datauris gem v1 – (modern) helpers to parse / build data uris (incl. base64)

Posted on by Michael G
hello, did you know? the most popular data uri gem (4+ million downloads) in rubyland is from anno 2014 (last update) unmaintained and broken (?). is ruby ded? not yet. let’s push a gem with (modern) helpers to parse / build data uris incl. base64-encoded/decoded images and more. let’s welcome the datauris gem v1 – last update some minutes ago ;-). questions and comments welcome.

GNU Guix: Write package definitions in a breeze

Posted on by Michael G

More than 28,000 packages are available in Guix today, not counting
third-party channels. That’s a lot—the 5th largest GNU/Linux
distro! But it’s nothing if the one package you
care about is missing. So even you, dear reader, may one day find
yourself defining a package for your beloved deployment tool. This post
introduces a new tool poised to significantly lower the barrier to
writing new packages.

Introducing Guix Packager

Defining
packages
for Guix is not all that hard but, as always, it’s much harder the first
time you do it, especially when starting from a blank page and/or not
being familiar with the programming environment of Guix. Guix
Packager is a new
web user interface to get you started—try
it!. It arrived
right in time as an aid to the packaging
tutorial
given last week at the Workshop on Reproducible Software Environments.

GNU Guix: Write package definitions in a breeze

The interface aims to be intuitive: fill in forms on the left
and it produces a correct, ready-to-use package definition on the right.
Importantly, it helps you avoid pitfalls that trip up many newcomers:

  • When you add a dependency in one of the “Inputs” fields, it adds the
    right variable name in the generated code and imports the right
    package
    module    .
  • Likewise, you can choose a license and be sure the license field
    will refer to the right variable representing that license.
  • You can turn tests on and off, and add configure flags. These
    translate to a valid arguments field of your package, letting you
    discover the likes of keyword
    arguments
    and
    G-expressions
    without having to first dive into the manual.

Pretty cool, no?

Implementation

All the credit for this tool goes to co-worker and intrepid hacker
Philippe Virouleau. A unique combination of paren aversion and web
development superpowers—unique in the Guix community—led
Philippe to develop the whole thing in a glimpse (says Ludovic!).

The purpose was to provide a single view to be able to edit a package recipe,
therefore the application is a single-page application (SPA) written in
using the UI library Philippe is most comfortable with: React,
and MaterialUI for styling the components.
It’s built with TypeScript, and the library
part actually defines all the types needed to manipulate Guix packages and their
components (such as build systems or package sources).
One of the more challenging parts was to be able to provide fast and helpful “search as you
type” results over the 28k+ packages. It required a combination of
MaterialUI’s virtualized inputs,
as well as caching the packages data in the browser’s local storage,
when possible (packaging metadata itself is fetched from
https://guix.gnu.org/packages.json, a generic representation of the
current package set).

While the feature set provides a great starting point, there are still a few
things that may be worth implementing. For instance, only the GNU and
CMake build systems are supported so far; it would make sense to include
a few others (Python-related ones might be good candidates).

Running a local (development) version of the application can happen on
top of Guix, since—obviously—it’s been developed with the node
version packaged in Guix, using the quite standard packages.json for
JavaScript dependencies installed through npm. Contributions
welcome!

Lowering the barrier to entry

This neat tool complements a set of steps we’ve taken over time to make
packaging in Guix approachable. Indeed, while package definitions are
actually code written in the Scheme language, the package “language”
was designed from the get-go to be
fully declarative—think JSON with parens instead of curly braces and
semicolons. More recently we simplified the way package inputs are
specified with an
eye on making package definitions less intimidating.

The guix import
command
also exists to make it easier to simplify packaging: it can generate a
package definition for anything available in other package
repositories such as PyPI, CRAN, Crates.io, and so forth. If your
preference goes to curly braces rather than parens, it can also convert
a JSON package
description
to Scheme code. Once you have your first .scm file, guix build
prints hints for common errors such missing module imports (those
#:use-module stanzas). We also put effort into providing reference
documentation,
a video
tutorial, and
a tutorial for more complex
packages.

Do share your experience with us and
until then, happy packaging!

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Felix Lechner and Timothy Sample for providing feedback on an
earlier draft of this post.

About GNU Guix

GNU Guix is a transactional package manager and
an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user
freedom.
Guix can be used on top of any system running the Hurd or the Linux
kernel, or it can be used as a standalone operating system distribution
for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, AArch64 and POWER9 machines.

In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports
transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management,
per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a standalone
GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative, stateless approach to
operating system configuration management. Guix is highly customizable
and hackable through Guile
programming interfaces and extensions to the
Scheme language.

New F-Droid releases on IPFS

Posted on by Michael G

TWIF generated on Thursday, 23 Nov 2023, Week 47

F-Droid core

Android Apps now on IPFS

New app releases on F-Droid are now being pushed to IPFS too, providing an additional mirroring channel that can be managed more flexibly. If this goes smoothly, we intend to upload all releases on F-Droid to IPFS. In the next F-Droid and Basic alpha versions the IPFS settings get overhauled, thanks to @uniqx

Community News

Tor on Mobile Devices Developer Guide

Guardian Project is working on a guide on how to integrate Tor into a mobile application, touching the broader goal of promoting online privacy and freedom. You can follow the progress here.

@Licaon_Kter’s comments:

Organic Maps: Hike, Bike, Drive Offline was updated to 2023.11.17-17-FDroid which, besides the usual maps updates, fixes and features, also brings “experimental ‘Details on KAYAK’ affiliate link to hotels”.

Missed in last weeks TWIF, FreePaint got a new signature key from its developer because “something happened to the old key”. We encourage developers to take great care of their keys but I guess this information it’s just not yet very evenly distributed. What does this mean for you? If this is the first time you install the app, just enjoy it, everything is fine. But if you had it installed before version 1.1.0 (4) please uninstall it and reinstall it. (!14020)

KeePassDX was updated to 4.0.5 after a long hiatus. The issue delaying its update is that the upstream code repo has a historic mistake that can’t be easily fixed (read in more detail here). Security measures set up in the F-Droid build server were blocking this mistake and the team had to provision code to handle such known exceptions.

Removed Apps

4 apps were removed

While Androidacy Module Manager’s license is LGPL-3.0, users are forced to agree to an extra EULA too just to be able to actually start the app. This makes the situation confusing for the users who expect a FOSS app, not restrictions. (#3129)

ForkHub for GitHub is no longer maintained and it can’t even login.

LibGen Mobile and SimpleWeatherForecast depend on servers or services that are no longer accessible.

Newly Added Apps

3 apps were newly added

fWallet – A beautiful cross-platform wallet application for your PkPass files.

Prayer Book for Catholic prayers.

Simple Counter – Keep track of things with a Material You interface.

Updated Apps

153 more apps were updated

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂
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You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread if you have any news from around the community, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

China’s new(ish) SW26010-Pro supercomputer at SC23

Posted on by Michael G
Sunway’s new supercomputer therefore feels like a system designed with the goal of landing high on some TOP500 lists. For that purpose, it’s perfect, providing a lot of throughput without wasting money on pesky things like cache, out-of-order execution, and high bandwidth memory. But from the perspective of solving a nation’s problems, I feel like Sunway is chasing a metric. A nation doing well in advanced technology might have a lot of supercomputer throughput, but more supercomputer throughput doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll solve technological problems faster. A detailed look at China’s new supercomputer. The conclusion quoted above is very well supported by the data and research concerning this new supercomputer, and the article is a great read.

Bill Wise Sale Return | Refund Items By Bill | || Mansoor Anwar || (Urdu)

Posted on by Michael G

Video by via Dailymotion Source #supermart #departmentalstore #erpsystem How to Refund Whole Bill.How to Refund Selected Bill Items. سافٹ ویئر حاصل کرنے کیلئے رابطہ کریں Detail: Call & SMS +92-332-5173356 WhatsApp https://wa.me/923325173356 =========================================================== iPOS Software with FBR POS Integration (_make your business easier_) Inventory & Account Software for Retail + Whole Sale & Distribution BusinessWe…

Runaway Girl Hides In My Shower

Posted on by Michael G

Video by via Dailymotion Source Don’t forget to Follow In the middle of my post-pool shower, a young girl dashed into my stall, clearly seeking refuge. Shortly after, an older man barged into the shower area, frantically looking for her. Once he was gone, the girl expressed her gratitude and left. But, before that, I…