2005.11_Project on the Move.pdf

COVER STORY

Schlagwort sollte hier stehen

Free Software Projects

COMMUNITY

ON THE MOVE

Free software covers such a diverse range of utilities, applications, and other assorted projects that it can be

hard to find the perfect tool. We pick the best of the bunch. This month we cover Yast2 for Debian, KDE 4,

Bluetooth headsets, and the Debian project. BY MARTIN LOSCHWITZ

tion tool shortly after acquiring

Suse. The Yast2 sources were

freely accessible prior to this change, but

the license restricted use and distribu-

tion of the program. These license

restrictions prevented legal full down-

loads of the Suse media for a long time.

scratch would have involved a lot of

work. The Yast4Debian project is cur-

rently porting the Yast2 version supplied

with Suse 9.1, although an upgrade to

the Suse 9.2 version is imminent.

Yast2 comprises the Libyutil library, a

program core, and a number of addi-

tional modules. The core is simply an

interpreter for Yast2’s own programming

language, YCP, which combines various

elements of other common scripting lan-

guages and is used to create new mod-

ules. Both the Yast2 libraries and the

core were written in C++ and pre-con-

figured with autotools to support build-

ing on any Linux system.

Porting the modules will be the biggest

challenge. User interfaces such as the

Yast2 Ncurses text interface and the

Yast2 Qt GUI can be built on other Linux

systems without any trouble. Unfortu-

nately, porting the other components is

far less trivial. There is even a module

for Yast2 icons, and there are many inter-

dependencies between modules that do

not appear to make much sense. For

example, to compile the partitioning

module, you need the Autoyast module.

Autoyast adds other dependencies, such

as the X11 configuration module, which

in turn requires the X11 mouse and X11

keyboard modules. Also, Autoyast

depends on the Yast Online Update mod-

ule and the Bootloader module.

Yast4Debian

Novell has stated that it intends to make

Yast2 a universal standard. According to

Novell, distributors should modify the

Yast source code to match their own

products. The first major project to

tackle this task was Debian. The Debian

distribution does not have its own cen-

tral configuration tool, and creating a

comprehensive tool like Yast2 from

Under the Hood

The task of modifying the highly Suse-

specific infrastructure to match the tar-

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LINUX USER

Schlagwort sollte hier stehen

An up-to-date look at free software and its makers

PROJECTS

N ovell GPL’d the Yast2 configura-

COMMUNITY

Free Software Projects

Schlagwort sollte hier stehen

COVER STORY

Figure 1: The Yast4Debian project brings Suse’s popular Yast config-

uration tool to Debian.

the previous ver-

sion dates back

almost three years

to October 21,

2001.

One major

change to Qt

affects the license

rather than the

code. Qt users

originally only

had the option of

selecting a free

license on Linux,

but with Qt 4, the

manufacturer

Trolltech intro-

duced the GPL

license for propri-

etary programs by Windows developers

in addition to the commercial license .

Some programmers are even talking

about porting KDE to Windows – now

that the legal issues have been removed,

it is just a question of technology.

Qt 4 also adds value for end users. The

library now supports 64-bit architec-

tures, and this means considerable per-

formance benefits.

The new engine, which goes by the

name of Arthur, also deserves a men-

tion. It allows users to add painting and

drawing functions to Qt applications in

a simple way. Arthur has a big speed

advantage over the QPainter tool pro-

vided by Qt 3, and it interfaces with the

GUIs of any operating systems that sup-

port Qt. This means that the developer

no longer needs to think about the spe-

cific characteristics of a user interface.

The new Scribe font engine also removes

the font problems that affected Qt 3.

All in all, Qt 4 gives KDE programmers

a powerful base for the next generation

desktop. The project Wiki [2] for the

recently opened KDE 4 branch already

has an impressive list of suggested fea-

tures. Among other things, the develop-

ers plan icon rendering and optical

updates of the individual KDE compo-

nents. KDE will also improve the user

experience by using Qt’s own access

methods for all icons and buttons, thus

providing a standardized look.

The Plasma [3] project will be looking

to revamp the KDE 4 look. According to

plans, it will integrate various KDE ele-

ments, including a completely reworked

version of the Control Center, the Kicker,

and the Kdesktop, which will act as the

root window that contains all other KDE

windows. On the design side, Super-

karamba – an optional component previ-

ously – will allow programmers to

enhance more or less any aspect of the

desktop with a minimum of effort, giv-

ing users a Mac OS X style task bar (Fig-

ure 2). As a result, the developers are

aiming for a modern and “completely

new desktop design.” A KDE 3 compati-

bility library will provide a bridgehead

between KDE 4 and its predecessor.

The KDE programmers have not yet

set a completion date. Of course, the

KDE people are not the only ones really

interested in the success of their devel-

opment activities: a few weeks ago,

Trolltech hired KDE programmer Aaron

Seigo to allow Aaron to concentrate on

KDE development. Trolltech seems to

be looking to make the best known Qt

application an object of prestige.

get distribution is even more complex

than compiling Yast2 and the accompa-

nying modules. In Debian’s case, pack-

age management is a major challenge. A

Yast2 module communicates with the

RPM database, but Debian uses the

Debian package format. On a more posi-

tive note, other Yast2 modules needed

far less modification; for example,

because Debian and Suse both use

shadow , the developers were able to

adopt the user management module

more or less unchanged.

The Yast4Debian developers can point

to the first fruits of their labor: besides

the user configuration module, the parti-

tioner now also works without any trou-

ble. But there is still much to do, and the

imminent move to the Yast2 version

from the current Suse distribution will

add considerably to the workload. If you

are interested in getting involved with

the porting work, check out the project

homepage at [1] for details.

Bluetooth Headsets on Linux

Bluetooth headsets are a useful thing.

In the car, these cheap earphones can

replace a more expensive hands-free

system, and they work with any Blue-

tooth devices that support appropriate

audio profiles. A driver for the Alsa

Sound System means that at least a few

headsets can be used for listening to

music on Linux home PCs. This said, the

Alsa Bluetooth project has still not been

formally accepted into the mainstream

Alsa developer branch. Besides the

source code and an installation guide,

the snd-bt-sco module is available from

the project homepage at [4].

The Alsa Bluetooth extension uses the

A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Pro-

file) protocol to support stereo sound,

although this has been restricted to ste-

reo reception thus far. Stereo transmis-

sions have failed, as the current headset

hardware does not support this function.

However, new Bluetooth headsets that

don't have this problem are under devel-

opment, and the snd-bt-sco driver

already has the necessary functionality.

Qt 4 and KDE 4

The KDE development cycle is tradition-

ally modeled on that of the underlying

graphics library, Qt. For example, a

development branch of KDE 4.0 was

opened just after Qt 4.0 was released.

KDE 4.0 is designed to leverage the fea-

tures the new Qt version offers, while at

the same time removing a few design

weaknesses that affected KDE 3.

The gap between the release dates

makes it obvious that some major

changes to KDE's Qt underpinnings

must have taken place. Version 4.0 of the

graphics library was released June 27;

Bug Squashing Party

There has been a bustle of activity at the

developer branch of Debian in the wake

of the Debian Sarge release. For example,

the future version of the distribution has

moved to GCC version 4.0. The migra-

tion pushed the number of release-criti-

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cal bug reports up to almost 600, and

this has left Debian developers facing the

task of removing the bugs.

To get up to speed, Frank Lichtenheld

initiated a bug squashing party at the

start of August. A bug squashing party

consists of developers meeting on an IRC

channel to hunt down the bugs in their

own and other project teams’ packages.

The administrators loosen up the rules

for package uploads to allow anyone tak-

ing part to upload their patches directly.

The group bug hunt led to the removal

of 32 release critical errors, letting a

number of packages previously consid-

ered unstable make their way to testing .

While development work on Sarge

was in its final stages, bug squashing

parties took place more or less once a

week, helping the new version to take

the final release hurdle – in fact, group

bug hunting has often led to visible

results in the past.

At the Debian Developer Conference

(DebConf) in Helsinki, Finland, a group

of programmers centered around Steve

McIntyre got together to discuss ways of

simplifying the CD tool. Source code

restructuring is the central issue; at the

same time, the team will be looking to

update and improve automated depen-

dency checking. Steve McIntyre has

announced a number of goals on the

Debian-Devel-Announce mailing list [6].

But the CD Tool is facing an even big-

ger problem. To find out which packages

it should put where on the 14 CD set, the

tool draws on the results of the Popular-

ity Contest. This is a kind of hit list of

Debian packages. Debian users can set

up the popularity-contest package to

send a list of the packages installed on

their systems to the popularity contest

server once a week. The statistics this

produces are evaluated to decide the

package order on the Debian CDs.

Unfortunately, the number of users

who transmit package lists is dwindling,

which makes the data less reliable. In a

posting to the Debian-Devel mailing list

[7], Petter Reinholdtsen warned of the

imminent demise of the package list.

Without the list, the CD Tool is useless.

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The Future of the Debian

CD Tool

The Sarge release saw the Debian soft-

ware collection grow to encompass

15,500 packages. If you do not have a

fast Internet connection at install time,

you need DVDs or CDs with the soft-

ware. The complete collection fills a

dual-layer DVD or 14 CD Roms. With an

Internet connection, you simply need

the first CD and can download the rest.

To ensure that the first CD does its job

well, it needs to contain a full set of vital

packages. Additionally, the dependen-

cies are not permitted to refer to any

other media. The Debian CD Tool [5]

ensures that the medium complies with

these conditions, but there are two

things to worry about. For one, the

source code is more or less unintelligi-

ble, as various developers have adapted

it to the changing conditions at Debian

over the years. Programmers who wish

to use the CD Tools to create their own

sets for special requirements first have to

dig down into the code and attempt to

understand the programming.

That’s all folks…

… for this month at least, but we do

have one request: if you can recommend

a program that you would like to see

featured in Projects on the Move , why not

mail me with your suggestion [8]? I look

forward to your comments! ■

INFO

[1] YaST4Debian:

http://yast4debian.alioth.debian.org/

[2] KDE 4 targets:

http://wiki.kde.org/KDE+4+Goals

[3] Plasma project: http://plasma.kde.org/

[4] Bluetooth Alsa:

http://bluetooth-alsa.sourceforge.net/

[5] Debian CD Tool:

http://www.debian.org/CD/

[6] Steve McIntyre on the Debian CD

Tool: http://lists.debian.org/

debian-devel-announce/2005/07/

msg00005.html

[7] Peter Reinholdtsen on the popularity

contest: http://lists.debian.org/

debian-devel/2005/07/msg01269.html

[8] Tips and suggestions:

projects@linux-magazine.com

Figure 2: Superkaramba enhances more or

less any aspect of the KDE desktop. The

Plasma project will give KDE 4 an attractive

design.

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14.09.2005 18:03:55 Uhr

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