In the last couple of week/month we have been working on the tasks below (among a lot more).
- LIBCx
- Samba Server 3.6
- Binutils
- Coreutils
- Bison
- DASH
- GNU gettext
- HPLip
- kLIBC
LIBCx - kLIBC Extension Library
The kLIBC Extension Library extends the functionality of the kLIBC library by adding a number of high demand features required by modern applications.
Currently, LIBCx provides the following extensions:
- Improved advisory file locking using the
fcntl()
API. The implementation provided by kLIBC usesDosSetFileLocks
and is broken as it does not guarantee atomicity of lock/unlock operations in many cases (like overlapping lock regions etc.) and does not have deadlock detection. - Improved positional read/write operations provided by
pread()
andpwrite()
APIs that guarantee atomic behavior. kLIBC emulates these functions using a pair oflseek
andread()/write()
calls in non-atomic manner which leads to data corruption when accessing the same file from multiple threads or processes. - Improved
select()
that now supports regular file descriptors instead of returning EINVAL (22) on them as kLIBC does. Regular files are always reported ready for writing/reading/exceptions (as per POSIX requirements). - Implementation of
poll()
usingselect()
. kLIBC does not provide thepoll()
call at all.
Samba Server 3.6
We fixed a whole lot of longstanding issues in Samba Server 3.6 like:
- Max logfile size does not work (Ticket #36)
- Adding exceptQ support (Ticket #236)
- SIGABRT on some situations (Ticket #189)
- TDBBackup does not work (Ticket #225)
- All remaining TDB Problems (Ticket #208)
Binutils
We updated the Binutils port to version 2.25.
Binutils is a collection of binary utilities, mostly needed to develop applications.
Coreutils
We updated the Coreutils port to version 8.25.
These are the GNU core utilities. This package is the combination of the old GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.
Bison
We updated the Bison port to version 3.0.4.
Bison is a general purpose parser generator that converts a grammar description for an LALR(1) context-free grammar into a C program to parse that grammar. Bison can be used to develop a wide range of language parsers, from ones used in simple desk calculators to complex programming languages.
DASH
Because our ASH shell shows it's age we have been in the need of a more modern one. So we decided to use DASH as our new shell and ported version 0.5.9.
DASH is a POSIX-compliant implementation of /bin/sh that aims to be as small as possible. It does this without sacrificing speed where possible. In fact, it is significantly faster than bash (the GNU Bourne-Again SHell) for most tasks.
GNU gettext
We updated the GNU gettext port to version 0.19.8.
The GNU gettext package provides a set of tools and documentation for producing multi-lingual messages in programs.
HPLip
We portet HPLip version 3.16.3
The Hewlett-Packard Linux Imaging and Printing Project provides drivers for HP printers and multi-function peripherals. It is used in our case as a addon to the CUPS printing subsystem.
kLIBC
We released a new version of kLIBC as RPM with an important fix. The fix prevents a possible crash when a app uses fork().
See Ticket #363 for more details. We now hope Knut will integrate this fix soon in his main branch.
Sponsoring
If you want to support us or a specific project then please check out our online shop.
You are one of the people making the future possible!
Partners
We at bww bitwise works GmbH would like to thank our development partners, Arca Noae and Netlabs.org for their continued contribution to the OS/2 platform.
Especially without Arca Noae the Firefox port would not be possible. They help us out when we are short on sponsorship.
www.bitwiseworks.com