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Another sh(1) update

Peter Avalos has committed another batch of updates to sh(1), from FreeBSD.  I was going to comment on how strange it was to see software getting updated so many years later; you’d think everything there was to update for /bin/sh had been done at this point.  Digging casually, the oldest bit on sh that I can find is from 1991 – 22 years old.   The man page mentions a rewrite in 1989 based on System V Release 4 UNIX, and there were versions of sh all the way back to version 1.

Here’s a trivia question – what’s the oldest Unix utility, and what’s the oldest code still in use?  I don’t know the answer.

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Patch cross-pollination

I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently DragonFly’s version of patch(1) comes from OpenBSD and NetBSD.  FreeBSD’s old version of patch is being replaced by this and modified to match the old one’s behaviors.  It would be worthwhile to bring these changes back, if possible, just to reduce the differences in a utility that’s already been around the world, so to speak.

As an aside, I always thought patch was one of Larry Wall’s unsung successes, and I’m entertained by any program that has “Hmm…” as one of its official outputs.

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Some other BSDs

For once, I got to read the commit logs for other BSDs…

The OpenBSD ‘Papers’ page has some videos listed to match the OpenBSD-related presentations from EuroBSDCon 2012.

Not only does NetBSD support the BeagleBoard, but Michael Lorenz is committing from it.

FreeBSD has brought in a new version of bmake and jemalloc.  I’ve seen a number of other commits recently attributed to ‘NetApp’, which is good to see.  Also, preliminary USB support for boot loaders.

PC-BSD is looking to use pkgng, the same binary package manager used in John Marino’s DPorts.  It’s proving quite popular.

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Lazy reading for 2012/12/30

The last of the year.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Marlo Meekins’ Tumblr.   Her lettering is refreshingly expressive.  That may sounds strange to single out, but so many people place words as an set block of text rather than as part of a graphic layout.

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SMBIOS access now possible

Sascha Wildner has added system management BIOS (SMBIOS) support, visible with kenv, from FreeBSD.  Use it for getting things like the BIOS revision, system manufacturer, and so on.  For example:

smbios.bios.reldate="12/04/2006"
smbios.bios.vendor="Dell Inc. "
smbios.bios.version="2.1.0 "

This may seem minor, but this can be very helpful when dealing with hardware you aren’t physically able to access.

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Clang-Day today for FreeBSD

Today is the day that FreeBSD moves to using clang by default.  This is not necessarily a surprise, but I like the finality of calling it “Clang-Day”.   I think Clang will probably be the next compiler brought into DragonFly’s base system, instead of the next release of gcc.  Don’t make any bets on my statement, though, cause I certainly won’t be the one doing it.  (It’s hard.)

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From make to bmake

John Marino is working on a very good idea: bringing bmake into DragonFly as a replacement for the current ‘make’.  bmake is going through more active development and apparently also in use/will be used? on FreeBSD, so syncing up with the same make flavor as FreeBSD and NetBSD will help everyone.  It’ll also remove the problem where you ‘make’ everything in DragonFly, except pkgsrc packages which you ‘bmake’.  It’s not changed over yet.

(What does OpenBSD use for make?)

 

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Major USB update arrives

Sascha Wildner has committed Markus Pfeiffer’s port of USB4BSD to DragonFly.   USB network, input , audio, and storage devices (including xhci/USB3 items) may work, though there’s no guarantee for each driver.  This is added but not on by default, so see the first link for instructions on how to rebuild your kernel to use it.  This will be in (but not default) the DragonFly 3.2 release.

(This is shaping up to be a much bigger release than I anticipated!)

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NYCBUG, RSS, and SMPng

NYCBUG, the NY BSD user’s group, has an RSS feed for their speaker events, found via Dru Lavigne’s always useful BSD Events twitter.  The next event at the start of October is a talk about SMPng in FreeBSD.  Given that it was the project that in part led to the creation of DragonFly, I’d like to hear about it.  (and even better, have someone more qualified than I compare and contrast that approach with what’s in DragonFly.)

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Some more books to read

This recent question asked on-list about creating your own file system meandered into good reference books.  This so far was “The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System“, “Modern Operating Systems“, and the paper “Vnodes: An Architecture for Multiple File System Types in Sun UNIX“.  Looking for links on those things led me to this Unix filesystem history paper from IBM, which is fun reading.

I’m saying that unironically!  It really is an interesting document to read, for historical and general knowledge.  I am a nerd.