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In Other BSDs for 2013/10/12

I got some PC-BSD items this week, too.

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Here, there, everywhere for mdocml

Franco Fichtner recently received commit rights for DragonFly.  This is so he could import mdocml, a OpenBSD-originating replacement for groff and man page display.  Mdocml has been mentioned before on the Digest, and there’s a downloadable book.  (See the more-interesting-than-it-sounds History of UNIX Manpages there too, but I digress.)

One advantage of using mdocml, as I understand it, is that groff is no longer required to view man pages.  The only thing left in DragonFly that required a C++ compiler was groff.  So, rebuilding could be a bit faster, and a bit less complicated.

Here’s the part that makes me happy: Changes made in DragonFly promptly made it back into NetBSD’s mdocml.   Other changes rolled from DragonFly back into OpenBSD, too, and mdocml is in FreeBSD 10, though I don’t have a src change to point at right now.  It all circled back around to DragonFly, too.  It’s really neat to have a BSD-grown cross-BSD product.

(Incidentally, if you have a Thinkpad and keyboard issues, Franco has a patch for you to try.)

 

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In Other BSDs for 2013/10/05

Less straight source links this week.

Related to DragonFly: Patrick Welche updated glib2 in pkgsrc, and is interested in hearing how it works for DragonFly users.  If you have pkgsrc on your system and it’s not a quarterly release, try building t.

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In Other BSDs for 2013/09/28

This week was relatively quiet, but also had the most cross-BSD work I’ve seen in a while.  Look at the links and you’ll see.

Here’s more on Unbound, since it seems to be a trend.

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Lazy Reading for 2013/09/22

This week, the sewer drain for my house clogged.  Fixing that is not fun.  What is fun is reading random semi-technical articles around the Internet.  So get clicking!

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In Other BSDs for 2013/09/21

Finally, a quieter week.

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New BSD video: BSDNow

Something I only just recently found out about: BSDNow.  They’re planning weekly videos with BSD news and interviews.  I say ‘planning’, but as of this writing, both Episode 1 and Episode 2 (which is much better quality) are already available.  Another episode is planned this week.  Episode 3 is out already.

 

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OpenZFS announced

ZFS was originally created at Sun and open sourced.  Sun was absorbed by Oracle and stopped being open (or even really existing), so ZFS was taken up by several separate groups – FreeBSD and Illumos being two examples.  OpenZFS has been announced, in part to provide common reference for other platforms that might implement it and probably to avoid capability fragmentation.  It’s certainly a good idea.

(If I have my history wrong, please correct me.)

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vBSDCon speaker/presentation list

I don’t think I saw it before, but there’s a list of speakers and events up for vBSDCon.  There’s no DragonFly-specific talks, but there is a presentation from Baptiste Daroussin, one of the people behind pkgNG, which is used to create parts of DragonFly’s dports framework.

It’s positive to see a BSD conference sponsored by a company that’s not selling a BSD-specific product.  It’s happening in about a month and a half, October 25-27, in Dulles, VA.

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In Other BSDs for 2013/09/07

There’s been a lot of commit activity across the BSDs, but my list doesn’t seem to reflect that.  A lot of incremental work, I suppose.

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Lazy Reading for 2013/09/01

Another week of links completed early.  And there’s a lot, so get clicking!

Your unrelated link of the week: The remix of this 1997 Kid’s Guide to the Internet – somewhat NSFW, and has all the best moments.  More from EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE.

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In Other BSDs: 2013/08/31

I need to update this post during the week as I see stuff, or else I spend an hour rushing to get it all together before Satuday.  I need to start watching PC-BSD src changes, too.