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tags:
docs: |
I'm working to improve documentation for GNU/Linux, but more than
that I'm working to improve the forms of documentation that more
skilled technical writers might be afraid or incapable of working
on: `--help` text, generated documentation, and auditing
documentation against the source code to make sure that it is
accurate and complete.
GI: |
"GObject Introspection" (which is a terrible name for what it is,
btw) is a cross-(language-runtime) object system. GObject was an
object system for C that game out of GTK+, and then GObject
Introspection was created as a way to specify the ABI for working
with an object, so that GObjects could be used from other
languages. I think that GObject Introspection is a really cool
technology that can be the basis of reducing friction between
languages, but it needs better/more-ubiquitous tooling.
ARM: |
Not that folks can't use GNU/Linux on ARM (obviously, the
Raspberry Pi has been a huge success), but there's still a lot
more friction to using GNU/Linux on ARM compared to x86. I'm
working on that.
contributions:
- urls: [https://github.com/flori/json/pull/567]
tags: [Ruby, JSON, SoftwareFreedom]
desc: |
Ruby's standard JSON Gem (which comes bundled with the core Ruby
distribution!) contains code that is not Free under the FSF's
definition, not Open Source under the OSI's definition, and not
GPL-compatible. This has coused much consternation among folks
who care about any of those 3 things.
This PR replaces that non-Free code with Free code, removing
friction for Ruby users on GNU/Linux distros that care about
those 3 things.
- urls: [https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio/-/merge_requests/328]
tags: [mkinitcpip, ARM]
sponsored-by: Umorpha Systems
desc: |
The `mkinitcpio` tool generates init-ramdisk images to boot
GNU/Linux systems. To do that it needs to know the version
number of the Linux kernel that it is generating an image for;
the normal way that it knows this is to sniff the version number
from the kernel file. However, it fails to sniff the version
number from ARM zImage kernels, which means that Arch Linux ARM
and Parabola for ARM need to resort to hacks to get mkinitcpio
to work right.
This PR removes that friction by teaching mkinitcpio to
understand ARM zImage files.
- urls: [https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio/-/merge_requests/277]
tags: [mkinitcpio, SecureBoot]
sponsored-by: Umorpha Systems
desc: |
One of the things going on in the secure-boot world is moving
toward "Unified Kernel Images" (UKI), which are when the kernel
and the init-ramdisk are bundled together into a single file to
reduce the risk of a compromised init-ramdisk being able to
compromise a secured kernel. The `mkinitcpio` tool generates
init-ramdisk images, and this PR reduces friction when using
`mkinitcpio` to generate them as UKI.
- urls:
- https://mailman.astron.com/pipermail/file/2024-April/001335.html
- https://github.com/file/file/commit/cf139abf35d07ebfd0c3edcab2fc400a211c0fbb
tags: [file, ARM]
desc: |
The `file` tool sniffs a file to tell you about the file's
format. This PR improves its ability to detect information
about Linux kernel ARM zImage files.
- urls:
- https://mailman.astron.com/pipermail/file/2024-March/001327.html
- https://github.com/file/file/commit/3b92878ee277a6b6c0a37429e9edf5e5b55fcdd4
tags: [file, docs]
desc: |
The `file` tool sniffs a file to tell you about the file's
format. To do this, it reads a "magic" file that describes the
magic numbers that it might see in a file. This PR fixes a
mistake in the `magic(5)` manual for writing such files.
- urls: [https://github.com/diamondburned/gotk4/pull/140]
tags: [Go, GI, docs]
desc: |
gotk4 is a project that burries the lede: yes, it is a set of Go
bindings to GTK 4.0. But (IMO) more interestingly,
`./gir/cmd/gir-generate` is a tool for generating Go bindings to
GObject Introspection (GI) libraries from the `.gir` files
describing the library. I'm working to improve that tool.
In particular, the not-quite-markdown format that `.gir` files
use for documentation is under-specified and hard to parse.
Right now I'm focusing on how to handle that, so that we can
have top-notch language-specific documentation for GI libraries.
This PR is laying the groundwork for the new parser.
- urls:
- https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linux-erofs/2023-November/009765.html
- https://github.com/erofs/erofs-utils/commit/f528b82ffbcb15484a7195c1a1d08ece0ff67350
- https://github.com/erofs/erofs-utils/commit/197e3294bcdf93f37d12989cd830a33c055b1a53
- https://github.com/erofs/erofs-utils/commit/f97311883337eb7e0ded55e60995e6599eba73e5
tags: [EroFS, docs]
sponsored-by: Umorpha Systems
desc: |
EroFS is the Enhanced Read-Only File System, a successor to
SquashFS. This patchset improves the `--help` documentation and
man-pages the EroFS userspace tools, and reduces friction by
having `fsck.erofs` accept common command line flags that fsck
implementions for other filesystems take.
|
