Libtoolers!

The Libtool Team is pleased to announce the release of libtool 2.5.1, a beta release.

GNU Libtool hides the complexity of using shared libraries behind a
consistent, portable interface. GNU Libtool ships with GNU libltdl, which
hides the complexity of loading dynamic runtime libraries (modules)
behind a consistent, portable interface.

There have been 33 commits by 8 people in the 10 weeks since 2.5.0.

See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Bruno Haible (3)
  Ileana Dumitrescu (24)
  Julien ÉLIE (1)
  Khem Raj (1)
  Peter Kokot (1)
  Richard Purdie (1)
  Vincent Lefevre (1)
  trcrsired (1)

Ileana
 [on behalf of the libtool maintainers]
==================================================================

Here is the GNU libtool home page:
    https://gnu.org/s/libtool/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libtool.git;a=shortlog;h=v2.5.1
or run this command from a git-cloned libtool directory:
  git shortlog v2.5.0..v2.5.1

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.1.tar.gz   (1.9MB)
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.1.tar.xz   (1020KB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.1.tar.gz.sig
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.1.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

  5e2f00be5b616b0a6120b2947e562b8448e139b2  libtool-2.5.1.tar.gz
  aoPtr9QtTi69wJV5+ZzoKNX5MvFzjeAklcyMKITkMM4=  libtool-2.5.1.tar.gz
  9f72b896f593c4f81cdd6c20c9d99463663e48a9  libtool-2.5.1.tar.xz
  0oDmTIzb8UXXb7kbOyGe2rAb20PLmUAuSsuX0BAGNv0=  libtool-2.5.1.tar.xz

Verify the base64 SHA256 checksum with cksum -a sha256 --check
from coreutils-9.2 or OpenBSD's cksum since 2007.

Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify libtool-2.5.1.tar.gz.sig

The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:

  pub   rsa4096 2021-09-23 [SC]
        FA26 CA78 4BE1 8892 7F22  B99F 6570 EA01 146F 7354
  uid   Ileana Dumitrescu <ileanadumi95@protonmail.com>
  uid   Ileana Dumitrescu <ileanadumitrescu95@gmail.com>

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

  gpg --locate-external-key ileanadumi95@protonmail.com

  gpg --recv-keys 6570EA01146F7354

  wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=libtool&download=1' | gpg --import -

As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
keyring:

  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify libtool-2.5.1.tar.gz.sig

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.72e
  Automake 1.17
  Gnulib v1.0-563-gd3efdd55f3

NEWS

• Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2024-07-25) [beta]

** New features:

  - Support C++17 compilers in the C++ tests.

  - Add sysroot to library path for cross builds.

** Important incompatible changes:

  - Autoconf 2.64 is required for libtool.m4 to use AS_VAR_APPEND.

** Bug fixes:

  - Fix for uninitialized variable in libtoolize.

  - Skip Fortran/C demo tests when using Clang with fsanitize to
    avoid an incompatible ASan runtime.

  - Updated documentation for testing.

  - Fix failing test to account for program-prefix usage.

  - Replaced a deprecated macro to remove warning messages in the
    testsuite logs.

  - Fix number of arguments for AC_CHECK_PROG call.

  - Fix test failures with no-canonical-prefixes flag by checking
    if the flag is supported first.

  - Fix test failures with no-undefined flag by checking host OS
    before appending the flag.

  - Skip test when passing CXX flags through libtool to avoid test
    failure on NetBSD.

  - Remove texinfo warning for period in node name of pxref.

  - Alter syntax in sed command to fix numerous test failures
    on 64-bit windows/cygwin/mingw.

  - Fix 'Wstrict-prototypes' warnings.

  - Correct DLL Installation Path for mingw multilib builds.

  - Fix '--preserve-dup-deps' stripping duplicates.

  - Disable chained fixups for macOS, since it is not compatible with
    '-undefined dynamic_lookup'.

** Changes in supported systems or compilers:

  - Support additional flang-based compilers, 'flang-new' and 'ftn'.


Enjoy!

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, July 26 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

Guix is the fruit of a combination of volunteer work by an amazing number of people, work paid for by employers, but also work sponsored by public institutions. The European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) calls have been instrumental in that regard. News that NGI funding could vanish came to us as a warning signal.

Since 2020, NGI has supported many free software projects, allowing for significant strides on important topics that would otherwise be hard to fund. As an example, here are some of the NGI grants that directly benefited Guix and related projects:

• the full-source bootstrap, which includes groundwork not just in Guix but crucially in Mes and sister projects (blog post);
• porting Guix to the RISC-V architecture;
• porting GNU Mes and associated projects to RISC-V and AArch64;
• porting the full-source bootstrap to the RISC-V architecture;
• the Cuirass continuous integration tool (blog post);
• the Guile implementation of the Guix build daemon (blog post);
• distributed system daemon management with the Shepherd and Goblins, under the aegis of the Spritely Institute (blog post).
• a new garbage collector for Guile, the Scheme implementation that Guix builds upon.

Over the years, NGI has more than demonstrated that public financial support for free software development makes a difference. We strongly believe that this support must continue, that it must strengthen the development of innovative software where user autonomy and freedom is a central aspect.

For these reasons, the Guix project joins a growing number of projects and organizations in signing the following open letter to the European Commission.

The open letter below was initially published by petites singularités. English translation provided by OW2.

Open Letter to the European Commission

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European Commission's Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NLnet's calls). This year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.

NGI programmes have shown their strength and importance to supporting the European software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure. Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organisations.

Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 million euros to:

• "Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe" ;
• "A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life" ;
• "A structured ecosystem of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons".

In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organisations managing these European funding consortia.

NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem, as most of its budget is allocated to fund third parties by the means of open calls, to structure commons that cover the whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research and innovation in Europe.

Moreover, NGI allows exchanges and collaborations across all the Euro zone countries as well as "widening countries"¹, currently both a success and an ongoing progress, likewise the Erasmus programme before us. NGI also contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project funding does. It encourages implementing projects funded as pilots, backing collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects, interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding schemes.

While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer data, the EU can't afford this renunciation. Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an international collaboration.

This is all the more essential in the current geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central, and free software allows to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty in the digital world as a whole.

In this perspective, we urge you to claim for preserving the NGI programme as part of the 2025 funding programme.

¹ As defined by Horizon Europe, widening Member States are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lituania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Widening associated countries (under condition of an association agreement) include Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Feroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldavia, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkeye, and Ukraine. Widening overseas regions are Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands.

The GNU C Library
=================

The GNU C Library version 2.40 is now available.

The GNU C Library is used as the C library in the GNU system and
in GNU/Linux systems, as well as many other systems that use Linux
as the kernel.

The GNU C Library is primarily designed to be a portable
and high performance C library.  It follows all relevant
standards including ISO C11 and POSIX.1-2017.  It is also
internationalized and has one of the most complete
internationalization interfaces known.

The GNU C Library webpage is at http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/

Packages for the 2.40 release may be downloaded from:
        http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/libc/
        http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libc/

The mirror list is at http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Distributions are encouraged to track the release/* branches
corresponding to the releases they are using.  The release
branches will be updated with conservative bug fixes and new
features while retaining backwards compatibility.

NEWS for version 2.40
=====================

Major new features:

• The <stdbit.h> header type-generic macros have been changed when using

  GCC 14.1 or later to use __builtin_stdc_bit_ceil etc. built-in functions
  in order to support unsigned __int128 and/or unsigned _BitInt(N) operands
  with arbitrary precisions when supported by the target.

• The GNU C Library now supports a feature test macro _ISOC23_SOURCE to

  enable features from the ISO C23 standard.  Only some features from
  this standard are supported by the GNU C Library.  The older name
  _ISOC2X_SOURCE is still supported.  Features from C23 are also enabled
  by _GNU_SOURCE, or by compiling with the GCC options -std=c23,
  -std=gnu23, -std=c2x or -std=gnu2x.

• The following ISO C23 function families (introduced in TS

  18661-4:2015) are now supported in <math.h>.  Each family includes
  functions for float, double, long double, _FloatN and _FloatNx, and a
  type-generic macro in <tgmath.h>.

  - Exponential functions: exp2m1, exp10m1.

  - Logarithmic functions: log2p1, log10p1, logp1.

• A new tunable, glibc.rtld.enable_secure, can be used to run a program

  as if it were a setuid process. This is currently a testing tool to allow
  more extensive verification tests for AT_SECURE programs and not meant to
  be a security feature.

• On Linux, the epoll header was updated to include epoll ioctl definitions

  and the related structure added in Linux kernel 6.9.

• The fortify functionality has been significantly enhanced for building

  programs with clang against the GNU C Library.

• Many functions have been added to the vector library for aarch64:

    acosh, asinh, atanh, cbrt, cosh, erf, erfc, hypot, pow, sinh, tanh

• On x86, memset can now use non-temporal stores to improve the performance

  of large writes. This behaviour is controlled by a new tunable
  x86_memset_non_temporal_threshold.

Deprecated and removed features, and other changes affecting compatibility:

• Architectures which use a 32-bit seconds-since-epoch field in struct

  lastlog, struct utmp, struct utmpx (such as i386, powerpc64le, rv32,
  rv64, x86-64) switched from a signed to an unsigned type for that
  field.  This allows these fields to store timestamps beyond the year
  2038, until the year 2106.  Please note that applications are still
  expected to migrate off the interfaces declared in <utmp.h> and
  <utmpx.h> (except for login_tty) due to locking and session management
  problems.

• __rseq_size now denotes the size of the active rseq area (20 bytes

  initially), not the size of struct rseq (32 bytes initially).

Security related changes:

The following CVEs were fixed in this release, details of which can be
found in the advisories directory of the release tarball:

  GLIBC-SA-2024-0004:
    ISO-2022-CN-EXT: fix out-of-bound writes when writing escape
    sequence (CVE-2024-2961)

  GLIBC-SA-2024-0005:
    nscd: Stack-based buffer overflow in netgroup cache (CVE-2024-33599)

  GLIBC-SA-2024-0006:
    nscd: Null pointer crash after notfound response (CVE-2024-33600)

  GLIBC-SA-2024-0007:
    nscd: netgroup cache may terminate daemon on memory allocation
    failure (CVE-2024-33601)

  GLIBC-SA-2024-0008:
    nscd: netgroup cache assumes NSS callback uses in-buffer strings
    (CVE-2024-33602)

The following bugs were resolved with this release:

  [19622] network: Support aliasing with struct sockaddr
  [21271] localedata: cv_RU: update translations
  [23774] localedata: lv_LV collates Y/y incorrectly
  [23865] string: wcsstr is quadratic-time
  [25119] localedata: Change Czech weekday names to lowercase
  [27777] stdio: fclose does a linear search, takes ages when many FILE*
    are opened
  [29770] libc: prctl does not match manual page ABI on powerpc64le-
    linux-gnu
  [29845] localedata: Update hr_HR locale currency to €
  [30701] time: getutxent misbehaves on 32-bit x86 when _TIME_BITS=64
  [31316] build: Fails test misc/tst-dirname "Didn't expect signal from
    child: got `Illegal instruction'" on non SSE CPUs
  [31317] dynamic-link: [RISCV] static PIE crashes during self
    relocation
  [31325] libc: mips: clone3 is wrong for o32
  [31335] math: Compile glibc with -march=x86-64-v3 should disable FMA4
    multi-arch version
  [31339] libc: arm32 loader crash after cleanup in 2.36
  [31340] manual: A bad sentence in section 22.3.5 (resource.texi)
  [31357] dynamic-link: $(objpfx)tst-rtld-list-diagnostics.out rule
    doesn't work with test wrapper
  [31370] localedata: wcwidth() does not treat
    DEFAULT_IGNORABLE_CODE_POINTs as zero-width
  [31371] dynamic-link: x86-64: APX and Tile registers aren't preserved
    in ld.so trampoline
  [31372] dynamic-link: _dl_tlsdesc_dynamic doesn't preserve all caller-
    saved registers
  [31383] libc: _FORTIFY_SOURCE=3 and __fortified_attr_access vs size of
    0 and zero size types
  [31385] build: sort-makefile-lines.py doesn't check variable with _
    nor with "^# variable"
  [31402] libc: clone (NULL, NULL, ...) clobbers %r7 register on
    s390{,x}
  [31405] libc: Improve dl_iterate_phdr using _dl_find_object
  [31411] localedata: Add Latgalian locale
  [31412] build: GCC 6 failed to build i386 glibc on Fedora 39
  [31429] build: Glibc failed to build with -march=x86-64-v3
  [31468] libc: sigisemptyset returns true when the set contains signals
    larger than 34
  [31476] network: Automatic activation of single-request options break
    resolv.conf reloading
  [31479] libc: Missing #include <sys/rseq.h> in sched_getcpu.c may
    result in a loss of rseq acceleration
  [31501] dynamic-link: _dl_tlsdesc_dynamic_xsavec may clobber %rbx
  [31518] manual: documentation: FLT_MAX_10_EXP questionable text, evtl.
    wrong,
  [31530] localedata: Locale file for Moksha - mdf_RU
  [31553] malloc: elf/tst-decorate-maps fails on ppc64el
  [31596] libc: On the llvm-arm32 platform, dlopen("not_exist.so", -1)
    triggers segmentation fault
  [31600] math: math: x86 ceill traps when FE_INEXACT is enabled
  [31601] math: math: x86 floor traps when FE_INEXACT is enabled
  [31603] math: math: x86 trunc traps when FE_INEXACT is enabled
  [31612] libc: arc4random fails to fallback to /dev/urandom if
    getrandom is not present
  [31629] build: powerpc64: Configuring with "--with-cpu=power10" and
    'CFLAGS=-O2 -mcpu=power9' fails to build glibc
  [31640] dynamic-link: POWER10 ld.so crashes in
    elf_machine_load_address with GCC 14
  [31661] libc: NPROCESSORS_CONF and NPROCESSORS_ONLN not available in
    getconf
  [31676] dynamic-link: Configuring with CC="gcc -march=x86-64-v3"
    --with-rtld-early-cflags=-march=x86-64 results in linker failure
  [31677] nscd: nscd: netgroup cache: invalid memcpy under low
    memory/storage conditions
  [31678] nscd: nscd: Null pointer dereferences after failed netgroup
    cache insertion
  [31679] nscd: nscd: netgroup cache may terminate daemon on memory
    allocation failure
  [31680] nscd: nscd: netgroup cache assumes NSS callback uses in-buffer
    strings
  [31682] math: [PowerPC] Floating point exception error for math test
    test-ceil-except-2 test-floor-except-2 test-trunc-except-2
  [31686] dynamic-link: Stack-based buffer overflow in
    parse_tunables_string
  [31695] libc: pidfd_spawn/pidfd_spawnp leak an fd if clone3 succeeds
    but execve fails
  [31719] dynamic-link: --enable-hardcoded-path-in-tests doesn't work
    with -Wl,--enable-new-dtags
  [31730] libc: backtrace_symbols_fd prints different strings than
    backtrace_symbols returns
  [31753] build: FAIL: link-static-libc with GCC 6/7/8
  [31755] libc: procutils_read_file doesn't start with a leading
    underscore
  [31756] libc: write_profiling is only in libc.a
  [31757] build: Should XXXf128_do_not_use functions be excluded?
  [31759] math: Extra nearbyint symbols in libm.a
  [31760] math: Missing math functions
  [31764] build: _res_opcodes should be a compat symbol only
  [31765] dynamic-link: _dl_mcount_wrapper is exported without prototype
  [31766] stdio: IO_stderr _IO_stdin_ _IO_stdout should be compat
    symbols
  [31768] string: Extra stpncpy symbol in libc.a
  [31770] libc: clone3 is in libc.a
  [31774] libc: Missing __isnanf128 in libc.a
  [31775] math: Missing exp10 exp10f32x exp10f64 fmod fmodf fmodf32
    fmodf32x fmodf64 in libm.a
  [31777] string: Extra memchr strlen symbols in libc.a
  [31781] math: Missing math functions in libm.a
  [31782] build: Test build failure with recent GCC trunk (x86/tst-cpu-
    features-supports.c:69:3: error: parameter to builtin not valid:
    avx5124fmaps)
  [31785] string: loongarch: Extra strnlen symbols in libc.a
  [31786] string: powerpc: Extra strchrnul and strncasecmp_l symbols in
    libc.a
  [31787] math: powerpc: Extra llrintf, llrintf, llrintf32, and
    llrintf32 symbols in libc.a
  [31788] libc: microblaze: Extra cacheflush symbol in libc.a
  [31789] libc: powerpc: Extra versionsort symbol in libc.a
  [31790] libc: s390: Extra getutent32, getutent32_r, getutid32,
    getutid32_r, getutline32, getutline32_r, getutmp32, getutmpx32,
    getutxent32, getutxid32, getutxline32, pututline32, pututxline32,
    updwtmp32, updwtmpx32 in libc.a
  [31797] build: g++ -static requirement should be able to opt-out
  [31798] libc: pidfd_getpid.c is miscompiled by GCC 6.4
  [31802] time: difftime is pure not const
  [31808] time: The supported time_t range is not documented.
  [31840] stdio: Memory leak in _IO_new_fdopen (fdopen) on seek failure
  [31867] build: "CPU ISA level is lower than required" on SSE2-free
    CPUs
  [31876] time: "Date and time" documentation fixes for POSIX.1-2024 etc
  [31883] build: ISA level support configure check relies on bashism /
    is otherwise broken for arithmetic
  [31892] build: Always install mtrace.
  [31917] libc: clang mq_open fortify wrapper does not handle 4 argument
    correctly
  [31927] libc: clang open fortify wrapper does not handle argument
    correctly
  [31931] time: tzset may fault on very short TZ string
  [31934] string: wcsncmp crash on s390x on vlbb instruction
  [31963] stdio: Crash in _IO_link_in within __gcov_exit
  [31965] dynamic-link: rseq extension mechanism does not work as
    intended
  [31980] build: elf/tst-tunables-enable_secure-env fails on ppc

Release Notes
=============

https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Release/2.40

Contributors
============

This release was made possible by the contributions of many people.
The maintainers are grateful to everyone who has contributed
changes or bug reports.  These include:

Adam Sampson
Adhemerval Zanella
Alejandro Colomar
Alexandre Ferrieux
Amrita H S
Andreas K. Hüttel
Andreas Schwab
Andrew Pinski
Askar Safin
Aurelien Jarno
Avinal Kumar
Carlos Llamas
Carlos O'Donell
Charles Fol
Christoph Müllner
DJ Delorie
Daniel Cederman
Darius Rad
David Paleino
Dragan Stanojević (Nevidljivi)
Evan Green
Fangrui Song
Flavio Cruz
Florian Weimer
Gabi Falk
H.J. Lu
Jakub Jelinek
Jan Kurik
Joe Damato
Joe Ramsay
Joe Simmons-Talbott
Joe Talbott
John David Anglin
Joseph Myers
Jules Bertholet
Julian Zhu
Junxian Zhu
Konstantin Kharlamov
Luca Boccassi
Maciej W. Rozycki
Manjunath Matti
Mark Wielaard
MayShao-oc
Meng Qinggang
Michael Jeanson
Michel Lind
Mike FABIAN
Mohamed Akram
Noah Goldstein
Palmer Dabbelt
Paul Eggert
Philip Kaludercic
Samuel Dobron
Samuel Thibault
Sayan Paul
Sergey Bugaev
Sergey Kolosov
Siddhesh Poyarekar
Simon Chopin
Stafford Horne
Stefan Liebler
Sunil K Pandey
Szabolcs Nagy
Wilco Dijkstra
Xi Ruoyao
Xin Wang
Yinyu Cai
YunQiang Su

We would like to call out the following and thank them for their
tireless patch review:

Adhemerval Zanella
Alejandro Colomar
Andreas K. Hüttel
Arjun Shankar
Aurelien Jarno
Bruno Haible
Carlos O'Donell
DJ Delorie
Dmitry V. Levin
Evan Green
Fangrui Song
Florian Weimer
H.J. Lu
Jonathan Wakely
Joseph Myers
Mathieu Desnoyers
Maxim Kuvyrkov
Michael Jeanson
Noah Goldstein
Palmer Dabbelt
Paul Eggert
Paul E. Murphy
Peter Bergner
Philippe Mathieu-Daudé
Sam James
Siddhesh Poyarekar
Simon Chopin
Stefan Liebler
Sunil K Pandey
Szabolcs Nagy
Xi Ruoyao
Zack Weinberg

--
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, releng)
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Dilfridge
https://www.akhuettel.de/

GNU Parallel 20240722 ('Assange') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

  parallel is frickin great for launching jobs on multiple
  machines. Ansible and Jenkins and others may be good too but I was
  able to jump right in with parallel.
    -- dwhite21787@reddit
 
New in this release:

• No new features. This is a candidate for a stable release.
• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• Scientific Workflows at Scale using GNU Parallel https://web.cvent.com/event/f318e73c-2230-432a-a044-b75625020543/websitePage:afd80266-008e-414b-9f94-2fd9b4dd1924?session=fe79a785-ec60-414c-8d2b-c29208f53d4c&shareLink=true
• Use GNU Parallel to render blender movies distributed by a bunch of nodes https://github.com/tfmoraes/blender_gnu_parallel_render
• Lessons Learned from Scaling to Multi-Terabyte Datasets https://v2thegreat.com/2024/06/19/lessons-learned-from-scaling-to-multi-terabyte-datasets/
• Efisiensi Maksimal: Cara Paralelisasi Perintah di CLI Linux https://medium.com/@nfrozi/efisiensi-maksimal-cara-paralelisasi-perintah-di-cli-linux-f4fda3afe2a0
• Introduction to GNU parallel https://datascience.101workbook.org/06-hpc/06-parallel/01-intro-to-gnu-parallel/#gsc.tab=0

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep 883c667e01eed62f975ad28b6d50e22a
    12345678 883c667e 01eed62f 975ad28b 6d50e22a
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep cc21b4c943fd03e93ae1ae49e28573c0
    cc21b4c9 43fd03e9 3ae1ae49 e28573c0
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep ec113b49a54e705f86d51e784ebced224fdff3f52
    79945d9d 250b42a4 2067bb00 99da012e c113b49a 54e705f8 6d51e784 ebced224
    fdff3f52 ca588d64 e75f6033 61bd543f d631f592 2f87ceb2 ab034149 6df84a35
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, Evgeny Grin has interviewed Mikolai Gütschow who designed and implemented solutions for the payments in the Internet of Things (IoT).

DHT Technical Specification Milestone 5

We are happy to announce the completion of milestone 5 for the DHT specification. The general objective is to provide a detailed and comprehensive guide for implementors of the GNUnet DHT "R ⁵ N". As part of this milestone, the specification was updated and interoperability testing conducted. We submitted the draft to the Independent Stream Editor (ISE) who is going to decide if it will be adopted and shepherded through the RFC process.

The current protocol is implemented as part of GNUnet and gnunet-go as announced on the mailing list when the previous implementation milestones were finished .

We again invite any interested party to read the document and provide critical review and feedback. This greatly helps us to improve the protocol and help future implementations. Contact us at the gnunet-developers mailing list .

• Plain text version
• HTML version
• Git sources

This work is generously funded by NLnet as part of their NGI Assure fund .

On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, Evgeny Grin has interviewed Özgür Kesim who designed and implemented an age restricition mechanism inside the GNU Taler coins.

The European Union must keep funding free software

The GNUnet project was granted NGI funding via NLnet . Other FOSS related projects also benefit from NGI funding. This funding is now at risk for future projects.

The following is an open letter initially published in French by the Petites Singularités association. To co-sign it, please publish it on your website in your preferred language, then add yourself to this table .

Open Letter to the European Commission.

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet ( NGI ) programmes, part of European Commission’s Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NLnet’s calls ). This year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.

NGI programmes have shown their strength and importance to supporting the European software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure. Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.

Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 million euros to:

• “Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe” ;
• “A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life” ;
• “A structured ecosystem of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons”.

In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organisations managing these European funding consortia.

NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem, as most of its budget is allocated to fund third parties by the means of open calls, to structure commons that cover the whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research and innovation in Europe.

Moreover, NGI allows exchanges and collaborations across all the Euro zone countries as well as “widening countries” ¹ , currently both a success and an ongoing progress, likewise the Erasmus programme before us. NGI also contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project funding does. It encourages implementing projects funded as pilots, backing collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects, interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding schemes.

While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer data, the EU can’t afford this renunciation. Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an international collaboration. This is all the more essential in the current geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central, and free software allows addressing it while acting for peace and sovereignty in the digital world as a whole.

---

1. As defined by Horizon Europe, widening Member States are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lituania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Widening associated countries (under condition of an association agreement) include Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Feroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldavia, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkeye, and Ukraine. Widening overseas regions are Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands. ↩︎

On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, Berna Alp has interviewed Christian Blättler who implemented a system for using GNU Taler for unlikable discounts and subscriptions.

Dear community

I am happy to announce patchset 2.2.1 for MYGNUHealth, the GNU Health Personal Health Record.

This patchset fixes the following issues:

• MyGH crashes when clicking 'Network':  https://codeberg.org/gnuhealth/mygnuhealth/issues/34
• Include icons of type gif on MANIFEST.in : https://codeberg.org/gnuhealth/mygnuhealth/issues/36

You can download MyGNUHealth source code from the official GNU Savannah (https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/health/mygnuhealth/). You can also install MyGH from the Python Package Index (PyPI) or from your operating system distribution.

Happy hacking
Luis

On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, Berna Alp has interviewed Nicola Eigel who implemented a real-time auditor for the GNU Taler exchange with his colleague Cédric Zwahlen.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, July 19 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

Automake 1.17 released. Announcement:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autotools-announce/2024-07/msg00000.html

The 23rd release of GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro) is now available. See the full announcement for all the new features in this release and the many bugs that have been found and fixed: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnuastro/2024-07/msg00001.html

After rebuilding all added/modified packages in Trisquel, I have been circling around the elephant in the room: 99% of the binary packages in Trisquel comes from Ubuntu, which to a large extent are built from Debian source packages. Is it possible to rebuild the official binary packages identically? Does anyone make an effort to do so? Does anyone care about going through the differences between the official package and a rebuilt version? Reproducible-build.org‘s effort to track reproducibility bugs in Debian (and other systems) is amazing. However as far as I know, they do not confirm or deny that their rebuilds match the official packages. In fact, typically their rebuilds do not match the official packages, even when they say the package is reproducible, which had me surprised at first. To understand why that happens, compare the buildinfo file for the official coreutils 9.1-1 from Debian bookworm with the buildinfo file for reproducible-build.org’s build and you will see that the SHA256 checksum does not match, but still they declare it as a reproducible package. As far as I can tell of the situation, the purpose of their rebuilds are not to say anything about the official binary build, instead the purpose is to offer a QA service to maintainers by performing two builds of a package and declaring success if both builds match.

I have felt that something is lacking, and months have passed and I haven’t found any project that address the problem I am interested in. During my earlier work I created a project called debdistreproduce which performs rebuilds of the difference between two distributions in a GitLab pipeline, and display diffoscope output for further analysis. A couple of days ago I had the idea of rewriting it to perform rebuilds of a single distribution. A new project debdistrebuild was born and today I’m happy to bless it as version 1.0 and to announces the project! Debdistrebuild has rebuilt the top-50 popcon packages from Debian bullseye, bookworm and trixie, on amd64 and arm64, as well as Ubuntu jammy and noble on amd64, see the summary status page for links. This is intended as a proof of concept, to allow people experiment with the concept of doing GitLab-based package rebuilds and analysis. Compare how Guix has the guix challenge command.

Or I should say debdistrebuild has attempted to rebuild those distributions. The number of identically built packages are fairly low, so I didn’t want to waste resources building the rest of the archive until I understand if the differences are due to consequences of my build environment (plain apt-get build-dep followed by dpkg-buildpackage in a fresh container), or due to some real difference. Summarizing the results, debdistrebuild is able to rebuild 34% of Debian bullseye on amd64, 36% of bookworm on amd64, 32% of bookworm on arm64. The results for trixie and Ubuntu are disappointing, below 10%.

So what causes my rebuilds to be different from the official rebuilds? Some are trivial like the classical problem of varying build paths, resulting in a different NT_GNU_BUILD_ID causing a mismatch. Some are a bit strange, like a subtle difference in one of perl’s headers file. Some are due to embedded version numbers from a build dependency. Several of the build logs and diffoscope outputs doesn’t make sense, likely due to bugs in my build scripts, especially for Ubuntu which appears to strip translations and do other build variations that I don’t do. In general, the classes of reproducibility problems are the expected. Some are assembler differences for GnuPG’s gpgv-static, likely triggered by upload of a new version of gcc after the original package was built. There are at least two ways to resolve that problem: either use the same version of build dependencies that were used to produce the original build, or demand that all packages that are affected by a change in another package are rebuilt centrally until there are no more differences.

The current design of debdistrebuild uses the latest version of a build dependency that is available in the distribution. We call this a “idempotent rebuild“. This is usually not how the binary packages were built originally, they are often built against earlier versions of their build dependency. That is the situation for most binary distributions.

Instead of using the latest build dependency version, higher reproducability may be achieved by rebuilding using the same version of the build dependencies that were used during the original build. This requires parsing buildinfo files to find the right version of the build dependency to install. We believe doing so will lead to a higher number of reproducibly built packages. However it begs the question: can we rebuild that earlier version of the build dependency? This circles back to really old versions and bootstrappable builds eventually.

While rebuilding old versions would be interesting on its own, we believe that is less helpful for trusting the latest version and improving a binary distribution: it is challenging to publish a new version of some old package that would fix a reproducibility bug in another package when used as a build dependency, and then rebuild the later packages with the modified earlier version. Those earlier packages were already published, and are part of history. It may be that ultimately it will no longer be possible to rebuild some package, because proper source code is missing (for packages using build dependencies that were never part of a release); hardware to build a package could be missing; or that the source code is no longer publicly distributable.

I argue that getting to 100% idempotent rebuilds is an interesting goal on its own, and to reach it we need to start measure idempotent rebuild status.

One could conceivable imagine a way to rebuild modified versions of earlier packages, and then rebuild later packages using the modified earlier packages as build dependencies, for the purpose of achieving higher level of reproducible rebuilds of the last version, and to reach for bootstrappability. However, it may be still be that this is insufficient to achieve idempotent rebuilds of the last versions. Idempotent rebuilds are different from a reproducible build (where we try to reproduce the build using the same inputs), and also to bootstrappable builds (in which all binaries are ultimately built from source code). Consider a cycle where package X influence the content of package Y, which in turn influence the content of package X. These cycles may involve several packages, and it is conceivable that a cycle could be circular and infinite. It may be difficult to identify these chains, and even more difficult to break them up, but this effort help identify where to start looking for them. Rebuilding packages using the same build dependency versions as were used during the original build, or rebuilding packages using a bootsrappable build process, both seem orthogonal to the idempotent rebuild problem.

Our notion of rebuildability appears thus to be complementary to reproducible-builds.org’s definition and bootstrappable.org’s definition. Each to their own devices, and Happy Hacking!

Addendum about terminology: With “idempotent rebuild” I am talking about a rebuild of the entire operating system, applied to itself. Compare how you build the latest version of the GNU C Compiler: it first builds itself using whatever system compiler is available (often an earlier version of gcc) which we call step 1. Then step 2 is to build a copy of itself using the compiler built in step 1. The final step 3 is to build another copy of itself using the compiler from step 2. Debian, Ubuntu etc are at step 1 in this process right now. The output of step 2 and step 3 ought to be bit-by-bit identical, or something is wrong. The comparison between step 2 and 3 is what I refer to with an idempotent rebuild. Of course, most packages aren’t a compiler that can compile itself. However entire operating systems such as Trisquel, PureOS, Ubuntu or Debian are (hopefully) a self-contained system that ought to be able to rebuild itself to an identical copy. Or something is amiss. The reproducible build and bootstrappable build projects are about improve the quality of step 1. The property I am interested is the identical rebuild and comparison in step 2 and 3. I feel the word “idempotent” describes the property I’m interested in well, but I realize there may be better ways to describe this. Ideas welcome!

 When NeXT still existed and the black hardware was a thing, Steve Jobs made the announcement that OPENSTEP would be created and that the object model, not the operating system and not the hardware, was the important thing.

This is a concept that Apple has forgotten.  With it's push towards Apple Silicon and a walled-garden, Apple has committed itself to the same pitfall that NeXT fell into.  NeXT lacked the infrastructure to handle OPENSTEP running on multiple kinds of hardware, but the object model on different OSes was successful... this is evident in OPENSTEP1.1 for Solaris and OPENSTEP for NT.

GNUstep attempts to reach the same goal, but provides the APIs that are available with Cocoa.   The object model IS the important thing and this is why GNUstep is so important.  It breaks the walled garden and makes it possible for users to run their apps and tools on other operating systems.  GNUstep HASN'T forgotten and we believe this is a core concept that Apple has left behind.

GNU direvent version 5.4 is available for download.

New in this version:

Simultaneous execution limits

It is possible to limit number of command instances that are allowed to run simultaneously for a particular watcher.  This is done using
the max-instances statement in watcher section.

Restore the "nowait" default

In previous version, watchers waited for the handler to terminate, unless given the nowait option explicitly.  It is now fixed and nowait is the default, as described in the documentation.

Fix bug in generic to system event translation

Fix sentinel code

In some cases setting the sentinel effectively removed the original watcher.  That happened if the full file name of the original watcher
and its directory part produced the same hash code.

GNU dbm version 1.24 is available for download. New in this version:

New gdbm_load option: --update

The --update (-U) option instructs gdbm_load to update an existing database.

Fix semantics of gdbm_load -r

The --replace (-r) is valid only when used together with --update.

Use getline in gdbmtool shell

New function: gdbm_load_from_file_ext

In contrast to gdbm_load and gdbm_load_from_file, which derive the value of the flag parameter for gdbm_open from the value of their replace argument, this function allows the caller to specify it explicitly. 

Bugfixes

• Fix binary dump format for key and/or data of zero size (see bug 656)
• Fix location tracking and recover command in gdbtool (see bug 566)
• Fix possible buffer underflow in gdbmload.
• Ensure any padding bytes in avail_elem structure are filled with 0. This fixes debian bug 1031276.
• Improve the documentation.

from arch:

After upgrading to openssh-9.8p1, the existing SSH daemon will be unable to accept new connections. When upgrading remote hosts, please make sure to restart the sshd service using systemctl try-restart sshd right after upgrading.

We are evaluating the possibility to automatically apply a restart of the sshd service on upgrade in a future release of the openssh-9.8p1 package.

I am happy to announce a new release of GNU poke, version 4.2.

This is a bugfix release in the 4.x series.

See the file NEWS in the distribution tarball for a list of issues
fixed in this release.

The tarball poke-4.2.tar.gz is now available at
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/poke/poke-4.2.tar.gz.

    > GNU poke (http://www.jemarch.net/poke) is an interactive, extensible
    > editor for binary data.  Not limited to editing basic entities such
    > as bits and bytes, it provides a full-fledged procedural,
    > interactive programming language designed to describe data
    > structures and to operate on them.


Thanks to the people who contributed with code and/or documentation to
this release.

Happy poking!

Mohammad-Reza Nabipoor

The title of this article, “Migrar, migrant, migràrem“, comes from a beautiful poem written by Laia Porcar[1], that inspired the strikingly profound painting by Sara Belles [2] “Jo per tu, fill meu“. The artists reflect the migrants ordeal to provide a better life to their children and families, even at the cost of losing their own lives.

GNU Health[3] is a Social project with some technology behind and the mission at Sea-Eye is one of the best examples. After all, GNU Solidario[4] is a NGO that focuses in the advancement of Social Medicine.

We live a world of injustice. Concentration of power, social gradient and poverty rates keep on the rise. Artificial intelligence is on the hands of mega private corporations, targeting our privacy and feeding the macabre business of war. The fight for scarce natural resources such as lithium or coltan creates coups in impoverished countries. Nature and non-human animals are used and abused as mere commodities. Our world turns a blind eye to the systematic crushing and eradication of civilian population by powerful armies. As a result, we live in a world where migration is not a choice, but the only way out for millions of human beings, even at the risk of becoming anonymous victims in the Atlantic ocean or Mediterranean sea mass graveyards.

But there is hope. The Sea-Eye mission is the end result of a network of solidarity, cooperation and empathy. The Free Software movement started by Richard Stallman[5]; Julian Sassenscheidt message in Mastodon and his presentation at GNU Health Con 2023[6] ; The work of our representative in Germany, Gerald Wiese; the Chaos Computer Club[7]; the team from L’Aurora[8] providing logistic support to the Search and Rescue vessels; the phenomenal Sea-Eye family who made me feel at home: The cook, crew on deck, the logistics and medical team who stood stoically intensive hours of GNU Health training. Of course, Selene, the heart of GNU Solidario and the one that looks after the human and non-human family members while I’m away.

You will hardly see these people in the news, because most corporate-backed media neglect them and their organizations. Unlike some billionaire “philanthropists” that take the media spotlight, these anonymous heroes stand on the right side of history, making a difference on the present and future of those who need it most, with very limited resources.

We’re very happy and proud to see that GNU Health can be of help to Sea-Eye in tasks such as guests registration, health evaluations, reporting, statistics and stock management. This is just the beginning and we will be optimizing and adding functionality on successive missions. That said, GNU Health will always play a secondary role compared to picking up somebody from the water and giving them a welcoming hug. Again, we’re a social project with a bit of technology behind.

I’d like to finish with a reflection on the picture I took to some of the drawings done by children during their stay at the Sea-Eye. The drawings exist because the Sea-eye crew rescued those kids. Otherwise, their corpses would be at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea, along with thousands who tragically perished trying to find dignity in this world. Thank you, Sea-eye. You are priceless.

A final note: shame on those countries and governments that detain and punish Search and Rescue vessels. Saving lives is not a crime.

Love, freedom and happy hacking

You can obtain Sara Belles painting and Laia Porcar poem from L’Aurora solidarity shop[8]

 So... recently I was working for a bit (sweat equity or so I thought) for a company by the name of ImmortalData.  The company is headed by a man by the name of Dale Amon.  I have worked, on and off, for them for about 2-3 years.   They are developing a piece of software that is used to extract data from their proprietary black box systems.  This piece of software uses GNUstep.   They were born from a previous company known as XCOR which was developing a space plane at the Mojave space port.   That company is now defunct.

Okay, so with that bit of history, I worked for a while for XCOR and then, because ImmortalData inherited the software, for them as well.  When I worked for XCOR it was as a contractor.  There have been issues with the software (some GNUstep bugs and some bugs due to problems introduced by Dale) that I have been asked to address.

At the end of a meeting a few weeks ago Dale made a comment like "Well, this issue seems like a GNUstep bug, so there is no reason we should have to pay for any of this" which hit an EXTREMELY sour note with me.

Later on that week I tried to clarify it with Dale, and it seems as though he was under the impression that since I was working on Free Software any changes or fixes TO that software should not be billable.   This is NOT true.  Additionally, the issue that they are experiencing is because of something THEY did, and it is not a GNUstep bug. 

I mentioned this in the previous post, but I feel strongly that this needs to be called out explicitly.   Free Software is free as in FREEDOM.  This means you are free to look at, examine, and modify the software as you see fit.   It does NOT mean services performed on that software on your behalf by someone other than you are free.

This development was VERY upsetting to me and I feel the need to make the above VERY clear.

GNU Parallel 20240622 ('34 counts') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

  The most glorious 15,000 lines of Perl ever written.
    -- @nibblrrr7124@YouTube
 
New in this release:

• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• Howto - Parallel: lanciare comandi in simultanea https://github.com/linuxhubit/linuxhub.it/blob/main/_posts/2024-06-14-howto-parallel-per-lanciare-comandi-in-simultanea.md
• Implementing Concurrency in Shell Scripts https://dev.to/siddhantkcode/implementing-concurrency-in-shell-scripts-521o

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep 883c667e01eed62f975ad28b6d50e22a
    12345678 883c667e 01eed62f 975ad28b 6d50e22a
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep cc21b4c943fd03e93ae1ae49e28573c0
    cc21b4c9 43fd03e9 3ae1ae49 e28573c0
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep ec113b49a54e705f86d51e784ebced224fdff3f52
    79945d9d 250b42a4 2067bb00 99da012e c113b49a 54e705f8 6d51e784 ebced224
    fdff3f52 ca588d64 e75f6033 61bd543f d631f592 2f87ceb2 ab034149 6df84a35
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

We are pleased to finally announce the release of GNU Guile 3.0.10! This release is mainly a bug-fix release, though it does include a number of new features:

• Better ability to define new port types in Scheme (R6RS custom textual ports, a new soft port interface, low-level custom ports).
• Support for local define definitions in all forms with bodies: when and unless, cond and case clauses, and so on.
• An experimental opt-in surface syntax, WISP.

For full details, see the release announcement, and check out the download page.

Happy Guile hacking!

automake 1.16.92 pretest release candidate released. Please test if you can, so 1.17 will be as reliable as we can make it. Announcement:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autotools-announce/2024-06/msg00001.html

Dear all

I am happy to announce the release of MyGNUHealth 2.2.0!

The new series of the GNU Health Personal Health record comes with many improvements and bug fixes. Some highlights of this new version:

• Support for Kivy 2.3.0
• Localization. MyGNUHealth now has support for different languages. English, Spanish and Chinese are available to use, and French, German, Italian are ready to be translated. There will be a translation component for MyGNUHealth at Codeberg's Weblate instance.
• Bluetooth functionality: Starting with MyGH series 2.2 we provide bluetooth integration for open compatible devices and health trackers. We include the link with the Pinetime Smartwatch (experimental) and the possibility to link to any open hardware device (glucometer, scales, blood pressure monitors,  .. ). We need to get a list of available medical devices that respect our privacy and freedom, so let us know of any!
• Charts now allow to select date ranges with calendar widgets
• The Book of Life have a revised format for the pages.
• The charts have been improved in the format and include x axis labels.

Thanks to Kivy, Mygnuhealth codebase can be ported to other architectures and operating systems such as Android AOSP (Pierre Michel is working on this) and GNU/Linux phones.

In addition to Savannah, we have incorporated Codeberg to the GNU Health development environment. Mailing lists, news and file downloads are at GNU, while the development repositories are at Codeberg (https://codeberg.org/gnuhealth)

You can download the latest MyGNUhealth sourcecode from GNU ftp site, pypi (using pip) or from your operating system package (like openSUSE).

Upgrading should be straightforward, and all the health history will remain in the MyGH database. In any case, please make sure you make a backup before upgrading (and daily ;) ).

Thank you to all the contributors that have possible this milestone!

Happy hacking
Luis

A little history first. Keysight is a large company that, primarily, makes testing equipment such as oscilloscopes and other electronics. They bought a company a few years back named TestPlant. Prior to that, TestPlant bought a company by the name of Redstone that produced a product known as Eggplant. Recently, I was laid off for economic reasons (at least that's what they said). It occurs to me that nothing in this world lasts forever. I was so depressed when I was let go because Keysight was the perfect home for me... they used GNUstep deeply. So, as you can imagine, I was deeply upset when things ended... but all things do. 

GNUnet 0.21.2

This is a bugfix release for gnunet 0.21.1. It primarily addresses some connectivity issues introduced with our new transport subsystem.

Links

• Source: https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/gnunet/gnunet-0.21.2.tar.gz ( https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/gnunet/gnunet-0.21.2.tar.gz.sig )
• Source (meson): https://buildbot.gnunet.org/gnunet-0.21.2-meson.tar.gz ( https://buildbot.gnunet.org/gnunet-0.21.2-meson.tar.gz.sig )
• Detailed list of changes: https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet.git/log/?h=v0.21.2
• NEWS: https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet.git/tree/NEWS?h=v0.21.2
• The list of closed issues in the bug tracker: https://bugs.gnunet.org/changelog_page.php?version_id=440

The GPG key used to sign is: 3D11063C10F98D14BD24D1470B0998EF86F59B6A

Note that due to mirror synchronization, not all links may be functional early after the release. For direct access try https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnunet/

libgnunetchat 0.5.0 released

We are also pleased to announce the release of libgnunetchat 0.5.0.
This is a major new release bringing compatibility with the major changes in the Messenger service from latest GNUnet release 0.21.2 adding new message kinds and functionality. This release will also require your GNUnet to be at least 0.21.2 because of that.

Download links

• libgnunetchat-0.5.0.tar.gz
• libgnunetchat-0.5.0.tar.gz.sig

Noteworthy changes in 0.5.0

• This release requires the GNUnet Messenger Service 0.5!
• Implements tickets to share attributes with contacts.
• Implement functionality to get recipient of sent private messages.
• Allow file sharing without additional encryption key.
• Implements discourses to send data in live channels.
• Fix memory violations and duplicate storage entries.
• Adjust callbacks regarding account states.
• Fix deletions of accounts and lobbies.
• Fix multiple synchronization bugs.
• Add test cases for discourses and tickets.

A detailed list of changes can be found in the ChangeLog .

Messenger-GTK 0.10.0

Since libgnunetchat made some changes there're also a new releases of the messenger applications addressing changes for compatibility and providing some new functionality.

Download links

• messenger-gtk-0.10.0.tar.gz
• messenger-gtk-0.10.0.tar.gz.sig

Noteworthy changes in 0.10.0

• Implement tagging and filtering messages
• Adjust media previews and optimize memory footprint
• Implement sharing profile attribute and profile picture with contacts
• Fix several UI issues and memory leaks
• Improve UI to waste less vertical space for smaller screens
• Add localization for English, German and Spanish

Known Issues

• Chats still require a reliable connection between GNUnet peers. So this still depends on the upcoming NAT traversal to be used outside of local networks for most users (see #5710 ).
• File sharing via the FS service should work in a GNUnet single-user setup but a multi-user setup breaks it (see #7355 )

In addition to this list, you may also want to consult our bug tracker at bugs.gnunet.org .

messenger-cli 0.3.0

This is mostly a compatibility release for messenger-cli 0.3.0 to address changes in libgnunetchat 0.5.0.

Download links

• messenger-cli-0.3.0.tar.gz
• messenger-cli-0.3.0.tar.gz.sig

Dear Translators:

Recently, the Licensing and Compliance Lab provided guidelines
for writing copyright notices in www.gnu.org translations:

https://www.gnu.org/s/trans-coord/w/Copyright-Notices.html

Please take them into account.

After received 2 translators‘ feedback plus my thought, I would put the following as advice for new translations:

1. add your name in the copyright notices in the translation if you think your contribution is enough for an article, like

Copyright &copy; 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.<br></br>
Copyright &copy; 2024 XIE Wensheng (translation)<

2. or optionally add your name in the TRANSLATOR'S CREDITS part as we always do.

<b>翻译</b>：李凡希，2010。<br></br>
<b>审校</b>：<a href="mailto:1945649519@qq.com">&lt;Nios34&gt;</a>，2020。<br></br>
<b>翻译团队</b>：<a rel="team" href="https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/www-zh-cn/">&lt;CTT&gt;</a>，2017-2024。<

best regards,
wxie

Version 1.7rc is available for download from:

  git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/enscript.git

We are looking forward for your feedback.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, June 07, from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

This is to announce findutils-4.10.0, a stable release.
See the NEWS below for more details.

GNU findutils is a set of software tools for finding files that match
certain criteria and for performing various operations on them.
Findutils includes the programs "find", "xargs" and "locate".
More information about findutils is available at:
  https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/

Please report bugs and problems with this release via the the
GNU Savannah bug tracker:
  https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils

Please send general comments and feedback about the GNU findutils
package to the mailing list (<mailto:bug-findutils@gnu.org):
  https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-findutils

There have been 88 commits by 8 people in the - sigh - 121 weeks since 4.9.0:
  Antonio Diaz Diaz (2)       James Youngman (24)
  Bernhard Voelker (57)       John A. Leuenhagen (1)
  Bjarni Ingi Gislason (1)    Shuiqing Zhou (1)
  Helmut Grohne (1)           ribbon (1)

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
   Autoconf 2.72
   Automake 1.16.5
   M4 1.4.18
   Gnulib v1.0-187-g623bcc22f4

Please consider supporting the Free Software Foundation in its fund
raising appeal; see <https://www.fsf.org/appeal/>.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

Have a nice day,
Bernhard Voelker [on behalf of the GNU findutils maintainers]

================================================================================

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/findutils/findutils-4.10.0.tar.xz
   
Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/findutils/findutils-4.10.0.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here is the SHA256 checksum:
 
  1387e0b67ff247d2abde998f90dfbf70c1491391a59ddfecb8ae698789f0a4f5  findutils-4.10.0.tar.xz

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

gpg --verify findutils-4.10.0.tar.xz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys A5189DB69C1164D33002936646502EF796917195

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

================================================================================

NEWS

• Noteworthy changes in release 4.10.0 (2024-06-01) [stable]

** Bug Fixes

  Find now defaults to optimization level 1 rather than 2 and the
  cost-based optimizer will only run at level 2 and above.  This
  should prevent changes of operation order which result in
  user-visible differences in behaviour. [#58427]

  If the -P option to xargs is not used, xargs will not change the way
  in which the SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2 signals are handled.  This means
  that they will cause the program to terminate if the signals were
  not ignored in the process which started xargs.  This also means that
  xargs does not use parallel execution at all.
  If you start xargs with '-P 1', then xargs will not be killed by these
  signals, and they instead change the degree of parallelism.
  This change improves xargs' POSIX compliance.

  'xargs -P' now waits for all its child processes to complete before
  exiting, even if one of them exits with status 255. [#64451]

  If the -P option of xargs is in use, reads on standard input which are
  interrupted by a signal are re-started. [#64442]

  'find -name /' no longer outputs a warning, because that is a valid pattern
  to match the root directory "/".  Previously, a diagnostic falsely claimed
  that this pattern would not match anything. [#62227]

  'find -gid' (without the mandatory argument) now outputs a correct error
  diagnostic.  Previously it output: "find: invalid argument `-gid' to `-gid'".
  The error diagnostic for non-numeric arguments has been improved as well.
  Likewise for -inum, -links and -uid.

  'find -user' and 'find -group' now allow to specify larger UIDs/GIDs.
  Previously, that was limited to INT_MAX, although the types uid_t and gid_t
  are larger on many systems, including x86_64 GNU/Linux. [#64900]

  'find -xtype l' no longer fails on symbolic links that point to
  themselves.  These are treated similarly to broken links. [#51926]

** Improvements

  The find predicates -used, -amin, -cmin, -mmin, -atime, -ctime, and -mtime
  now properly diagnose a not-a-number argument.  Previously, find dumped
  core via an assertion.  [#64717]

** Changes to the build process

  findutils now builds again on systems with musl-libc.
  This requires gettext-0.19.8.

  findutils programs no longer fail for timestamps past the year 2038
  on obsolete configurations with 32-bit signed time_t, because the
  build procedure now rejects these configurations.
  On systems without any year2038 support configure with --disable-year2038.

** Documentation Changes

  When generating the Texinfo manual, `makeinfo` is invoked with the --no-split
  option for all output formats now; this avoids files like find.info-[12].

  The xargs documentation now describes the double dash "--" option delimiter.

  The xargs examples in the Texinfo manual now use the -L and --replace options
  instead of the deprecated -l and -i options.  [#64480]

  The TexInfo manual now uses upper-case 'B' as birthtime for the -newerXY
  comparison consistently.  [#65378]

** Translations

Updated the following translations: Belarusian, Brazilian Portuguese,
Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional),
Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French,
Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish,
Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Luganda, Malay, Norwegian
Bokmaal, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak,
Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

I am happy to announce a new release of GNU poke, version 4.1.

This is a bugfix release in the 4.x series.

See the file NEWS in the distribution tarball for a list of issues
fixed in this release.

The tarball poke-4.1.tar.gz is now available at
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/poke/poke-4.1.tar.gz.

> GNU poke (http://www.jemarch.net/poke) is an interactive, extensible
> editor for binary data.  Not limited to editing basic entities such
> as bits and bytes, it provides a full-fledged procedural,
> interactive programming language designed to describe data
> structures and to operate on them.

Thanks to the people who contributed with code and/or documentation to
this release.

Happy poking!

Mohammad-Reza Nabipoor

We are glad to announce the publication of a new research paper entitled Source Code Archiving to the Rescue of Reproducible Deployment for the ACM Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability. The paper presents work that has been done since we started connecting Guix with the Software Heritage (SWH) archive five years ago:

The ability to verify research results and to experiment with methodologies are core tenets of science. As research results are increasingly the outcome of computational processes, software plays a central role. GNU Guix is a software deployment tool that supports reproducible software deployment, making it a foundation for computational research workflows. To achieve reproducibility, we must first ensure the source code of software packages Guix deploys remains available.

We describe our work connecting Guix with Software Heritage, the universal source code archive, making Guix the first free software distribution and tool backed by a stable archive. Our contribution is twofold: we explain the rationale and present the design and implementation we came up with; second, we report on the archival coverage for package source code with data collected over five years and discuss remaining challenges.

The ability to retrieve package source code is important for researchers who need to be able to replay scientific workflows, but it’s just as important for engineers and developers alike, who may also have good reasons to redeploy or to audit past package sets.

Support for source code archiving and recovery in Guix has improved a lot over the past five years, in particular with:

• Support for recovering source code tarballs (tar.gz and similar files): this is made possible by Disarchive, written by Timothy Sample.

• The ability to look up data by nar hash in the SWH archive (“nar” is the normalized archive format used by Nix and Guix), thanks to fellow SWH hackers. This, in turn, allows Guix to look up any version control checkout by content hash—Git, Subversion, Mercurial, you name it!
• The monitoring of archival coverage with Timothy’s Preservation of Guix reports has allowed us to identify discrepancies in Guix, Disarchive, and/or SWH and to increase archival coverage.

94% of the packages in a January 2024 snapshot of Guix are known to have their source code archived!

Check out the paper to learn more about the machinery at play and the current status.

NOTICE FOR EVERYONE:

You may see the following error message from pacman:

error: config file /etc/pacman.d/*.conf could not be read: No such file or directory

If you do, that is because you have modified your pacman.conf file in the past; but you forgot to reconcile the latest .pacnew replacement. Remember that it is upon each user to notice any new .pacnew replacement files for any configuration files that you have modified, each time pacman does an upgrade, and to merge the changes into your existing config files. Pacman will not do that automatically, to avoid clobbering your customizations. To correct this, compare /etc/pacman.conf and /etc/pacman.conf.pacnew to remind yourself which changes you had made. Then move /etc/pacman.conf.pacnew to /etc/pacman.conf; and redo you customizations (eg: enable the [nonsystemd] repo, enable ParallelDownloads, add ILoveCandy, etc).

NOTICE FOR THOSE WHO BUILD THEIR OWN PACKAGES:

Parabola's default makepkg.conf has long loaded /etc/makepkg.d/*.conf. As of makepkg 6.1.0, the program itself now loads /etc/makepkg.conf.d/*.conf, so this part of our makepkg.conf has been removed. Users who have /etc/makepkg.d/*.conf files need to move them to /etc/makepkg.conf.d/.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, May 24, from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

GNU Parallel 20240522 ('Tbilisi') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

  GNU Parallel é mais um daqueles "como eu vivia sem isso?!"
  -- Ivan Augusto @ivanaugustobd@twitter
 
New in this release:

• --onall now supports sshpass - user:pass@host.
• --memfree kills do not count as --retries.
• Bug fixes and man page updates.

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep 883c667e01eed62f975ad28b6d50e22a
    12345678 883c667e 01eed62f 975ad28b 6d50e22a
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep cc21b4c943fd03e93ae1ae49e28573c0
    cc21b4c9 43fd03e9 3ae1ae49 e28573c0
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep ec113b49a54e705f86d51e784ebced224fdff3f52
    79945d9d 250b42a4 2067bb00 99da012e c113b49a 54e705f8 6d51e784 ebced224
    fdff3f52 ca588d64 e75f6033 61bd543f d631f592 2f87ceb2 ab034149 6df84a35
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

New Addition to Education Case Studies - Italy

All Italian-Language Schools in South Tyrol Migrated to Free Software

Libtoolers!

The Libtool Team is pleased to announce the release of libtool 2.5.0, a alpha release.

GNU Libtool hides the complexity of using shared libraries behind a
consistent, portable interface. GNU Libtool ships with GNU libltdl, which
hides the complexity of loading dynamic runtime libraries (modules)
behind a consistent, portable interface.

There have been 91 commits by 29 people in the 113 weeks since 2.4.7.

See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Albert Chu (1)
  Alex Ameen (3)
  Antonin Décimo (3)
  Brad Smith (2)
  Bruno Haible (2)
  Dmitry Antipov (1)
  Florian Weimer (1)
  Gilles Gouaillardet (1)
  Ileana Dumitrescu (24)
  Jakub Wilk (1)
  Jonathan Wakely (2)
  Manoj Gupta (1)
  Mike Frysinger (23)
  Mingli Yu (2)
  Oliver Kiddle (1)
  Olly Betts (1)
  Ozkan Sezer (2)
  Paul Eggert (2)
  Paul Green (1)
  Raul E Rangel (1)
  Richard Purdie (5)
  Sam James (4)
  Samuel Thibault (1)
  Stephen Webb (1)
  Tijl Coosemans (1)
  Tim Rice (1)
  Uwe Kleine-König (1)
  Vadim Zeitlin (1)
  Xiang.Lin (1)

Ileana
 [on behalf of the libtool maintainers]
==================================================================

Here is the GNU libtool home page:
    https://gnu.org/s/libtool/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libtool.git;a=shortlog;h=v2.5.0
or run this command from a git-cloned libtool directory:
  git shortlog v2.4.7..v2.5.0

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.0.tar.gz   (1.9MB)
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.0.tar.xz   (1008KB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.0.tar.gz.sig
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.5.0.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

  fb3ab5907115b16bf12a0d3d424c79cb0003d02e  libtool-2.5.0.tar.gz
  1DjDF0VdhVVM4vmYvkiGb9QM/L+DTWCzAm9PwO1YPSM=  libtool-2.5.0.tar.gz
  70e2dd113a9460c279df01b2eee319adb99ee998  libtool-2.5.0.tar.xz
  fhDMhjgj1AjsX/6kHUPDckqgiBZldXljydsL77LIecw=  libtool-2.5.0.tar.xz

Verify the base64 SHA256 checksum with cksum -a sha256 --check
from coreutils-9.2 or OpenBSD's cksum since 2007.

Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify libtool-2.5.0.tar.gz.sig

The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:

  pub   rsa4096 2021-09-23 [SC]
        FA26 CA78 4BE1 8892 7F22  B99F 6570 EA01 146F 7354
  uid   Ileana Dumitrescu <ileanadumi95@protonmail.com>
  uid   Ileana Dumitrescu <ileanadumitrescu95@gmail.com>

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

  gpg --locate-external-key ileanadumi95@protonmail.com

  gpg --recv-keys 6570EA01146F7354

  wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=libtool&download=1' | gpg --import -

As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
keyring:

  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify libtool-2.5.0.tar.gz.sig

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.72e
  Automake 1.16.5
  Gnulib v0.1-6995-g29d705ead1

NEWS

• Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.0 (2024-05-13) [alpha]

** New features:

  - Pass '-fdiagnostics-color', '-frecord-gcc-switches',
    '-fno-sanitize*', '-Werror', and 'prefix-map' flags.

  - Pass the '-no-canonical-prefixes' linker flag.

  - Pass '-fopenmp=*' for Clang to allow choosing between libgomp and
    libomp.

  - Pass '-shared-libsan', '-static-libsan', 'rtlib=*', and
    'unwindlib=*' for Clang.

  - Expanded process.h inclusion on Windows for more than the
    proprietary MSVC compiler. Other alternative Windows compilers
    also require process.h.

  - Pass 'elf32_x86_64' and 'elf64_x86_64' to the linker on hurd-amd64.

  - Recognize --windows* config triplets.

** Important incompatible changes:

  - Removed test_compile from command line options.

  - By default executables are created with the RUNPATH property for
    the Android linker. RUNPATH works for libraries which are not
    installed in system locations.

  - Removed AC_PROG_SED fallback, as the macro has been supported
    in Autoconf since the 90's.

** Bug fixes:

  - Check for space after -l, -L, and -R linker flags.

  - Updated documentation for tests, the demo directory, and
    elsewhere.

  - Fixed Solaris 11 builds.

  - Clean trailing "/" from sysroot path.

  - Fixed shared library builds for System V.

  - Added mingw to the list of systems not requiring libm.

  - Fixed support for nios2 systems.

  - Fixed linker check for '--whole-archive' support for linkers other
    than ld.

  - Use -Fe instead of -o with MSVC to avoid deprecation warnings.

  - Improved reproducibility of libtool scripts.

  - Avoided MinGW warning by adding CRTIMP.

  - Improved grep portability.

  - Fixed cross-building warnings when checking for file.


** Changes in supported systems or compilers:

  - Removed support for bitrig (--bitrig*).

  - Added support for flang (Fortran LLVM-based) compilers.


Enjoy!

You clone a Git repository, then pull from it. How can you tell its contents are “authentic”—i.e., coming from the “genuine” project you think you’re pulling from, written by the fine human beings you’ve been working with? With commit signatures and “verified” badges ✅ flourishing, you’d think this has long been solved—but nope!

Four years after Guix deployed its own tool to allow users to authenticate updates fetched with guix pull (which uses Git under the hood), the situation hasn’t changed all that much: the vast majority of developers using Git simply do not authenticate the code they pull. That’s pretty bad. It’s the modern-day equivalent of sharing unsigned tarballs and packages like we’d blissfully do in the past century.

The authentication mechanism Guix uses for channels is available to any Git user through the guix git authenticate command. This post is a guide for Git users who are not necessarily Guix users but are interested in using this command for their own repositories. Before looking into the command-line interface and how we improved it to make it more convenient, let’s dispel any misunderstandings or misconceptions.

Why you should care

When you run git pull, you’re fetching a bunch of commits from a server. If it’s over HTTPS, you’re authenticating the server itself, which is nice, but that does not tell you who the code actually comes from—the server might be compromised and an attacker pushed code to the repository. Not helpful. At all.

But hey, maybe you think you’re good because everyone on your project is signing commits and tags, and because you’re disciplined, you routinely run git log --show-signature and check those “Good signature” GPG messages. Maybe you even have those fancy “✅ verified” badges as found on GitLab and on GitHub.

Signing commits is part of the solution, but it’s not enough to authenticate a set of commits that you pull; all it shows is that, well, those commits are signed. Badges aren’t much better: the presence of a “verified” badge only shows that the commit is signed by the OpenPGP key currently registered for the corresponding GitLab/GitHub account. It’s another source of lock-in and makes the hosting platform a trusted third-party. Worse, there’s no notion of authorization (which keys are authorized), let alone tracking of the history of authorization changes (which keys were authorized at the time a given commit was made). Not helpful either.

Being able to ensure that when you run git pull, you’re getting code that genuinely comes from authorized developers of the project is basic security hygiene. Obviously it cannot protect against efforts to infiltrate a project to eventually get commit access and insert malicious code—the kind of multi-year plot that led to the xz backdoor—but if you don’t even protect against unauthorized commits, then all bets are off.

Authentication is something we naturally expect from apt update, pip, guix pull, and similar tools; why not treat git pull to the same standard?

Initial setup

The guix git authenticate command authenticates Git checkouts, unsurprisingly. It’s currently part of Guix because that’s where it was brought to life, but it can be used on any Git repository. This section focuses on how to use it; you can learn about the motivation, its design, and its implementation in the 2020 blog post, in the 2022 peer-reviewed academic paper entitled Building a Secure Software Supply Chain with GNU Guix, or in this 20mn presentation.

To support authentication of your repository with guix git authenticate, you need to follow these steps:

1. Enable commit signing on your repo: git config commit.gpgSign true. (Git now supports other signing methods but here we need OpenPGP signatures.)

2. Create a keyring branch containing all the OpenPGP keys of all the committers, along these lines:

   git checkout --orphan keyring
   git reset --hard
   gpg --export alice@example.org > alice.key
   gpg --export bob@example.org > bob.key
   …
   git add *.key
   git commit -m "Add committer keys."

   All the files must end in .key. You must never remove keys from that branch: keys of users who left the project are necessary to authenticate past commits.

3. Back to the main branch, add a .guix-authorizations file, listing the OpenPGP keys of authorized committers—we’ll get back to its format below.

4. Commit! This becomes the introductory commit from which authentication can proceed. The introduction of your repository is the ID of this commit and the OpenPGP fingerprint of the key used to sign it.

That’s it. From now on, anyone who clones the repository can authenticate it. The first time, run:

guix git authenticate COMMIT SIGNER

… where COMMIT is the commit ID of the introductory commit, and SIGNER is the OpenPGP fingerprint of the key used to sign that commit (make sure to enclose it in double quotes if there are spaces!). As a repo maintainer, you must advertise this introductory commit ID and fingerprint on a web page or in a README file so others know what to pass to guix git authenticate.

The commit and signer are now recorded on the first run in .git/config; next time, you can run it without any arguments:

guix git authenticate

The other new feature is that the first time you run it, the command installs pre-push and pre-merge hooks (unless preexisting hooks are found) such that your repository is automatically authenticated from there on every time you run git pull or git push.

guix git authenticate exits with a non-zero code and an error message when it stumbles upon a commit that lacks a signature, that is signed by a key not in the keyring branch, or that is signed by a key not listed in .guix-authorizations.

Maintaining the list of authorized committers

The .guix-authorizations file in the repository is central: it lists the OpenPGP fingerprints of authorized committers. Any commit that is not signed by a key listed in the .guix-authorizations file of its parent commit(s) is considered inauthentic—and an error is reported. The format of .guix-authorizations is based on S-expressions and looks like this:

;; Example ‘.guix-authorizations’ file.

(authorizations
 (version 0)               ;current file format version

 (("AD17 A21E F8AE D8F1 CC02  DBD9 F8AE D8F1 765C 61E3"
   (name "alice"))
  ("2A39 3FFF 68F4 EF7A 3D29  12AF 68F4 EF7A 22FB B2D5"
   (name "bob"))
  ("CABB A931 C0FF EEC6 900D  0CFB 090B 1199 3D9A EBB5"
   (name "charlie"))))

The name bits are hints and do not have any effect; what matters is the fingerprints that are listed. You can obtain them with GnuPG by running commands like:

gpg --fingerprint charlie@example.org

At any time you can add or remove keys from .guix-authorizations and commit the changes; those changes take effect for child commits. For example, if we add Billie’s fingerprint to the file in commit A, then Billie becomes an authorized committer in descendants of commit A (we must make sure to add Billie’s key as a file in the keyring branch, too, as we saw above); Billie is still unauthorized in branches that lack A. If we remove Charlie’s key from the file in commit B, then Charlie is no longer an authorized committer, except in branches that start before B. This should feel rather natural.

That’s pretty much all you need to know to get started! Check the manual for more info.

All the information needed to authenticate the repository is contained in the repository itself—it does not depend on a forge or key server. That’s a good property to allow anyone to authenticate it, to ensure determinism and transparency, and to avoid lock-in.

Interested? You can help!

guix git authenticate is a great tool that you can start using today so you and fellow co-workers can be sure you’re getting the right code! It solves an important problem that, to my knowledge, hasn’t really been addressed by any other tool.

Maybe you’re interested but don’t feel like installing Guix “just” for this tool. Maybe you’re not into Scheme and Lisp and would rather use a tool written in your favorite language. Or maybe you think—and rightfully so—that such a tool ought to be part of Git proper.

That’s OK, we can talk! We’re open to discussing with folks who’d like to come up with alternative implementations—check out the articles mentioned above if you’d like to take that route. And we’re open to contributing to a standardization effort. Let’s get in touch!

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Florian Pelz and Simon Tournier for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this post.

Did you forget the -r when cloning a git repo with submodules? The command you’re looking for is git submodule update --init

If you are developer on a package that uses GNU gnulib as part of its build system:

gnulib-tool has been known for being slow for many years. We have listened to your complaints. We have rewritten gnulib-tool in another programming language (Python). It is between 8 times and 100 times faster than the previous implementation.

Both implementations behave identically, that is, produce the same generated files and the same output. Nothing changes in your way to use Gnulib; it's only faster.

In order to reap the new speed:

1. Make sure you have Python (version 3.7 or newer) installed on your machine.

2. Update your gnulib checkout. (For some packages, it comes as a git submodule named 'gnulib'.) Like this:

  $ git checkout master
  $ git pull

  Set the environment variable GNULIB_SRCDIR, pointing to this checkout.

  If the package is using a git submodule named 'gnulib', it is also advisable to do

  $ git commit -m 'build: Update gnulib submodule to latest.' gnulib

  (as a preparation for step 4, because the --no-git option does not work as expected in all variants of 'bootstrap').

3. Clean the built files of your package:

  $ make -k distclean

4. Regenerate the fetched and generated files of your package. Depending on the package, this may be a command such as

  $ ./bootstrap --no-git --gnulib-srcdir=$GNULIB_SRCDIR

  or

  $ export GNULIB_SRCDIR; ./autopull.sh; ./autogen.sh

  or, if no such script is available:

  $ $GNULIB_SRCDIR/gnulib-tool --update

5. Continue with

  $ ./configure
  $ make

  as usual.

Enjoy! The rewritten gnulib-tool was implemented by Dmitry Selyutin, Collin Funk, and me.

GNU Parallel 20240422 ('Børsen') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

  I’m a big fan of GNU parallel!
    -- Scott Cain @scottjcain@twitter
 
New in this release:

• Bug fixes and man page updates.

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep 883c667e01eed62f975ad28b6d50e22a
    12345678 883c667e 01eed62f 975ad28b 6d50e22a
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep cc21b4c943fd03e93ae1ae49e28573c0
    cc21b4c9 43fd03e9 3ae1ae49 e28573c0
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep ec113b49a54e705f86d51e784ebced224fdff3f52
    79945d9d 250b42a4 2067bb00 99da012e c113b49a 54e705f8 6d51e784 ebced224
    fdff3f52 ca588d64 e75f6033 61bd543f d631f592 2f87ceb2 ab034149 6df84a35
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

Hi, All:

Please join me in welcoming our new member:

 User Details:
-------------
Name:
Login:   integral
Email:   integral@member.fsf.org

I wish integral a wonderful journey in GNU CTT.

Happy Hacking
wxie