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Heads up! OpenBSD now supports multi-byte characters!
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Contributed by maxime on Thu Jul 29 22:40:58 2010 (GMT)
from the charset-for-IRC-junkies dept.
On July 27th, Stefan Sperling (stsp@) added support for the multi-byte characters in the OpenBSD libc. Thanks to the work of the people involved in its development, the OpenBSD C library now supports the Unicode character encoding scheme UTF-8. Read on for the full commit message, some words from Stefan about what needs to be tested and how to do so:
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[ 0 comments ] (flat) (expanded)
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[c2k10] (Part 5)
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Contributed by mtu on Wed Jul 28 10:07:31 2010 (GMT)
from the surfs-up dept.
In all of my interviews at c2k10, there were many things that kept coming up over and over again. One of those things was the release of 2.7 in June of 2000 and 2.8 in November. It was a period when many of the developers, tedu@ included, started to use OpenBSD. There is a reason for these two releases being so popular and a tipping point, so to speak, that attracted many thereafter.
Read on to find out more about tedu@ and learn what this attraction was all about:
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[ 3 comments 23:55 ago ] (flat) (expanded)
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[c2k10] The Hackathon BBQ (Part 4) - June 25 - July 3, 2010, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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Contributed by mtu on Mon Jul 26 20:12:54 2010 (GMT)
from the beef, beer and baklava dept.
With almost two days of hacking under their belts, everyone was
instructed to make their way to Bob Beck's (beck@) house for the
traditional BBQ event and Swedish beer hurling festivities. The food was
fantastic and the camaraderie undeniable.
Read on to find out more about the famous Annual OpenBSD BBQ and a lot more:
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[ 6 comments 3d7:53 ago ] (flat) (expanded)
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Heads up! OpenBSD turns 4.8-BETA
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Contributed by maxime on Sat Jul 24 20:27:41 2010 (GMT)
from the β dept.
Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) has tagged 4.8-BETA (see here and here). Snapshots should be available soon for testing, check the mirrors for availability. Read below for the full commit messages:
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[ 4 comments 1d6:55 ago ] (flat) (expanded)
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[c2k10] Expectations (Part 3)
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Contributed by jcr on Tue Jul 20 17:38:05 2010 (GMT)
from the unmanaged-expectations dept.
Different people get into OpenBSD in different ways and for different
reasons. I can give you my own experiences and opinions, but as
such, they will fail to be universal or even be correct for anyone but
myself. Unlike most undeadly articles, the following will be light on
technical details, but hopefully you will find it useful.
As Theo told me over a decade ago, "The project is
code," but my opinion has always been slightly
different. I intentionally fail to draw a distinction between the code
itself, the people contributing it, the friendships between them, and
the fun of coding. In a formal sense I know I'm wrong and Theo is
right. The code stands on its own. The greatest diff in the world
should be committed on its technical merits alone. The trouble is,
without other people willing to look at it, test it and vet the ideas,
its technical merit may never be known and it may never make it into the
tree. The lone genius programmer working in isolation and doing
everything himself is a myth. When contributing in a group setting like
OpenBSD, getting improvements committed is much easier when you know
both the process and the people.
To understand OpenBSD development and why the hackathons are so
important, the first thing you need to realize is the OpenBSD developers
really care about building the very best operating system
possible. You could call the OpenBSD hackathons amazingly successful
just by the cold metric of increased volume of source code commits, but
you would be missing the more fundamental reasons why OpenBSD hackathons
are so vitally important. The hackathons are a chance for like-minded
friends to have fun spending a week concentrating and collaborating on
something all of them care about.
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[ 3 comments 8d8:15 ago ] (flat) (expanded)
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[c2k10] Preparation - Portable Systems (Part 2)
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Contributed by jcr on Mon Jul 19 13:22:55 2010 (GMT)
from the too-much-exercise dept.
This is the continuation and conclusion of the previous [c2k10] article
of the same title on portable systems and test environments.
Bob Beck (beck@) said, "We're actually a hiking club with a
software development problem," so you can hopefully grasp how
important it is to have reasonably portable systems. The down-side of
most developers using reasonably portable and reasonably powerful
systems is the lack of diversity. The majority of the laptops used by
developers are either 32-bit or 64-bit x86 systems (i386 or amd64
respectively). Just because OpenBSD will run on a monstrous VAX and said
VAX will be very useful for finding bugs unseen on other platforms, it
doesn't mean you'll want to carry one around with you. Diversity of
supported platforms and constantly doing native builds on them makes
OpenBSD more robust.
Porting the entire OpenBSD operating system to a new platform would be a
lot of fun but requires a great deal of skill and a significant amount
of time. Even if you're seeking FUN, you may not have time and skill to
do a full OS port, so most people would want to pick one of the already supported platforms. If you
pick the right system, there will still be plenty of FUN to be had in
adding or improving support for some of the unsupported or
under-supported parts. Depending on your personal requirements and how
much FUN you want to have with it, you always have a number of great
choices available within the realm of supported platforms.
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[ 7 comments 9d10:56 ago ] (flat) (expanded)
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[c2k10] Preparation - Portable Systems (Part 1)
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Contributed by jcr on Fri Jul 16 14:08:22 2010 (GMT)
from the supposedly-portable dept.
The staggering volume of hardware the developers bring to hackathons
sometimes causes delays, raised eyebrows or pointed questions when going
through customs on international flights. The customs officers are
usually wondering, "What kind of person needs five laptops and a
suitcase full of parts and peripherals on a vacation?"
Some of the systems hauled to hackathons are generally non-portable,
large servers, or smaller embedded systems, but the majority of systems
are various types of laptops, each with their own unique challenges and
headaches. One of the most frequently asked questions is, "What is
a good laptop for running OpenBSD?" Although there have been
countless opinions voiced in the
mailing list archives, there will never be a "correct"
opinion. Requirements and preferences will always vary from person to
person and situation to situation, so defining your personal
requirements and preferences is a good first step. There is the obvious
question of, "What do you plan to do with it?" but defining
your own preferences and requirements involves a lot more questions
where the answers are often trade-offs.
Read more...
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[ 7 comments 7d11:27 ago ] (flat) (expanded)
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[m2k10] mandoc mini-hackathon
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Contributed by jcr on Wed Jul 14 08:25:40 2010 (GMT)
from the man-jokes-are-cliche dept.
Development on the mandoc(1)
manual formatter is moving fast these days.
Currently, mandoc was hacked on during two hackathon in less
than two months. From May 13 to May 17, 2010, Kristaps Dzonsons (bsd.lv
and OpenBSD), Joerg Sonnenberger (NetBSD) and Ingo Schwarze (OpenBSD) met
at the BEC.de site in Elmenhorst near
Rostock, Germany for a mini-hackathon (m2k10) dedicated exclusively on
mandoc. Ingo was again focusing on mandoc during the yearly OpenBSD
general hackathon (c2k10)
and Kristaps was strongly supporting him remotely.
The mandoc utility is a lightweight, portable
mdoc(7) and
man(7) formatter written
in C, started by Kristaps in 2008, so far supporting ASCII, HTML and
simple PostScript output. Kristaps has committed to develop PostScript
output during the current
GSOC.
OpenBSD -current has recently switched over to pre-format the base system
manuals with mandoc instead of groff during the system build. The
current plan is to release OpenBSD 4.8 built with mandoc this autumn and
to remove groff from the base system by the OpenBSD 4.9 release next
spring. The NetBSD, FreeBSD and Dragonfly trees also include mandoc,
and NetBSD is planning to eventually switch over the tree to mandoc just
like OpenBSD did.
If you're unfamiliar with mandoc, you may enjoy reading the previous
undeadly
article on the topic, otherwise read on for more technical details
of the on-going work.
Read more...
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[ 3 comments 13d16:13 ago ] (flat) (expanded)
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NYCBSDCon Call For Presentations
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Contributed by weerd on Fri Jul 2 21:56:03 2010 (GMT)
from the i-know-what-you're-doing-this-november dept.
The New York City BSD Conference (NYCBSDCon) is the main technical
conference on the US East Coast for the BSD community to get together to
share and gain knowledge, to network with like-minded people, and to
have fun. This event is organized by members of the New York City *BSD
Users Group (NYC*BUG).
Read more...
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