounders Elie Ashery and Michael Weisel say open source is the only way to keep prices down and "truly compete in the current marketplace." "In order to keep costs down and to build the company on a more reliable base, Weisel and Ashery decided to build on a Linux infrastructure. "Before we laid out any of our own money, we looked at what we'd used in the past and tried not to make the same mistakes we made before," Weisel says. "My background was mostly Microsoft, but I looked at all the issues I'd had with Microsoft servers, stepped back, and said, 'What can we do to avoid that?' I saw open source as the biggest jump toward this. We knew we could keep the cost down with Linux, too." "We didn't want to dilute ourselves," Ashery says, "And open source source afforded us the possibility of not raising venture money. Now, if we'd had to go down the Oracle or Microsoft route, we would have needed VC for licensing, for development, for all that, but open source allowed us to avoid that. There's no way we could have gotten where we are today without open source." "They tried a few different flavors of Linux before settling on Gentoo. "One of our previous employees was into Gentoo, and made us believe that it is one of the most secure distributions out there," Weisel says. "Yeah, it's hard to install and manage sometimes, but it has definitely given us an advantage. Back when we started moving toward Gentoo, our lead developer and I were sitting in my townhouse with an old server trying to get it loaded. It took two days to get it up and running -- but after we learned how it works, now he can put in a Gentoo server without even looking at it. We found other people, so now we have an arsenal of people who know the system. We knew the initial investment of time to get it configured properly and running was going to pay off in the future. It's very secure and stable." The following developers recently left the Gentoo project:
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo project:
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo project:
Gentoo Security is on hiatus this week due to no GLSAs being released. This section lists packages that have either been moved or added to the tree and packages that have had their "last rites" announcement given to be removed in the future. The package removals come from many locations, including the Treecleaners and various developers. Most packages which are listed under the Last Rites section are in need of some love and care and can remain in the tree if proper maintainership is established.
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 26 August 2007 and 01 September 2007, activity on the site has resulted in:
Of the 9751 currently open bugs: 10 are labeled 'blocker', 101 are labeled 'critical', and 338 are labeled 'major'. The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period are:
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during this period are:
The GWN is staffed by volunteers and members of the community who submit ideas and articles. If you are interested in writing for the GWN, have feedback on an article that we have posted, or just have an idea or article that you would like to submit to the GWN, please send us your feedback and help make the GWN better. 10. GWN subscription information To subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank e-mail to gentoo-gwn+subscribe@gentoo.org. To unsubscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank e-mail to gentoo-gwn+unsubscribe@gentoo.org from the e-mail address you are subscribed under. The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
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