Sourceware update to cure your summer time blues

Sourceware update to cure your summer time blues

[Jason Molenda]

Hey hey, nearly three months without a sourceware update and I'm busting
at the seams with incredibly great stuff to tell you about.  Sunlight bad,
hacking good--skip this weekend's picnic and play with all these neato
things we've got on-line instead.

GREAT NEW STUFF

    Insight is out!

	http://sourceware.cygnus.com/insight/

      This is some great stuff.  It's a GUI for GDB, the GNU Debugger,
      written largely in the tcl/tk scripting language.  You may have
      seen this in the past under the name "GDBtk"; that was our first
      prototypey cut at the idea.  We've been developing and refining
      this bugger for nearly five years.   It is now totally sweet, and
      we're releasing it under the terms of the GPL.  Insight will help
      you to debug like you've never debugged before; it will strike
      fear in the hearts of your bugs.  Cower, bugs!

    Sourceware CD

        http://www.cygnus.com/sourcewarecd/

      We've got all the free software you could ever want on a handy
      little CD.  To be a little more accurate, this CD has the entire
      contents of the sourceware.cygnus.com ftp site from late May,
      1999.  If you'd like to have all the sources on a groovy CD, check
      this out.  There is a link from the web page to some e-commerce
      site that will gleefully snarf up your credit card information.

   Docbook tools

        http://sourceware.cygnus.com/docbook-tools/

      Convenient packaging of all the usual Docbook processing tools!
      Mark Galassi has set up all the things you'd need to process
      and format documents written in Docbook, an SGML format intended
      for writing software and hardware documentation.  If you've ever
      tried to track down all the necessary tools to work with something
      like Docbook, you'll really appreciate the convenience of this.
      Prebuilt x86 RPMs are provided on the ftp site for those on
      appropriate boxes.

   GNU libc (glibc)

        http://sourceware.cygnus.com/glibc/

      The GNU C library has moved to Sourceware!  This is the C library
      used on all the Linux systems, and works on a myriad of other hosts
      as well.  Ulrich Drepper is the current maintainer and primary
      developer of glibc, and he's got the whole host of Sourceware
      access set up:  Ftp directory, anonymous CVS, web-browsable CVS,
      mailing lists, web archives for mailing lists, and so on.

   Guile

        http://sourceware.cygnus.com/guile/

      Guile is the Scheme-based GNU extension language (``Duct Tape for
      Bits''--I love that motto), and has a habit of showing up behind
      the scenes of large projects like GNOME.  Guile has the usual host
      of infrastructure available, including a very active developer's
      mailing list and browsable / read-only accessible CVS repository.
      I have no idea how Jim Blandy keeps up with all of the developments
      happening simultaneously on Guile, but he seems to pull it off.
      Check this one out.

NEW RELEASES

   eCos 1.2.1 is out!

        http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/

      This is a gigantic new release from the eCos folks with lots of
      goodies for you embedded OS users.  Support for ARM and SPARClite,
      support for more PowerPC variants, several more boards supported,
      bunches of new tools including a synthesized target that runs
      on Linux native, and the current sources are now available by
      anonymous CVS.

   EGCS becomes GCC, GCC 2.95 coming out

        http://egcs.cygnus.com/

      EGCS, the Enhanced GNU Compiler Suite, has been blessed as the
      official GNU C Compiler.  Future releases are going to be called
      gcc instead of egcs, and the first one of these releases will be
      going out within the few days--gcc 2.95.  GCC 2.95 has seen a lot
      of testing and should be wildly great, so get on the gcc-announce
      mailing list and hear the very second when it is released.
      Jeff Law, I have no idea how you pulled this off without large
      doses of illegal drugs--my hat is off to you and your stamina.


INFRASTRUCTURE and other exciting things to discuss with your parents

   When we last tuned in, I had just started setting up a search engine.
   That's all in place now--you can search any old thing anywhere on
   the site that you'd care to, including all the mailing lists.

   I've started setting up GNATS based bug databases for projects and
   you can expect to see most of them start using these soon.  automake,
   autoconf, Java, and Insight now have them.  I'm using the gnatsweb
   web-based user interface for them, and it is GREAT!  I'm very happy
   with this, it should impose some organization on the randomness that
   is bug reports.

   There has been a lot of exciting infrastructure work going on behind
   the scenes to make your Sourceware experience a more rewarding,
   direct, efficient one (snort!  I can't believe I wrote that!  I must
   go wash my hands repeatedly).   Let me know if you have any ideas or
   suggestions for making the site even better.

Keep it real,

Jason
Free the Software!