Do we need a zsh-static package in Debian? //at 11:17 //by abe

Dear Planet Debian,

the Debian Zsh Packaging Team (consisting of Michael Prokop, Frank Terbeck, Richard Hartmann and myself) wonders if there’s still a reason to build and ship a zsh-static package in Debian.

There are multiple reasons:

• None of us packagers really use it. (A weak reason, yes.)
• Low popcon: “installed” peak at ca. 150, decreasing; “vote” peak at ca. 40, decreasing as well.

• The statically compiled Zsh has some annoying restrictions (#354631 et al) for over 9 years now, which only can be fixed if some other packages change:

  To cite Clint Adams, long time Debian Zsh package maintainer: the problem is that user/group lookups are disabled in the -static build because glibc’s NSS ABI is unstable and static binaries still need to load NSS modules dynamically.

  One solution here would be to compile against dietlibc, but for that we’d need an ncurses library built against dietlibc (#471208), too.

So we ask you, the Planet Debian reader:

Do you need Debian’s zsh-static package?

If so, please send an e-mail to us Debian Zsh Maintainers <pkg-zsh-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org> and state that you use zsh-static, and, if you want, please also state why or how you’re using it.

Thanks in advance! Mika, Frank, RichiH and Axel

Conkeror usable on Ubuntu again despite XULRunner removal //at 00:08 //by abe

Because of the very annoying new Mozilla release politics (which look like a pissing contest with the similar annoying Google Chrome/Chromium release schedule), Ubuntu kicked out Mozilla XULRunner with its recent release of 11.10 Oneiric. And with XULRunner, Ubuntu also kicked out Conkeror and all other XULRunner reverse dependencies, too. Meh.

Sparked by this thread on the Conkeror mailing list, I extended the Debian package’s /usr/bin/conkeror wrapper script so that it looks for firefox in the search path, too, if no xulrunner* is found, and added an alternative dependency on firefox versions greater or equal to 3.5, too.

From now on, if the wrapper script finds no xulrunner but firefox in the search path, it calls firefox -app instead of xulrunner-$VERSION to start Conkeror.

With the expection of the about:-page showing the orange-blue Firefox logo and claiming that this is “Firefox $CONKEROR_VERSION”, it works as expected on my Toshiba AC100 netbook running the armel port of Ubuntu 11.10.

From version 1.0~~pre+git1110272207-~nightly1 on, the Conkeror Nightly Built Debian Packages will be installable on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric again without the need to install or keep XULRunner version from Ubuntu 11.04 Natty.

For those who don’t want to use the nightly builds, I created a (currently still empty) specific PPA for Conkeror where I’ll probably upload all the conkeror packages I upload to Debian Unstable.

Conkeror in the Debian NEW queue //at 22:57 //by abe

I already mentioned a few times in the blog that I’m working on a Debian package of the Conkeror web browser. And now, after a lot of fine-tuning (and I still further new ideas how to improve the package ;-) Conkeror is finally in the NEW queue and hopefully will hit unstable in a few days. (Update Thursday, 03-Jul-2008, 18:13 CEST: The package has been accepted by Jörg and should be included on most architectures in tonight’s updates.)

Those who could hardly await it can fetch Conkeror .debs from http://noone.org/debian/. The conkeror package itself is a non-architecture specific package (but needs xulrunner-1.9 to be available), and its small C-written helper program spawn-process-helper is available as package conkeror-spawn-process-helper for i386, amd64, sparc, alpha, powerpc, kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64. There are no backported packages for Etch available, though, since I don’t know of anyone yet, who has successfully backported xulrunner-1.9 to Etch.

Interestingly the interest in Conkeror seems to have risen in the Debian community independently of its Debian packaging. Luca Capello, who sponsored the upload of my Conkeror package, pointed me to two blog post on Planet Debian, written by people being fed up with Firefox 3 already and are looking for a more lean, but still Gecko based web browser: Decklin Foster is fed up with Firefox’ -eh- Iceweasel’s arrogance and MJ Ray is fed up with Firefox 3 and its SSL problems.

Since my previously favourited Gecko based web browser Kazehakase never became really stable but instead became slow and leaking memory (and therefore not much better than Firefox 2), I can imagine that it’s no more an candidate for people seaking for a lean and fast web browser.

Conkeror has some “strange” concepts of which the primary one is that it looks and feels like Emacs:

• The current location is shown in a status bar below the website, where Emacs usually shows buffer names. All input, even entering new URLs to go to, is done via the mini-buffer, an input line below the status bar.

• Instead of tabs it uses Emacs’ concept of buffers. So no tab bar clutter and though easy access to all currently open pages.

• It has no buttons, menu-bar or such. And except the status bar and mini-buffer, it uses the whole size of the window for the displayed web page. This is the main reason why I prefer Conkeror on the 7” EeePC: I don’t want to waste any pixels for buttons or menu bars and still have a fully functional web browser.

• It of course has Emacs alike keybindings (with a slight touch of Lynx). While this may seem awkward for the vi world (Hey, they have the vimperator^*, also in Debian since a few days!), as an Emacs user you just have to remember that you web browser now also expects to be treated like an Emacs. It just works:

  C-x C-c

  Exit Emacs -eh- Conkeror

  C-x C-f

  Open File -eh- web page in new buffer

  C-x C-b

  Change to some other tab -eh- buffer

  C-x C-v

  Replace web page in this buffer and use the current URL as start for entering the new one

  C-x 5 2

  Open new frame -eh- window

  C-x 5 0

  Close current frame -eh- window

  C-x k

  Close tab, -eh- kill buffer

  C-h i

  Documentation

  C-s

  Incremental search forward

  C-r

  Incremental search backward

  C-g

  Stop

  l

  Go back (Think info-mode)

  g

  Go to (Open web page in this buffer)

  (Hehe, I like the faces of vi users having read these keybindings and now wondering how to remember them. SCNR. Well, sometimes vi key bindings are a mystery to me, too. :-)

  There are of course many more and nearly all are the same as in Emacs, even the universal argument C-u and the M-x command-line are there. E.g. C-u g lets you open a web page in a new buffer, too.

• Conkeror also has very promising concept for following and copying links with the keyboard only. Opera is very inefficient here since you have to jump from link to link to get to the one you want. In Conkeror you just press f for following or c for copying links and then all links on the currently shown part of the page show a small number attached to it. Then you just enter the number (and additionally press enter if the number is ambigous) and the link is either opened or copied to the clipboard.

  A funny anecdote about how this concept grew over the time: Early versions of Conkeror (back in the days when it just was a Firefox externsion as vimperator) numbered all links on the page, not only the visible ones. On large pages with many links or buttons (e.g. my blog ;-), this took minutes to complete. The idea to just number the visible links is so simple and important – but someone first needed to have it. :-)

Footnotes

*) I just noticed that there is now also muttator, making Thunderbird look and behave like vim (and probably also mutt), too. Wonder into which e-mail client the Emacs community will convert Thunderbird. GNUS? RMAIL? VM? Wanderslust? What will it be called? Wunderbird? Thunderslust? (SCNRE ;-)

Daily Snapshot .debs of Conkeror //at 22:57 //by abe

Keeping track with packaging software which is under heavy development can be time-consuming. I noticed this while packaging Conkeror, because there was quite a demand for up-to-date packages, especially from upstream themself.

So recently on the IRC channel #conkeror the idea of automatically built Debian packages came up. After a few hours of experimenting and a few days of steadily optimizing, I can proudly present daily built snapshot packages of Conkeror for currently Lenny and Sid, ready to be included in your sources.list:

deb     http://noone.org/conkeror-nightly-debs lenny main
deb-src http://noone.org/conkeror-nightly-debs lenny main

deb     http://noone.org/conkeror-nightly-debs sid main
deb-src http://noone.org/conkeror-nightly-debs sid main

The binary package conkeror-spawn-process-helper is currently only built for the i386 architecture, but other architectures may follow.

The packages probably work also on any other Debian based distribution (e.g. Ubuntu) which includes XULRunner version 1.9.

Surely they are not of the usual Debian quality, but they should do it for staying up-to-date with the Conkeror development just by using your favourite APT frontend.

The script which generates those packages is also available in the Conkeror git repository at repo.or.cz.

The APTable archive is generated with reprepro. Packages and the repository are signed with the passphrase-less GnuPG key 373B76B4 which is used only for the Conkeror nightly builds. (If anyone knows a better solution for automatic builds than a passphrase-less key, please tell me. :-)

P.S.: I really like the new keybindings “<<”, “>>” and “G”. :-)

Tablet Amora runs on the OpenMoko FreeRunner (updated) //at 00:13 //by abe

Amora (“A MObile Remote Assistant”) is a client/server suite which allows you to remote control an X desktop using a bluetooth enabled mobile phone. Initially there was only a Symbian client (running e.g. on nearly all Nokia E and N series phones), but J2ME clients are under developement, too.

Then there is Tablet Amora (aka Tamora), an Amora “proof of concept” client for the Maemo platform which runs on internet tablets like e.g. the linux based Nokia N770, N800, and N810. Since Maemo isn’t that far away from what runs on the OpenMoko, getting Tamora working on the OpenMoko, too, suggested itself.

Maemo seems to use the deb package format, too, just slightly extended (e.g. by package icons), so it wasn’t even that hard work to adapt the existing Maemo packaging to build, install and run on Debian, too.

So that’s how Tamora looks on the OpenMoko:

The packaging is still far away from Debian standards (throws tons of lintian warnings and the source package generation is b0rked), so yet there are no prebuilt debs available, but you can checkout amora-client from the Subversion repository and build the package from there:

 $ svn checkout http://amora.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/amora-client/maemo/ amora-client
 $ cd amora-client
 $ debuild -uc -us
 $ cd ..
 # dpkg -i amora-client_0.1-2maemo+openmoko_all.deb

For running and installing tamora you need packages from the pkg-fso APT repository on alioth. And to build it, you need the libedje-bin which is available from the pkg-fso repository for at least the armel architecture, or else from Debian experimental. You can add these repositories to your sources.list as follows:

 # PKG FSO repository
 deb     http://pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org/debian unstable main
 deb-src http://pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org/debian unstable main

 # Debian Experimental
 deb     http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian experimental main
 deb-src http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian experimental main

Since Tamora is yet only a “proof of concept” client, currently only the following remote functions are available:

• pressing arrow key right/left
• pressing F5 (fullscreen for the OpenOffice.org Presenter)

This should though at least suffice for a presentation with the OpenOffice.org Presenter.

To use Tamora to remote control your Debian laptop, you need a bluetooth dongle (or builtin bluetooth support) and amora-server installed as with the Symbian S60 (3rd Edition) Amora client, too.

Update, 23:51

libedje-bin seem not available in the pkg-fso repository for every architecture. You’ll also find it in Debian experimental. Updated the sources.list section above appropriately. Thanks to Sebastian Montini for pointing out this problem.