While asking some questions, Alex Hornung let drop some of the details of his Summer of Code devfs project. Sounds like he's making good progress.
Huawei modems, often available as USB attachments, have been problematic on DragonFly. However, it looks like it's fixed. (I dont have one to test.) There's a lot of names involved, so I'll just point to the commit message.
This arrived in my mailbox in dead tree form today, but it's also online: My favorite magazine has some good thoughts on open source vs. cloud computing, plus one on open source variety, or lack of it. It's interesting that mainstream articles talking about open source software have moved beyond the forms 'gee whiz there's Linux' and 'here's what a software license is'.
Subversion isn't being used for DragonFly, but it is available via pkgsrc. If you're one of the people using it, the pkgsrc version has been updated to 1.6.2 which may have some upgrading issues.
When DragonFly was moving away from CVS, the votes were split pretty evenly between Git and Mercurial. DragonFly went to Git, but it's apparently now possible to use Mercurial with a Git repository.
Statis Kamperis is working on POSIX conformance for DragonFly as his Summer of Code project; he's posted some questions about the agreement he is given for the Open Group's test suites. If you're curious, he links to a copy of the agreement. (I have an I-am-not-a-lawyer-but-have-worked-on-a-number-of-contracts followup)
Matthew Dillon has put together some new test machines, in preparation for porting the OpenBSD AHCI driver to DragonFly. Check his message if you are thinking about building a new system, as they appear to work well.
Well, I'm not sure if it's out, or the new thing is the release announcement and 2009Q1 has been out for a while. Usually, the quarterly releases of pkgsrc are available 2 weeks after freeze, which was back in March. Either way, it's available.
Hasso Tepper has a "BIG FAT WARNING" about two new issues: threaded programs are broken on bleeding-edge DragonFly because of a possible GCC bug that was only recently exposed, and Xorg in pkgsrc has issues with the Intel driver.
Simon 'corecode' Schubert already has one change in that may fix the issue with threaded programs, and is working on the Intel driver issue.
Update: more threading changes.
Sdävtaker is giving a "Hammer administration" presentation at BSDDay, May 29th and 30th in Argentina. (His presentation is the second day.)
Jordan Gordeev posted installation instructions for his 'BTX Halted' fix. It may not be the final answer, though.
Another Summer of Code summary: Jordan Gordeev is returning to AMD64 work. He appears to be ahead of schedule, too.
Here's an in-depth but quite readable explanation of not just the surface features of Git, but the underlying ideas of how it works, via a narrative. (via)
Dan Chis has posted a summary of his Summer of Code project: debugging multi-threaded applications. He also has some details of his current thesis in there... He's busy.
Hasso Tepper has some xorg updates to fix problems he's seen with the intel video driver. The versions of these packages in pkgsrc are old enough that the changes can't be committed 'upstream' to xorg, so he's attacking the problem from the opposite direction and upgrading the software.
He reported significant EXA performance improvements, so it's definitely worthwhile. It's tested on DragonFly but will probably benefit other pkgsrc-using platforms too.
Dru Lavigne has posted links to SummerCamp presentations explaining "What is BSD?". Whip this out for your mildly confused Linux-using friends.
Sepherosa Ziehau's recent commit changing how ioapic works may help anyone who has previously had trouble compiling a multiprocessor kernel with IO_APIC enabled. Try it, if that applies to you.
Also, Jordan Gordeev has a potential fix for anyone who has had a failed boot with a 'BTX Halted' message; you will have to retrieve it from his Git repo.
Sascha Wildner made two relatively minor commits that solved two long-standing (for me) irritations: a version mismatch in uname for identical versions of DragonFly, and automatic running of newaliases. Both issues have bit me several times in minor but irritating ways over the course of years, and it's a relief to have them gone. Thanks, Sascha!
More Summer of Code summaries: Robert Luciani has posted what he plans for his MP contention profiling work, and Stathis Kamperis has a description of his C99/POSIX conformance audit testing, with links.
Hasso Tepper has added the open source HAL code for ath(4) (old man page), as suggested by Alexander Polakov. I'm not sure if this is related to Dmitry Komissaroff's work.