Emacs 27.1 released

([Development] Aug 11, 2020 15:29 UTC (Tue) (corbet))

Version 27.1 of the Emacs editor is out. New features include support for arbitrary-sized integers, [1]HarfBuzz support, improved drawing with Cairo, and the obligatory new JSON parser.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/741722/

"Structural pattern matching" for Python, part 2

([Development] Sep 1, 2020 15:50 UTC (Tue) (jake))

We left the [1]saga of [2]PEP 622 (" Structural Pattern Matching ") at the end of June, but the discussion of a Python " match " statement—superficially similar to a C switch but with extra data-matching features—continued. At this point, the next steps are up to the [3]Python steering council , which will determine the fate of the PEP. But there is lots of discussion to catch up on from the last two months or so.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/827179/

[2] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0622/

[3] https://github.com/python/steering-council

Local locks in the kernel

([Kernel] Aug 11, 2020 21:10 UTC (Tue) (mrybczyn))

The Linux kernel has never lacked for synchronization primitives and locking mechanisms, so one might justifiably wonder why there might be a need to add another one. The addition of [1]local locks to 5.8 provides an answer to that question. These locks, which have their origin in the realtime ( PREEMPT_RT ) tree, were created to solve some realtime-specific problems, but they also bring some much-needed structure to a common locking pattern used in non-realtime kernels as well.

[1] https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/20200527201119.1692513-1-bigeasy@linutronix.de/

Security updates for Monday

([Security] Aug 10, 2020 16:12 UTC (Mon) (jake))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (pillow, ruby-kramdown, wpa, and xrdp), Fedora (ark and rpki-client), Gentoo (apache, ark, global, gthumb, and iproute2), openSUSE (chromium, grub2, java-11-openjdk, libX11, and opera), Red Hat (bind, chromium-browser, java-1.7.1-ibm, java-1.8.0-ibm, and libvncserver), SUSE (LibVNCServer, perl-XML-Twig, thunderbird, and xen), and Ubuntu (samba).

Building a Flutter application (part 1)

([Development] Aug 12, 2020 16:59 UTC (Wed) (coogle))

In this two-part series, we will be implementing a simple RSS reader for LWN using the UI toolkit [1]Flutter . The project recently [2]announced version 1.20 of the toolkit on August 5. Flutter is a BSD-licensed UI development platform written in [3]Dart that is [4]backed by Canonical as a new way to develop desktop applications targeting Linux. Part one will cover some of the basics of the project and Flutter, with part two building on that work to focus on building a full interactive UI for the application.

[1] http://flutter.dev

[2] https://medium.com/flutter/announcing-flutter-1-20-2aaf68c89c75

[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/826315/

[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/826124/

[$] 5.9 Merge window, part 2

([Kernel] Aug 17, 2020 15:34 UTC (Mon) (corbet))

By the time Linus Torvalds [1]released 5.9-rc1 and closed the merge window for this cycle, 12,866 non-merge changesets had been pulled into the mainline repository. Nearly 9,000 of those came in after [2]the first 5.9 merge-window summary was written. Clearly the kernel-development community remains busy. Much of what was merged takes the form of cleanups and restructuring, as always, but there was also a substantial set of new features.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/828894/

[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/828120/

On Perl 7 and the Perl Steering Committee

([Development] Aug 8, 2020 16:53 UTC (Sat) (corbet))

For those who are wondering about the state of the proposed Perl 7 fork and the role of the newly formed Perl Steering Committee, Ricardo Signes has put together a detailed explanation that is worth a read. " You should not expect to see a stream of unjustified dictates issuing forth from some secret body on high. You should expect to see perl5-porters operating as it generally did: with proposals coming to the list, getting discussion, and then being thumbed up or down by the project manager. This is what has been happening for years, already. Some proposals were already discussed by the project manager and some were not. If you eliminated any named mailing list for doing this, it would still happen. The PSC is a means to say that there is a default group for such discussions. If you were wondering, its initial membership was formed from 'the people who came to or were invited to the Perl Core Summit' over the last few years. "

Knauth elected Free Software Foundation president; Bénassy joins board

([Briefs] Aug 7, 2020 18:17 UTC (Fri) (coogle))

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has [1]announced that Geoffrey Knauth has been elected president, and free software activist and developer Odile Bénassy has been appointed to the board of directors. Knauth is replacing Richard Stallman who [2]resigned last year . In Knauth's [3]statement , he said: " The FSF board chose me at this moment as a servant leader to help the community focus on our shared dedication to protect and grow software that respects our freedoms. It is also important to protect and grow the diverse membership of the community. "

[1] https://www.fsf.org/news/geoffrey-knauth-elected-free-software-foundation-president-odile-benassy-joins-the-board

[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/799375/

[3] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/statement-from-fsfs-new-president-geoffrey-knauth

Security updates for Friday

([Security] Aug 7, 2020 16:14 UTC (Fri) (coogle))

Security updates have been issued by CentOS (firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, libvncserver, postgresql-jdbc, and thunderbird), Debian (firejail and gupnp), Fedora (cutter-re, postgresql-jdbc, radare2, and webkit2gtk3), openSUSE (chromium, firefox, kernel, and python-rtslib-fb), Oracle (container-tools:ol8, kernel, and nss and nspr), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), and SUSE (firefox, kernel, postgresql10 and postgresql12, python-ipaddress, and xen).

LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 13, 2020

Stable kernels 5.7.14, 5.4.57, 4.19.138, and 4.14.193

([Kernel] Aug 7, 2020 15:38 UTC (Fri) (coogle))

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the [1]5.7.14 , [2]5.4.57 , [3]4.19.138 , and [4]4.14.193 stable kernels. As usual, these contain lots of important fixes throughout the tree; users should upgrade.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/828260

[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/828261

[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/828262

[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/828263

The GNU C Library version 2.32 is now available

([Development] Aug 6, 2020 16:26 UTC (Thu) (jake))

Version 2.32 of the [1]GNU C Library (glibc) has been released. It contains support for Unicode 13.0.0, a new Kurdish/Sorani locale ( ckb_IQ ), support for audit modules listed in ELF sections of the executable, support for Synopsys ARC HS cores, new signal abbreviation and descriptive text functions ( sigabbrev_np() and sigdescr_np() ), similar functions for errno values ( strerrorname_np() and strerrordesc_np() ), branch protection security hardening for arm64, and more. There are also lots of bug fixes, deprecations, and removals, as well as four security fixes. More information can be found in the [2]release notes .

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/

[2] https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Release/2.32

Security updates for Thursday

([Security] Aug 6, 2020 16:11 UTC (Thu) (jake))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (clamav and json-c), Fedora (python2, python36, and python37), Red Hat (thunderbird), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), SUSE (java-11-openjdk, kernel, rubygem-actionview-4_2, wireshark, xen, and xrdp), and Ubuntu (openjdk-8 and ppp).

[$] PHP struggles with attributes syntax

([Development] Aug 6, 2020 23:31 UTC (Thu) (coogle))

PHP 8.0 is on the horizon, and the project has imposed a [1]feature freeze for the release . There's one exception to the feature freeze, though: the new attributes syntax. An attribute is syntactical metadata for PHP code, identical to what is called an "annotation" in other languages. Even though attributes have been voted on [2]multiple [3]times by the community, major contributor and creator of [4]XDebug Derick Rethans threw a wrench into the works days before the feature freeze by challenging the current syntax. The ensuing discussion lead to the [5]fourth attributes proposal for the year, with a [6]special feature freeze exception being made by release manager Sara Golemon. This exception gives Rethans one more opportunity to convince the community to change how attributes work up to the Beta 3 release, [7]scheduled for September 3.

[1] https://lwn.net/ml/php-internals/CAP%3D4hCLm0qOBkCiynKcYJQXHGMvykv19otQYfig9t_rQf771VA%40mail.gmail.com/

[2] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/attributes

[3] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/attributes_v2

[4] https://xdebug.org

[5] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/shorter_attribute_syntax_change

[6] https://lwn.net/ml/php-internals/CAESVnVqpdtYZmdw_rQddzwZy3PQo6b3zarrMhDsM9SVjFK%3DedQ%40mail.gmail.com/

[7] https://wiki.php.net/todo/php80

Firefox extended tracking protection

([Security] Aug 5, 2020 19:44 UTC (Wed) (corbet))

[1]This Mozilla Security Blog entry describes the new redirect-tracking protections soon to be provided by the Firefox browser. " ETP 2.0 clears cookies and site data from tracking sites every 24 hours, except for those you regularly interact with. We’ll be rolling ETP 2.0 out to all Firefox users over the course of the next few weeks. "

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/08/04/firefox-79-includes-protections-against-redirect-tracking/

[$] 5.9 Merge window, part 1

([Kernel] Aug 7, 2020 20:21 UTC (Fri) (corbet))

As of this writing, just over 3,900 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline repository for the 5.9 kernel development cycle. While this merge window has just begun, there is already a significant set of new features to point out.

Security updates for Wednesday

([Security] Aug 5, 2020 14:48 UTC (Wed) (ris))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (net-snmp), Fedora (mingw-curl), openSUSE (firefox, ghostscript, and opera), Oracle (libvncserver and postgresql-jdbc), Scientific Linux (postgresql-jdbc), SUSE (firefox, kernel, libX11, xen, and xorg-x11-libX11), and Ubuntu (apport, grub2, grub2-signed, libssh, libvirt, mysql-8.0, ppp, tomcat8, and whoopsie).

Another set of stable kernels

([Kernel] Aug 5, 2020 14:47 UTC (Wed) (corbet))

The [1]5.7.13 , [2]5.4.56 , [3]4.19.137 , and [4]4.14.192 stable kernel updates have been released; each contains another set of important fixes.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/828083/

[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/828084/

[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/828085/

[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/828086/

LibreOffice 7.0 released

([Development] Aug 5, 2020 13:43 UTC (Wed) (corbet))

Version 7.0 of the LibreOffice office suite is out. It brings a long list of new features, including: " support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3; Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration for better performance; and carefully improved compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files ". The plan to create a differentiated "enterprise edition" that was [1]discussed in July has been deferred and is not part of this release.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/

[$] End-to-end network programmability

([Kernel] Aug 10, 2020 22:20 UTC (Mon) (jake))

Nick McKeown kicked off the virtual [1]Netdev 0x14 conference with a talk on extending the programmability of networking equipment well beyond where it is today. His vision is of an end-to-end system with programmable pieces at every level. Getting there will require collaboration between the developers of the networking stacks on endpoint operating systems as well as those of switches, routers, and other backbone equipment. The keynote was held on July 28, a little over two weeks before the [2]seven days of talks, workshops, and tutorials for Netdev, which begins on August 13.

[1] https://netdevconf.info/0x14/

[2] https://netdevconf.info/0x14/schedule.html

You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.