Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/1001164/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, postgresql, postgresql:12, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, python3:3.6.8, and thunderbird), Debian (clamav), Fedora (pam), Red Hat (firefox, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, python-tornado, redis:7, ruby, ruby:2.5, and ruby:3.1), SUSE (avahi, docker-stable, java-1_8_0-openjdk, libmozjs-128-0, obs-scm-bridge, php8, and teleport), and Ubuntu (ghostscript, needrestart, and shiro).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/997784/

The traditional structure of a compiler forms a pipeline — parsing,
type-checking, optimization, and code-generation, usually in that order. But
modern programming languages have requirements that are ill-suited to such a
design. Increasingly, compilers are moving toward other designs in
order to support incremental compilation and low-latency responses for uses
like integration into IDEs. Rust has, for the last eight years, been pursuing a
particularly unusual design; in that time
compile times have

substantially improved, but there’s still more work to be done.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/1000185/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, redis, twisted, and tzdata), Fedora (firefox, nss, pam, rust-rustls, rust-zlib-rs, thunderbird, tuned, and xen), and SUSE (cobbler, kernel, libjxl-devel, libuv, postgresql12, postgresql14, postgresql15, python-waitress, seamonkey, tomcat, and tomcat10).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/1000097/

Earlier today, one of our subscribers, anselm, posted the one millionth item in our database during a discussion in the comments about the GPL. One million articles and comments is a big milestone — one representing twenty two years of work by both the editors of LWN and the community. I think reaching this milestone on Thanksgiving is a lovely coincidental reminder of how far LWN has come, and how that wouldn’t have been possible without your support. So thank you for reading.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/998115/

The Linux kernel community’s discussions about including Rust have

gotten a lot of attention, but the kernel is not the only project wrestling
with the question of whether to allow Rust. The Git project

discussed the prospect in January, and then

again at the Git Contributor’s Summit in September. Complicating the
discussion is the Git project’s lack of a policy on platform
support, and the fact that it does already have tools written in other
languages.
While the project has not committed to using
or avoiding Rust, it seems like only a matter of time until maintainers will
have to make a decision.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/999107/

The
6.12.1,
6.11.10,
6.6.63, and
6.1.119 stable kernel updates have been released.
As always, they contain important fixes.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/999102/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (postgresql-13, postgresql-15, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (libsndfile, microcode_ctl, and trafficserver), Mageia (kanboard, kernel, kmod-xtables-addons, kmod-virtualbox, and bluez, kernel-linus, opendmarc, and radare2), Oracle (.NET 9.0, bubblewrap and flatpak, buildah, expat, firefox, grafana, grafana-pcp, kernel, krb5, libsoup, libvpx, NetworkManager-libreswan, openexr, pcp, python3.11, python3.11-urllib3, python3.12, python3.9, squid, thunderbird, tigervnc, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (.NET 9.0, binutils, expat, grafana-pcp, kernel, libsoup, NetworkManager-libreswan, openexr, python3.11, python3.12, python39:3.9, squid, tigervnc, and webkit2gtk3), SUSE (chromedriver, cobbler, govulncheck-vulndb, and icinga2), and Ubuntu (linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, python2.7, and zbar).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/998856/

CHICKEN Scheme, a portable Scheme compiler, is gearing up for its next major release. Maintainer Felix Winkelmann has
shared

an article about what changes to expect in version 6 of the language, including better Unicode support and support for the

R7RS (small) Scheme standard.

Every major release is a chance of fixing long-standing problems with the codebase and address bad design decisions. CHICKEN is now nearly 25 years old and we had many major overhauls of the system. Sometimes these caused a lot of pain, but still we always try to improve things and hopefully make it more enjoyable and practical for our users. There are places in the code that are messy, too complex, or that require cleanup or rewrite, always sitting there waiting to be addressed. On the other hand CHICKEN has been relatively stable compared to many other language implementations and has a priceless community of users that help us improving it. Our users never stop reminding us of what could be better, where the shortcomings are, where things are hard to use or inefficient.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/998854/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (guix, libmodule-scandeps-perl, needrestart, and thunderbird), SUSE (gh), and Ubuntu (kernel, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp,
linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke, linux-hwe-6.8,
linux-ibm, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency,
linux-oem-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-iot, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, needrestart, python2.7, python3.10, python3.12, python3.8, and Waitress).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/998291/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (curl and unbound), Fedora (krb5 and microcode_ctl), Red Hat (kernel and kernel-rt), SUSE (glib2, python3-wxPython, and ucode-intel), and Ubuntu (golang-1.17, golang-1.18, libgd2, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-gke, linux-raspi, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, and php7.0, php7.2).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/997238/

Programming language polyglots are files that are valid
programs in multiple languages, and do different things in each. While polyglots are normally
nothing more than a curiosity, the

Cosmopolitan Libc project has been trying
to put them to a novel use: producing native, multi-platform binaries that
run directly on several operating systems and architectures. There are still
some rough edges with the project’s approach, but it is generally possible to
build C programs into a polyglot format with with minimal
tweaking.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/996720/

Back In Time is a GPL-2.0-licensed backup tool based on

rsync and written in Python. It has both graphical and command-line interfaces, and
supports backups to local disks or over SSH.
Back In Time was originally written by
Oprea Dan and released in 2009. The tool has been
through some rough patches over the years, and is currently on its third set of
maintainers. Christian Buhtz, one of the current maintainers, explained to me
how he and his co-maintainers had revived the project, as well as why he thought
Back In Time stood out from all of the existing backup solutions.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/997525/

Greg Kroah-Hartman has shared another seven stable kernel updates:
6.6.60,
6.11.7,
6.1.116,
5.15.171,
5.10.229,
5.4.285, and
4.19.323.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/997480/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (edk2), Debian (webkit2gtk), Fedora (thunderbird), Oracle (bzip2, container-tools:ol8, edk2, go-toolset:ol8, libtiff, python-idna, python3.11, and python3.12), Slackware (expat), and SUSE (apache2, govulncheck-vulndb, grub2, java-1_8_0-openjdk, python3, python39, qemu, xorg-x11-server, and xwayland).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/996329/

Image-based Linux distributions have seen increasing popularity, recently. They
promise reliability and security, but pose packaging problems for
existing distributions. Ryan Lahfa and Niklas Sturm spoke about the work that
NixOS has done to enable an image-based workflow at this year’s

All Systems Go!
conference in Berlin.
Unfortunately, LWN was not able to cover the conference for scheduling reasons,
but the

videos of the event are available for anyone interested in watching the
talks.
Lahfa and Sturm explained that it is currently possible to create a

NixOS system that
cryptographically verifies the kernel, initrd, and Nix store on boot — although
doing so still has some rough edges. Making an image-based NixOS installation is
similarly possible.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/995814/

Joshua Liebow-Feeser took to the stage at
RustConf to describe the methodology
that his team uses to encode
arbitrary constraints in the Rust type system when working on the

Fuchsia operating system
(slides).
The technique is not unknown to
the Rust community, but Liebow-Feeser did a good job of both explaining the
method and making a case for why it should be used more widely.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/996687/

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released another four stable Linux kernel updates:
6.11.6,
6.6.59,
6.1.115, and
5.15.170.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/996679/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr), Fedora (xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Oracle (buildah, e2fsprogs, grafana, kernel, and mod_http2), Red Hat (buildah, container-tools:rhel8, firefox, grafana, grafana:7.3.6, podman, and thunderbird), SUSE (alloy, cargo-audit-advisory-db-20241030, chromedriver, corepack22, netty, openvpn, python310-Werkzeug, thunderbird, uwsgi, and xsd), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-azure-6.8, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-hwe-6.8 and linux, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/996216/

Mozilla has
announced the release of a new version of Firefox. This version has the usual mix of

security fixes and new features, as well as a handful of deprecations. The release removes support for HTTP/2 Push, but adds hardware acceleration for SVGs, support for wide color gamuts on more platforms, and restores support for remote debugging via USB.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/995276/

The first program that Martin Pool ever wrote, he said, had bugs; the ones he’s writing
now most likely have bugs too. The talk Pool gave at
RustConf this year was about a way to try
to write programs with fewer bugs. He has developed a tool called

cargo-mutants that highlights gaps in test coverage by identifying
functions that can be broken without causing any tests to fail.
This can be a valuable complement to other testing techniques,
he explained.