Version 0.1 of gmtkbabel has just been released!

It consists of a set of shell scripts, which use zenity to give a nice GUI over mtkbabel.

Future improvements might include providing a Qt alternative (and the "g" in the name might just mean "GUI" instead of "GTK" then), and whatever users need. It might also become something more serious, written in a more complex language, who knows

Many thank to Elena ``of Valhalla'' Grandi, who started this project to help some users on #osm-it@oftc.

Finally we have the same exact features as the upstream precompiled one. YAY!

Here's the story. JOSM supports the OAuth authentication method since the SVN snapshot rev. 3094. At the time (the package was uploaded on Mar 18, 2010), we didn't have some needed dependencies in Debian for that. So I had to disable it, by patching the source code.

In the meanwhile, I started filing RFP/ITPs, to fulfill the missing dependency chain. And it turned to be a long chain. Here it is:

Looking at it now, that it's all done, it doesn't seem that long. However, I had to face the infamous Maven buildsystem, which I didn't know at all and pretended to download every dependency in a "local repository". Then I found the maven-debian-helper and maven-repo-helper packages, and started understanding it. Unfortunately, it seems that maven is only being used by CDBS people, so I had to override some debian/rules targets to get the work done with dh7.

Once the chain was fulfilled... JOSM didn't even compile. Then I discovered that JOSM had code working with oauth-signpost 1.1, but 1.2 (which I uploaded to Debian) broke the API. So I had to port it to the new API, and I could finally upload it.

Now we're at the end of this adventure. Debian JOSM users will have the choice of OAuth re-enabled, and I learned to master a new (to me) beast.

Enjoy

Riporto qui la mail che ho appena mandato alla mailing list di SputniX.

---8<---

Ciao a tutti,

questa mail è per spiegare il perché sono praticamente scomparso. In seguito a questa mail, ho deciso di ridurre la mia attività in SputniX a zero, ed uscirne. O forse non ne ho mai fatto parte, visto che ho pagato la quota associativa solo i primi due anni, e gli altri 4-5 no (cfr. messaggio).

Con la quasi-fusione con AICQ Sicilia poi, sembra che SputniX abbia preso una deriva "enterprise". Come Vincenzo avrà notato (o forse no) alla prima riunione (l'unica cui partecipai), io ero del tutto fuori luogo. Un mondo fatto di ingegneri, controllo di qualità, un sacco di paroloni; io un "quasi-dentista" con la passione per il FLOSS (notare il gioco di parole [1]). 'un ci trasu nenti nenti.

Ricordo con nostalgia le nottate passate a smanacciare sul kernel per presentare qualcosa al LM di $anno, oppure andar la mattina del LD, presto, al complesso didattico per dare una mano per sistemare le aule ed accogliere i visitatori, ed impazzire con Alessandro per fermare il fiume di gente che si presentava. O assistere meravigliato alla "linux car". Mi sentivo in una verà "comunità". Forse non lo era neppure allora, ma almeno ne aveva la parvenza.

Se penso che ora si parla di DM, DLgs, normative ISO, [..], mi veni 'u friddu. Visto che, sempre in riferimento al messaggio, non ho alcun diritto in merito alle attività dell'associazione, preferisco non litigare né "fare bile" con nessuno, ed uscirne.

Grazie a tutti delle pizziate. Forse i chili che ho preso sono anche merito vostro (merito, non colpa).

Forse un giorno troverò un LUG meno "rigido" sotto il punto di vista "chi può prendere le decisioni"; o forse ne creerò uno mio (il MazaLUG esiste come idea da qualche anno, e ho un paio di persone che spingono per crearlo, ma non mi ci sono mai messo visti gli impegni con l'uni. Forse, una volta laureato...).

In fin dei conti, è stata una bella esperienza.

Nel caso qualcuno voglia parlarmi, è inutile che mi cerchiate a casa. Né a Palermo né a Mazara.

Lo trovo un grave atto di scortesia E di violazione della privacy (non ho mai dato il numero di telefono di casa a Mazara, eppure...), e c'è il rischio che mi scaldi troppo a parlare dal vivo di questa situazione (non solo per questo, anche per il periodo particolarmente stressante; purtroppo non sono fatto a camere stagne). Ripeto, non voglio inimicarmi nessuno, quindi meglio lasciar perdere, e parlarne solo online (dove una mail si può rileggere più volte, e si può tenere a bada l'istinto; tipo questa, che è scritta da un paio di giorni, ed è stata limata e modificata più e più volte).

Sadly,

David

[1] sarò pure amareggiato, ma non per questo perdo il mio umorismo nerd.

--->8---

Non so se il messaggio in questione sia visibile da tutti, in caso contrario:

From: Vincenzo Virgilio <[..]>

To: Sputnix@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Sputnix - 24 Ottobre LD09] Proposta di mediazione - Locandina - Logo

Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 09:44:33 +0100

Lo status di soci è riservato a tutti coloro che sono in regola con le quote associative, dal primo anno di iscrizione a oggi.

Quindi prima di parlare di diritti, voti o altri argomenti, controlla di poterlo fare.

Vincenzo

After more than 9 months from the previous release, the Bash Completion Team is proud to announce the release of bash-completion 1.2!

In this release, we dropped support for bash < 3.2. We're sorry, but we cannot stop development just to support versions that old. By now, everyone should have a version fulfilling our requirement.

As usual, lots of completions have been added: we're now at 168 files in our contrib/ directory (1.1 had 145, and 1.0 had 44 -- but most completions in 1.0 were bundled in the main file). Now bash_completion only contains helper functions, and basic filename-based completions. Everything has moved to contrib/!

This release also saw the contribution of many external people, despite the fact that our bugtracker on Alioth doesn't seem to work too well (problem with attachments, anyone?). Anyhow, you're invited to register and start filing bugs as you find them :).

Apart from the usual team members (Ville Skyttä, Freddy Vulto, the newcome Leonard Crestez and me), we've had contributions from (in no particular order): Ted Stern, Jeremie Lasalle Ratelle, Raphaël Droz, Adrian Friedli, Ildar Mulyukov, Neville Gao, Austin English, Igor Murzov, Mario Schwalbe and Mark van Rossum. Thank you people for helping us!

For completion developers: we added new helper functions. Most notably, it's now possible to get the current and the previous "word" just by calling:

_get_comp_words_by_ref cur prev

instead of (up to 1.1):

cur=$(_get_cword)

prev=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}

Also, we have a new helper to deal with completion with colons, __ltrim_colon_completions(). See the comment in bash_completion for its documentation.

You'll find more helpers directly in bash_completion. We're still far from having a distributable API documentation, so please forgive us.

Enjoy the new bash-completion!

-- David

I recently saw a couple of bugreports all complaining about debian/watch files failing with GoogleCode. Since I'm myself maintaining some packages whose upstream authors use Google as their hoster, I felt it was a good idea to offer a service for uscan(1) and DEHS.

You can reach the service at http://googlecode.debian.net.

To use it in your debian/watch, just use:

http://googlecode.debian.net/p/<project>/<regex>

For example:

http://googlecode.debian.net/p/pyproj/pyproj-(\d+.*).tar.gz

The source code is available at debian-it.it (you should give this url to git clone). This service is currently in beta testing; suggestions and patches are more than welcome! Also, feel free to report any issue you might encounter!

For those of you fans of OpenStreetMap, I just uploaded JOSM 3094 to Sid.

I had to heavily patch this version, to disable OAuth support. Yes, you won't be able to use it with the Debian package. The reason is simple: supporting OAuth requires a set of packages not yet available in Debian. I've filed ITPs, and blocked bugs appropriately, but it'll take some time until the full chain is available.

In the meanwhile, enjoy! Go in the streets and map the world!

I just approved his request for joining the DKMS team. Welcome on board!

I'm glad to announce that we accepted a new member in bash-completion's upstream team: Dan-Leonard Crestez. He's an active guy in the F/OSS world, and I'm glad he's now in our team.

Welcome on board!

WICD 1.7.0-1 just landed in Unstable! This is supposed to be the last 1.* release -- upstream will actively work on 2.0, and fix bugs on 1.7 only if they're serious enough. I will obviously support 1.7 until 2.0 comes out

Enjoy!

I just uploaded WICD 1.7.0~b3 to experimental. This was supposed to be the last pre-release before the official one, but a ~b4 has just been released, adding one more patch I'm keeping in debian/patches/. Luckily enough, my previous big hacking to split the source code (to make it easier for packagers to have separate binary packages) has been merged upstream! So one less patch for me to maintain

It would be cool if experienced people (this is not (yet) for the faint of heart!) could test this package, before 1.7.0 gets released as stable and I upload it to sid. Or maybe you could just want to help us

Let's find bugs now!