Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Month: June 2013

Rainy weekend update

June 15, 2013 / / 8 Comments

Last week was another busy working week at the office, but I still managed to update some of my packages.I also prepared sources and scripts for the just-released KDE 4.11-beta but I am not going to build those packages yet. I will probably wait for the first release candidate. There are almost 30 new packages due to the splitting of the bigger source tarballs for  kdeadmin, kdenetwork, kdesdk and kdetoys into smaller sub-packages. That meant, writing almost 30 new slack-desc files and updating the module definitions. If anyone is interested enough to want to compile this him- or herself, let me know and I will upload the sources to my ktown repository.

Speaking of repositories, you surely noticed that my packages for the various Slackware releases and architectures are all organized by program name, not by Slackware release/architecture. This makes it difficult for some repository search engines (like http://www.slackabduction.com/sse/, http://slakfinder.org/, http://slackfind.net/en/) to add my repositories to their database. Some time ago I created two “shadow” repositories to overcome their problems. In http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/ (mirrored from the master repo on slackware.com) and http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/restricted_sbrepos/ I have re-organized all packages by Slackware release and architecture. These two shadow repositories are using hard links to the original repositories so that they almost do not take up any additional space in the filesystem if you download them with a tool which can preserve hard-links (like rsync’s “-H” option). I hope these repository search engines will start using the shadow repository information. For instance, all packages I have for Slackware64 14.0 can be found under http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/14.0/x86_64/

What package updates came out of the hat this week?

Flashplayer-plugin

Another Adobe security bulletin apsb13-16, mentions a vulnerability CVE-2013-3343 in the Flashplayer plugin for webbrowsers. I built new packages for the version 11.2.202.291 which closes the hole.

Ffmpeg

I updated my packages to version 1.2. Actually I had built these packages a while ago but had forgotten to upload them to my repository.

Calibre and python-lxml

The newest release of Calibre, the e-book management and library software, is able to read and convert Microsoft DOCX files. In order to achieve that, it needs a version of the Python lxml library which I did not use yet. I discovered this by accident (because the Calibre site does not mention the correct version as minimum version dependency). You will need the version 3.2.1 of the python-lxml package. I also updated the internally used version of lxml in my Slackware 13.37 package (you may recall that the Slackware 13.37 package has Qt4, Python 3.7.5 and a lot of supporting libraries compiled into the package because Slackware’s versions are too old).

Qbittorrent and libtorrent-rasterbar

There was a new release of the qbittorrent software a few months ago which I had not yet packaged. Qbittorrent is my favourite Bittorrent software and an update was long overdue. The libtorrent-rasterbar library on which qbittorrent depends, was updated as well.

Have fun! Eric

 

OpenJDK 7 Update 40 (yes, 40) courtesy of IcedTea 2.4.0

June 10, 2013 / / 6 Comments

After so many “critical bugfix releases” that have plagued Java during the past year, it is nice to see some real hard work being made available to the public. The IcedTea developers have been preparing their first major release since 2.3.0 of August last year. Today, icedtea-2.4.0 was announced on the mailing list and on the blog of release manager Andrew John Hughes . The list of enhancements and new features is way too long to copy here, it’s best to go check out that blog post. There are a lot of bug fixes as expected, but there were no vulnerabilities that needed patching this time. A lot of effort has gone into the CACAO and JamVM alternative virtual machines for Java.

You will probably be surprised to see the jump in the update number for the OpenJDK package which is built using the new IcedTea. A finalized Update 40 of OpenJDK7 is scheduled for Augist this year, and some of the new features still have to be added to the source tree. But the IcedTea developers decided that making a new major release of their software available a few months earlier was for the better, considering the huge number of improvements and fixes that will result in a solid Java 7u40 release already.

On to the packages (and thanks Andrew for showing your appreciation for Slackware)!

My packages for OpenJDK have been compiled on Slackware 13.37 (and are useable on 13.37 as well as 14.0 and -current!). Get them preferably from a mirror site (faster downloads):

Further packages that are recommended/required:

  • Optional: If you want a Java browser-plugin you must install icedtea-web (OpenJDK itself does not contain such a plugin).
  • Required: The rhino package is a dependency of the openjdk/openjre package. It contains the JavaScript engine for OpenJDK.

Note that you should only install one of the two packages, either openjdk or openjre, do not install both at the same time or things will break! The openjdk package contains the jre (java runtime) as well as the java development kit.

Eric

KDE 4.10.4 – packages for Slackware 14

June 4, 2013 / / 11 Comments

Packaging a new KDE Software Compilation is verging on boring – believe it or not.

The KDE developers are so unbelievably focused on quality and co-ordination that preparing packages for the new release is a matter of checking the “kde-packagers” mailing list for messages about updated dependencies, adjusting the build scripts (disabling obsolete patches, bumping version numbers) and starting the build on a fresh clean virtual machine. It usually does not take more than a single pass to build all the packages for incremental releases.

Real investigative work is usually waiting around the corner only when jumping to a new major release (re-designing KDE.SlackBuild for the new modular build, almost two years back was a good example of that).

And today’s release of KDE SC 4.10.4 is no different – the packages were built without issues soon after I got hold of the sources. Now that the sources are available for public download, I have uploaded my Slackware 14 packages to the servers.

Note that these are built for – and should be used only on – Slackware 14.

I assume it will not take long for Pat to add KDE 4.10.4 to Slackware-current. So if you are running our development version of Slackware, just wait for Pat and do not install my packages – they will have issues on -current.

plasma-tasks-mini

KDE’s Dolphin File Manager

What to expect of KDE 4.10.4?

As with every incremental KDE release, this brings you “bugfixes and translation updates” and no new functionality. The over 50 recorded bugfixes include improvements to the Personal Information Management suite Kontact, the File Manager Dolphin, and others, according to the KDE 4.10.4 fix set.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.10.4?

You will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script. Please note that if you are not yet running one of my KDE builds, you should upgrade from a (preferably) full installation of Slackware 14. I had some feedback from Slackware users who installed Slackware 14, excluded the whole “KDE” package series from that installation, and then installed my KDE packages on top. That way, you will be missing a lot of packages, several of them essential to the proper functioning of KDE! If you skipped the whole KDE series and install my KDE packages, you still need to get these from a Slackware 14 package tree (the essentials are highlighted in blue):

amarok
k3b
kaudiocreator
kdevelop-pg-qt
kplayer
polkit-kde-agent-1
polkit-kde-kcmodules-1
wicd-kde

You are strongly advised to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!

Where to find packages?

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/4.10.4/ and packages in ./14.0/4.10.4/ subdirectories). Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!

Have fun! Eric

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