All posts by jake

[$] GIL removal and the Faster CPython project

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/939981/

The Python global interpreter lock (GIL) has long been a barrier to
increasing the performance of programs by using multiple threads—the GIL
serializes access to the interpreter’s virtual machine such that only one thread
can be executing Python code at any given time. There are other mechanisms
to provide
concurrency for the language, but the specter of the GIL—and its reality as
well—have often been cited as a major negative for Python. Back in October
2021, Sam Gross introduced
a proof-of-concept, no-GIL version of the
language. It was met with a lot of excitement at the time, but
seemed to languish to a certain extent for more than a year; now, the Python
Steering
Council has announced its intent to accept the
no-GIL feature. It will still be some time before it lands in a
released Python version—and there is the possibility that it all has to be
rolled back at some point—but there are several companies backing the
effort, which gives it all a good chance to succeed.

[$] Challenges for KernelCI

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/939538/

Kernel testing is a perennial topic at Linux-related conferences and the KernelCI project is one of the larger testing
players. It does its own testing but also coordinates with various other
testing systems and aggregates their
results. At the
2023 Embedded
Open Source Summit (EOSS), KernelCI developer Nikolai Kondrashov gave a
presentation on the testing framework, its database, and how others can get
involved in the project. He also had some thoughts on where KernelCI is
falling short of its goals and potential, along with some ideas of ways to
improve it.

Security updates for Monday

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/939770/

Security updates have been issued by CentOS (apr-util, bcel, c-ares, emacs, git, java-1.8.0-openjdk, libwebp, open-vm-tools, python, and python3), Debian (amd64-microcode, kernel, and thunderbird), Fedora (iperf3), SUSE (cdi-apiserver-container, cdi-cloner-container, cdi- controller-container, cdi-importer-container, cdi-operator-container, cdi- uploadproxy-container, cdi-uploadserver-container, cont, cjose, java-17-openjdk, jtidy, kernel-firmware, kubevirt, virt-api-container, virt-controller-container, virt-handler-container, virt-launcher-container, virt-libguestfs-tools- container, virt-operator-container, libqt5-qtbase, librsvg, libvirt, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-3, qemu, samba, thunderbird, and zabbix), and Ubuntu (linux-iot and wireshark).

Security updates for Thursday

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/939445/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (curl), Fedora (kitty, mingw-qt5-qtbase, and mingw-qt6-qtbase), Mageia (cri-o, kernel, kernel-linus, mediawiki, and microcode), SUSE (chromium, conmon, go1.20-openssl, iperf, java-11-openjdk, kernel-firmware, and mariadb), and Ubuntu (libvirt, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp,
linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm,
linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi,
linux-raspi-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15,
linux-dell300x, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm,
linux-oracle, linux-snapdragon, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-aws-5.19, linux-gcp-5.19, linux-hwe-5.19, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-iot, llvm-toolchain-13, llvm-toolchain-14, llvm-toolchain-15, open-iscsi, open-vm-tools, and xorg-server-hwe-16.04).