XBPS: working in GNOME 2.30, xorg-server-1.8.0 ready...

Long time without posting to the blog, but really I have stuff to do everyday much like every other person in the world. So much stuff happened over this time that I cannot remember, but briefly, XBPS is currently at version 0.4.1 and the number of available packages and quality of the build system has improved vastly.

Long ago I added support to build packages in a chroot (with xbps-src) without root privileges; this works thanks to Linux supporting POSIX File capabilities. You still need root permissions to be able to bind (or null in BSD world) mount some directories. This is the only step requiring the permission and it's all encapsulated in a small shell script.

I've been working for the past days in bringing GNOME 2.30 to XBPS, there are zillions of dependencies as you might already know, but it's really progressing. The number of packages in XBPS has increased vastly for these months:

[juan@nocturno srcpkgs]$ find . -type f -name \*template|wc -l
1121
[juan@nocturno srcpkgs]$

Every template file results in a binary package. Some highlights include latest Xorg (with the xorg-server-1.8.0 that doesn't need HAL and uses UDEV), latest stable and main (HEAD in BSD world) kernel, latest XFCE, latest GNOME (a minimal desktop, not fully finished), etc.

I wanted to show everyone some mandatory screenshots of GNOME running in XBPS (really I should give the distribution a name, but every time I think about it I'm out of ideas)... enjoy.

Best PC games in this decade

I decided to take the decision to list the best games of this decade for the PC platform. They have been selected with no order of genre, they are only listed here because I liked them and I played them a lot, I still love them every minute of my poor life.

5 - Warcraft 3: Reign Of Chaos (2002, Blizzard).



4 - Dead Space (2008, EA Redwood Shores).



3 - Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption (2000, Nihilistic Software).



2 - Half Life 2 (2004, Valve).



1 - Mass Effect (2007 (X360)/2008 (PC), Bioware).



Probably other games could also be listed, but really, this is not easy as you think; in 10 years there have been zillions of released games and it's hard to remember more than a few. Only those that were GOTY (Game Of The Year) probably will be remembered for the eternity.

XBPS 0.3 released!

I've just released version 0.3 of the XBPS utilities. This is the result of two months of development in the HEAD branch stored in the bazaar repository.

Please go to https://launchpad.net/xbps/head/0.3 to see the release notes.

XBPS main website

XBPS has advanced to the point where it's fully working and featureful, ok, there are still some missing features like detecting conflicting packages, installing a binary package directly from an archive (without using repositories) and more... but it's good to the point that I'm pleased to create the public web site. Don't forget that you can see its current state and future development at:

https://launchpad.net/xbps

Not to mention that I didn't want to waste much time on creating the web pages, so this time I used plain text files that are converted to XHTML with asciidoc... what a great tool! it saved me a lot of time in writing the XML/XSLT or XHTML files directly.

The web site contains instructions for testing XBPS in your favourite GNU/Linux x86 distribution, via the static binaries that I provide in the `xbps-devel-static` binary package. So enjoy it, and let me know if you have tried it!

http://xbps.nopcode.org/

XBPS: x86 first live ISO image for pre-testing

I didn't want to make this public yet, because there are some critical features missing in XBPS but a friend of mine has put it publicly so here it is... I have built a live image (thanks to my infamous xbps-mklive shell script!) of the GNU/Linux distribution I'm building with XBPS for x86 (more archs to follow in the future).

This contains the minimal base system packages, you can look at the full list in the top level directory of the ISO image (packages.txt). The bootloader (isolinux) will show you three options to boot from, live image, live image running from RAM and boot first HD detected by the BIOS.

Obviously if you have more than 105MB of RAM you can choose the 2nd option, it will run much faster. By default it will use a spanish keymap/locale, you can override it in the bootloader (pressing the TAB key and changing keymap and locale to your prefered settings).

http://lolcathost.org/b/xbps

XBPS: restarting services while upgrading packages

I've just implemented support in XBPS to restart services that a package provides while upgrading packages, such as is implemented in dpkg (I mean theoretically, I haven't looked at the source code).

The attached picture illustrates what I'm talking about: openssh-server-5.2p1_2 is currently installed and sshd running, a new version is available now: 5.3p1. Before removing the installed package, sshd is stopped, new package is unpacked and again sshd (from new version) is started.

The code in shell script is implemented in a trigger, and the package manager doesn't know anything about its details because that's only handled in the INSTALL/REMOVE scripts that are run when a package is removed/installed. The main reason for this is that the package manager itself does not need to know about all this for future possible changes or improvements.

By the way, I've moved the project to Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/xbps

The build templates are still stored in the GIT repository at: http://repo.or.cz/w/xbps.git

Soon I will provide a live image to test XBPS and all its features... stay tuned and enjoy responsibly! heh.

Mass Effect 2 - Subject Zero Trailer

A new friend has been discovered for Mass Effect 2: Subject Zero. She looks like an Assari with the biotic powers and all that stuff, but a lot more aggressive than the others seen in Mass Effect.

Commander Shepard: "She's dangerous, powerful and extremely violent, exactly what I'm looking for".

Can't wait for this game, I hope I'm not dead before the game is out! heh.

Monkey Island 2 in 3D with Cryengine? you are joking...

What would you think about having a Monkey Island game with the Crysis' Cryengine 3D engine? surely you'll think that won't be possible. Someone made this possible, and the video is really AWESOME!