Hitchhiker sources bumped to 2.6.30-r2
20 Jul 09 at 19:45 | 
gentoo, kernel, linux, overlay, reiser4 | 
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Following the release of Linux 2.6.30.2 which includes a fix for the latest security issue, I have bumped hitchhiker-sources, my “enhanced” version of the Linux kernel sources with Gentoo patches, as well as Reiser4, AUFS2 and TuxOnIce patches. So everyone is strongly encouraged to upgrade! The ebuild is in berkano overlay. Or get the patch tarball direct from the download location.
Qt 4.5.2 changes
27 Jun 09 at 18:48 | gentoo, qt | 4
This is basically a heads-up for Qt users on Gentoo. We are about to add the new 4.5.2 release to portage. With this release we have changed a few things. We no longer have certain useflags enabled by default that are already enabled by the desktop profile. This means that if you are not using the desktop profile, you should look if any useflags have changed and decide which ones you want to enable. Or otherwise, that you no longer need to disable them if you want a minimal install.
We also have removed the need for the libX11 dependency in qt-core and a couple of other non-gui modules. So you can now for example have a server-only install of quassel with minimal dependencies. The libX11 dependency is now only pulled by packages that really need it.
Another thing that changed is that we dropped the custom-cxxflags useflag. After a long period of testing we haven’t come across any problems with “advanced” cxxflags in Qt 4.5, so now we always let the Qt modules be built with the user-specified flags. As this is an eclass level change, this means also users of the stable branch will see this change. An emerge --newuse world will trigger a recompile of Qt, but this means you will get better optimizations.
Gentoo dying?
4 Jun 09 at 00:53 | gentoo | 76
As the CIA.vc stats show, Gentoo is far from dead, whatever anyone else may claim. I’ll admit it wasn’t a typical day, but last month’s number of 10k commits speaks for itself.
Preventing the qt-phonon vs phonon block
3 Jun 09 at 23:46 | gentoo, phonon, qt | 4
We’ve had an unfortunate situation with x11-libs/qt-phonon and media-sound/phonon blocking each other on Gentoo (bug 270188). KDE and Nokia Qt Software each make their own releases of the Phonon library, and while these are largely the same, there are some minor differences. KDE4 users want media-sound/phonon, while the Gentoo Qt team has always insisted that for non-KDE users x11-libs/qt-phonon should be the default choice as dependency of other Qt modules. Now Qt can also use media-sound/phonon, but the Qt3Support module needs the gstreamer back-end enabled. This has led to some useflag dependencies that trip up portage.
At the last project meeting we decided to introduce a kde useflag to force selecting media-sound/phonon instead of qt-phonon for KDE users. Now that both Qt 4.5.1 and phonon-4.3.1 are stable, or soon to be stabilized (depending on how quick or slow the arch testers are for the architecture that you’re using), enabling the kde useflag (if you want to use KDE4) should give you a smooth upgrade path, without any qt-phonon related blocks. If you don’t have nor want kdelibs on your system, you should disable the kde useflag, and you will get qt-phonon, which is preferred by Qt.
And if you want to prevent media-sound/phonon from pulling in gstreamer, then disable its gstreamer useflag, and make sure to also disable the phonon useflag for x11-libs/qt-qt3support. This will then disable the phonon options in qtconfig, but you can still configure phonon in KDE’s systemsettings.
If you still have any issues, please comment on the bug.
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Recently a user on IRC suggested that using the latest snapshots for sip and PyQt4 could help with pykde:live problems. So those people that are on live kde4 on Gentoo, they may want to unmask and emerge the snapshot ebuilds I just committed to qting-edge overlay. They are masked because they may break other PyQt4 based apps (eric-4.3.3 segfaults here).
gentoo, overlay, qt |
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If you’re not using eix, you probably are not (or shouldn’t be) using Gentoo. It’s simply so powerful and fast, that I can’t imagine working on Linux without it. For those not following Planet Larry, I’d like to point out the tip posted by Matija Šuklje about eix-sync. Use it!
eix, gentoo |
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Oh shiny!
28 Apr 09 at 22:17 | blog, personal, site | 1
So I finally took the time to move back to WordPress, with most of my content migrated—except for the comments made in my Habari install. I also took the opportunity to do a redesign. It’s sort of an evolution of the previous design, as I kept the general layout and a number of elements. I dropped the fancy fixed header, which caused a few (minor) nuisances. I hope you like the new minty color!
In other news, I have now made a definite decision to go to China. As preparation I plan to do a government accredited certification course in August and then start teaching English from September. Of course I’m pretty excited about these prospects, as it means I’m opening a new, exciting chapter in my life. It also means I will have less time to spend on Gentoo development. But hopefully there will be people to pick up where I leave off.
Habari fail
12 Apr 09 at 10:48 | blog, site | Add your comment
I updated my blog software to the latest version, Habari 0.6. Something went wrong during that procedure and I can no longer access the comments in the admin back-end. Sorry for all you commenters, but I cannot “approve” your latest comments.
I don’t really feel like delving deeper into the problem, or downgrading and staying on an old version. Instead I am thinking of migrating back to WordPress, as in certain ways it is easier. That is, from a blogger’s, not a coder’s, point of view. So please a bit of patience when I migrate again (story of my life…).
Dillo progress
10 Apr 09 at 21:54 | browser, gentoo | Add your comment
For users of older hardware and fans of light-weight systems, Dillo is probably not an unknown name. It’s a very light-weight web browser. That comes with its limitations, of course. It used to have a GTK1 GUI, which no one in his right mind would use anymore today. But last year Dillo 2.0 was released, which was reimplemented using FLTK2. This sports modern features like anti-aliasing (smooth fonts) and unicode
Currently the Dillo developers are working on exciting new features, such as basic CSS and JavaScript support. I figured some people may want to try out this new code, so I added an ebuild for the “live” development version to portage today (or yesterday, depending on your timezone). There is definitely some progress to see, so this little browser may grow in popularity again. And they manage to keep it small. The binary is only 629K on my amd64 system.
FOSDEM 2009
13 Feb 09 at 12:24 | fosdem, gentoo, lxde | Add your comment
Last Saturday I was at FOSDEM, the yearly European meeting of Free Software developers in Brussels. It was very nice to meet fellow devs, especially those from the Gentoo KDE team, as I chat with them on a daily basis in the #gentoo-kde IRC channel.
I also met up with Mario Behling and Christoph Wickert, from the LXDE project, which seems to be gaining a lot of momentum (several distros such as the famous Knoppix liveCD now offer LXDE as default desktop or lightweight option). They had a so called “Lightning Talk” with a 15 minute slideshow presentation. I spoke to them after the talk about the recent developments in LXDE, the growth of the community, and the need for some talented volunteers to work on offering more themes. LXDE themes would be a combined package of a matching Openbox theme and GTK2 theme, possibly with an iconset added. A wiki page is in the making, and there may be a contest later.
All in all, FOSDEM was a success, especially the social aspect. I hope to go for the whole weekend next year. What about you? Did you enjoy FOSDEM this year? And are you planning to go next year?
