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DATE | 2020-08-02 |
FROM | Alexandre Oliva
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SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] GNU Linux-libre 5.8-gnu
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GNU Linux-libre 5.8-gnu cleaning-up scripts, cleaned-up sources, and cleaning-up logs (including tarball signatures) are now available from our git-based release archive git://linux-libre.fsfla.org/releases.git/ tags {scripts,sources,logs}/v5.8-gnu.
Tarballs and incremental patches are still getting compressed; when ready, they are all going to be at published along with patches at .
There haven't been any changes to the deblobbing scripts since 5.8-rc7 last weekend.
This was quite a big release. New drivers that required cleaning up were for Atom ISP Video, MediaTek 7663 USB and 7915 PCIe and Realtek 8723DE WiFi, Renesas PCI xHCI, HabanaLabs Gaudi coprocessor, Enhanced Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter, Maxim Integrated MAX98390 Speaker Aimplifier, Microsemi ZL38060 Connected Home Audio Processor, and I2C EEPROM Slave. Drivers for Adreno GPU, HabanaLabs Goya coprocessor, x86 Touchscreen, vt6656 and btbcm, and various documentation files needed adjustments to their cleaning-up details.
I've also made some adjustments to enable the use of deblob-check to verify full tarballs using Python or Perl rather than GNU awk or GNU sed. The order of regexp alternatives matters in Python and Perl regular expression engines, and some constructs lead to exponential backtracking. Those that affected looking for blobs (e.g. -l, -B) have been fixed, so now checks for blobs without context make steady progress even with backtracking engines; GNU awk is still tens of times faster, but Python and Perl will run to completion with as little as a few tens of MBs, whereas GNU awk takes a couple of GBs. The details are in comments in deblob-check, under 'top mem'.
GNU sed, that long ago was fastest and leanest, was retested, and verified to now explode to a couple of tens of GBs of memory use, running some 4x slower than GNU awk. Maybe that's something that GNU sed developers would like to look into and see whether there's something wrong in their code, or in ours?
As for deblob-check -C, that still won't run to completion on full Linux tarballs when using the Python or Perl engines. There's presumably still something involving exponential backtracking in the context patterns. Alas, I haven't got as far as fixing those in time for this release. This is something that contributors with some regexp knowledge, or interest in learning, might be able to help with, without getting into the innards of our deblobbing monster scripts. Please get in touch if you'd like to help.
Another thing I could use some help with is some means to avoid introducing regexps prone to exponential backtracking when using perl or python. I imagine there might be some code that identifies common pitfalls, that we might be able to use, but my web searches were unfruitful.
For up-to-the-minute news, join us on #linux-libre of irc.gnu.org (Freenode), or follow me (-at-lxoliva) on Twister , Secure Scuttlebutt, GNU social at social.libreplanet.org, Diaspora* at pod.libreplanetbr.org or pump.io at identi.ca. Check the link in the signature for direct links.
Be Free! with GNU Linux-libre.
What is GNU Linux-libre? ------------------------
GNU Linux-libre is a Free version of the kernel Linux (see below), suitable for use with the GNU Operating System in 100% Free GNU/Linux-libre System Distributions. http://www.gnu.org/distros/
It removes non-Free components from Linux, that are disguised as source code or distributed in separate files. It also disables run-time requests for non-Free components, shipped separately or as part of Linux, and documentation pointing to them, so as to avoid (Free-)baiting users into the trap of non-Free Software. http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2010-11-Linux-2.6.36-libre-debait
Linux-libre started within the gNewSense GNU/Linux distribution. It was later adopted by Jeff Moe, who coined its name, and in 2008 it became a project maintained by FSF Latin America. In 2012, it became part of the GNU Project.
The GNU Linux-libre project takes a minimal-changes approach to cleaning up Linux, making no effort to substitute components that need to be removed with functionally equivalent Free ones. Nevertheless, we encourage and support efforts towards doing so. http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LinuxLibre:Devices_that_require_non-free_firmware
Our mascot is Freedo, a light-blue penguin that has just come out of the shower. Although we like penguins, GNU is a much greater contribution to the entire system, so its mascot deserves more promotion. See our web page for their images. http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
What is Linux? --------------
Linux is a clone of the Unix kernel [...]
(snipped from Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst)
-- Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/ Free Software Activist GNU Toolchain Engineer
-- If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html. _______________________________________________ Hangout mailing list Hangout-at-nylxs.com http://lists.mrbrklyn.com/mailman/listinfo/hangout
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