On coding for fun

On coding for fun -- stay fresh by living a rounded life, and doing small fun technical projects. You know it makes sense.

Déjà Dup

Déjà - a graphical interface to duplicity (based on librsync), to make encrypted local or remote backups. It's being discussed at UDS-Jaunty and sounds like it may be a leading option for Jaunty, at least for desktop backups...

How to get new upstream software into Ubuntu

I have sometimes wondered, and the question has come up a few times at UDS of how to get newer upstream software releases into already-released versions of Ubuntu. There are several ways this can happen. They exist on a spectrum, but that spectrum has not previously been very clear, and hopefully it can be described in the Ubuntu developer documentation.

1: Security updates. Changes here are automatically installed on almost all machines running this release through a priority process.

2: Stable release updates. Like security changes, these must be made with the minimal fix for the bug, based on the version of the software currently shipped in each Ubuntu release. In many cases the upstream maintainer won't have separately made a release with just that change, and they may not have fixed the bug in a minimal way - they may have changed internal APIs in fixing it, or cleaned up other things. In general upstreams may be likely to try to make minimal patches for security bugs but perhaps not for other bugs. SRUs are tested for some time in -proposed before being moved back into -updates, at which point many users will get them.

3: Backports. In this case they'll only be available to people who've specifically enabled the -backports packages, which is probably a minority. Only application-type packages with limited dependencies can be upgraded through this method can be uploaded, not major infrastructure. Backports can add new features and major versions, and don't need to be presented as a small patch from the current version.

I think this was hidden in some previous versions, but in Intrepid there's a checkbox for backports in Software Sources.

4: PPAs. Anyone can publish anything into a PPA; users need to individually add the PPA as a software source and there are no specifically "official" PPA. You can upload anything that complies with the code of conduct.

Ubuntu 8.10 wireless broadband support

Intrepid's wireless broadband support is just amazing. I plugged my Nokia 6300 phone in to a USB port, confirmed which carrier I was using, and straightaway had a working (though a bit slow and expensive) network connection.

This Can't Be Linux...