PHP 5.3 update on the way

For reasons unknown to me, there’s enough functional change between PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3 that it affected a lot of PHP-based programs.  For that reason, PHP 5 in pkgsrc defaults to the 5.2 version.  However, it’s going to be 5.3 for the next stable quarterly release of pkgsrc.  In theory, all PHP5-dependent programs are ready to handle that now.  Note that PHP 5.3 is already in pkgsrc; it just wasn’t the default.  If you were using the php53 package, it may require some manual fiddling at your next upgrade of pkgsrc packages.

Lazy Reading for 2011/08/28

This week has taught me one thing for sure: Always make sure your backup generator is working.  And over-plan battery capacity.  That’s actually two things, but what the heck.  I’m tired, for reasons that can probably be inferred!  I’m not the only one suffering these problems, it seems.

  • There is a certain subset of readers here that will find this fascinating: a video of a game postmortem.  Specifically, Elite.  (via)  Needs Flash.
  • This is as good an article as any I’ve seen describing where the tablet computer market is going, at The Economist.
  • Remember RetroBSD, mentioned here previously?  Here’s some discussion of it.
  • EuroBSDCon’s 2011 conference is open for registration, but the early bird discount only lasts until the end of August, so jump on it soon if you’re thinking of going.  It’s the 10th anniversary of the event!
  • PHP 5.3 is coming to pkgsrc as default, soon?  The PHP 5.2 -> 5.3 transition seems to mess up a lot of code because of some changes in the way things are handled, or at least that’s my experience, so watch out.
  • Make sure you aren’t running mod_deflate on your Apache 2.x server.
  • Kristaps Dzonsons, the fellow behind mdocml (which is in DragonFly now and mentioned here before) is working on a mdoc manual.  It’s an actual book, with examples.  It’s titled “Practical UNIX Manuals: mdoc”, which sounds like part of a series, though I don’t know if there’s anything else.  I’d sure like it if there was.  (via Undeadly.)  Look very closely at the mdoc web page and you will see the markup, too.  Neat!
  • Breakout treated as a musical instrument, in 1983.  That’s too glib a summary of this explanation of an old book studying the game Breakout and playing it.  Really, read the article, and remember that the book described would just be lost in a sea of blog posts noise today.  (via)

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Wonderella.  This is the comic that ruined Batman for me.  I can’t unthink it.

 

More Java on DragonFly

Francois Tigeot has fixed wip/jdk16 to build on DragonFly.  Note that this is in pkgsrc-wip, not ‘normal’ pkgsrc.  The secret is to build lang/kaffe to bootstrap it, which requires CCVER=gcc41 to be set.  Apparently kaffe will not build under gcc 4.4.

Why did he do it?  To run OpenGrok, of course.  He’s posted instructions on getting OpenGrok running on DragonFly.  Note the Java crashes he reports in DragonFly 2.11 may already have been fixed.

p.s. I hated “Stranger in a Strange Land”.

2011Q2 binary builds finishing up

The builds of pkgsrc-2011Q2 are finishing up, so we have/will have binaries to download, for those who don’t want to build from source.  The uploads should be complete by now for everything except maybe 2.11/x86_64.  You’ll have to change $PKG_PATH to point at the new directories for now, though.  There’s also some build reports to look at.