[4296] in linux-announce channel archive
Linux-Announce Digest #588
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Digestifier)
Fri Nov 7 23:13:09 2003
From: Digestifier <Linux-Announce-Request@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
To: Linux-Announce@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu
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Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 23:13:04 EST
Linux-Announce Digest #588, Volume #4 Fri, 7 Nov 2003 23:13:04 EST
Contents:
NEWS: Singapore hosts major open source meet... ("Frederick Noronha (FN)")
ANNOUNCE: SCons 0.94 adds command-line argument features, fixes (Steven Knight)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 22:28:14 CST
From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <fred@bytesforall.org>
Subject: NEWS: Singapore hosts major open source meet...
A recently-held event... FN
> SINGAPORE HOSTS MAJOR OPEN SOURCE MEET IN EARLY NOVEMBER
> From Frederick Noronha
Japan is teaming up with the Singapore LUG, to host an Asian-level meeting
on Open Source, that aims to build a "concrete co-operative community" and
embark on "effective projects" among a larger number of countries in the
planet's most populous continent.
From November 2 to 4, 2003, delegates from a dozen-and-half countries will
meet at Singapore for the second Asia Open Source Software Symposium.
It is a follow-up to the one held in Phuket, Thailand in March 2003. This
meet's aims include updating participants of developments in each country,
building a 'management system' for the scattered Open Source community, and
finding ways to promote it through enhanced Asian cooperation.
Funded by the Japanese Centre of International Cooperation for
Computerization (CICC), the event is being organised in collaboration with
the Linux Users' Group Singapore (LUGS).
Eighteen countries reports are expected to come in during the meet, to help
paint a detailed canvas of the OSS projects which are underway, introduce
organisations and groups active in different countries, and describing the
various players in the Open Source and Free Software sphere in this critical
part of the globe.
For a sprawling continent somewhat divided by thriving diverse cultures and
the lack of common languages across its vast lands, Asia is also making
efforts to look at the various GNU/Linux distributions being put out in
various economies here.
(For instance, the Thai TLE distro or the Filipino Bayanihan Linux, come in
their own slick and impressive packing. But few outside these respective
countries might even be aware of their existance. In India, Milan, a distro
that offers local language support in tongues spoken by tens of millions,
has recently made its little-noticed debut.)
"If you had projects in your area that were OSS related, please suggest how
you expect to succeed in them if there was support -- in whatever form --
available from the Asia OSS community," the organisers of the meet told
intending participants. See http://www.asia-oss.org for details.
Countries to be represented include Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China,
India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan,
Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Chinese Taipei, and Vietnam.
Said the organisers of the event to be hosted at the Pan Pacific Hotel
(http://singapore.panpacific.com): "The last ten years have seen dramatic
growth in the popularity of Open Source Software (OSS) in all sectors --
government, business, academia, research and development as well as
education.
"A major beneficiary of these technologies are the lesser developed
economies who are generally dependent on the ability to push national
development on the basis of the availability of low-cost computing devices
on which OSS are able to function very well."
In March 2003, the first-ever Asian Open Source Software Symposium was held
at Phuket, Thailand. That meet was sponsored by Japan's CICC and Thailand's
National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (NSTDA) -- giving a hint
of growing official interest in Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Asia.
Some 100 participants took part in the first meet.
Participants at both meet include official organisation representiatives and
IT policy makers, officially-funded R&D groups, business and industry using
Open Source, academia, instututions focussing on human resource development,
and supporting community groups.
Some 70 participants are expected for this by invitation-only meet.
Recently, organisers voiced their interest to expanding this network from
being primarily South-East Asia focussed, to include South Asia too.
This time, special attempts have been made to involve countries like India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, according to Venkataraman 'Nara'
Narayanan, a Singapore-based consultant to the CICC. CICC is funded by the
Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), apart from other
bodies.
"There's a lot is happening on the Open Source front in India. It's too
important to ignore," he told this correspondent, during a recent meet.
Narayanan and CICC Singapore representative Jun Nakaya are currently India.
They focussed on IT software giants Wipro and IBM in Bangalore;
educationists and government initiatives and also school-related projects
using GNU/Linux.
Sometimes referred to as Open Source, and at other times called Free
Software -- two names for somewhat differing approaches to build software
which can be freely run, studied, redistributed and improved -- the FLOSS
(Free/Libre and Open Source Software) movements have being gaining momentum
worldwide, including in countries like India in a big way too.
Two 'birds of the feather' sessions are planned during this Singapore meet
-- one focussing on OSS legal issues. Coordinated by Kuo-Wei Wu of Chinese
Taipei, this will identify various types of OSS licenses, debate their
advantages and disadvantages, and look at alternatives.
One attempt would also be to look at a software licence that strikes a
"balance between developer and consumer".
Besides this, the other BoF will look at Open Source software for
e-learning. It will discuss the various types of tools -- learning
management systems, content development tools, assessment systems, and
repository systems. (ENDS)
--
=========================================================================
Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net
Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org
http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com
http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks
=========================================================================
T: 0091.832.2409490 or 2409783 M: 0 9822 122436
=========================================================================
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 06:51:42 CST
From: Steven Knight <knight@baldmt.com>
Subject: ANNOUNCE: SCons 0.94 adds command-line argument features, fixes
SCons is a software construction tool (build tool, or make tool) written
in Python. It is based on the design which won the Software Carpentry
build tool competition in August 2000.
Version 0.94 of SCons has been released and is available for download
from the SCons web site:
http://www.scons.org/
Or through the download link at the SCons project page at SourceForge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scons/
RPM and Debian packages and a Win32 installer are all available, in
addition to the traditional .tar.gz and .zip files.
WHAT'S NEW IN THIS RELEASE?
This release adds the following features:
- A new AddOptions() method makes it easier to add multiple command-line
option specifications in a single call.
- New BoolOption(), EnumOption(), ListOption(), PackageOption() and
PathOption() functions provide canned initialization for several
useful types of common option behavior.
- New BUILD_TARGETS, COMMAND_LINE_TARGETS and DEFAULT_TARGETS variables
provide access to the lists of targets specified on the command line
or through calls to the Default() function or method.
The following fixes have been added:
- The use of CPPDEFINES with C++ source files has been fixed.
- The env.Append() method now works properly when the operand
is an object with a __cmp__() method (like a Scanner instance).
- Subclassing the Environment and Scanner classes has been fixed.
- C++ compilation with the SGI compiler has been fixed.
- C and C++ compilation with AIX compiler has been fixed.
The documentation has been improved:
- The man page un-indented correctly after examples in some browsers;
this has been fixed.
- Use of the Options() object to control command-line options has
been documented in the User's Guide.
- New features have been documented in the man page and User's Guide.
ABOUT SCONS
Distinctive features of SCons include:
- a global view of all dependencies; no multiple passes to get
everything built properly
- configuration files are Python scripts, allowing the full use of a
real scripting language to solve difficult build problems
- a modular architecture allows the SCons Build Engine to be
embedded in other Python software
- The ability to scan files for implicit dependencies (#include files);
- improved parallel build (-j) support that provides consistent
build speedup regardless of source tree layout
- use of MD5 signatures to decide if a file has really changed; no
need to "touch" files to fool make that something is up-to-date
- easily extensible through user-defined Builder and Scanner objects
- build actions can be Python code, as well as external commands
An scons-users mailing list is available for those interested in getting
started using SCons. You can subscribe at:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scons-users
Alternatively, we invite you to subscribe to the low-volume
scons-announce mailing list to receive notification when new versions of
SCons become available:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scons-announce
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Hartmut Goebel, Steve Leblanc, Gary Oberbrunner and
Vincent Risi for their contributions to this release.
On behalf of the SCons team,
--SK
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