cvs-src summary for July 5-12

From: Mark Johnston <mjohnston_at_skyweb.ca>
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:04:51 -0500
FreeBSD cvs-src summary for 05/07/04 to 12/07/04
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is a regular weekly summary of FreeBSD's cutting-edge development.
It is intended to help the FreeBSD community keep up with the fast-paced
work going on in FreeBSD-CURRENT by distilling the deluge of data from
the CVS mailing list into a (hopefully) easy-to-read newsletter.  This
newsletter is marked up in reStructuredText_, so any odd punctuation
that you see is likely intended for the reST parser.

.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html

You can get old summaries, and an HTML version of this one, at
http://www.xl0.org/FreeBSD/.  Please send any comments to Mark Johnston
(mark at xl0.org).

For Lukasz Dudek and Szymon Roczniak's Polish translations of these
summaries, which may lag the English ones slightly, please see
http://mocart.pinco.pl/FreeBSD/.

.. contents::

============
New features
============
New kernel debugger framework added, plus GDB support
-----------------------------------------------------
Marcel Moolenaar (marcel) committed a new KDB kernel debugger framework.
KDB is a frontend that provides a way for multiple different debugger
backends to be registered with the kernel.  He then added a GDB backend
for KDB, which improves on the old GDB support with threading support,
compression, and an interface for devices to register themselves as debug
consoles.

Marcel also updated many system files to use KDB instead of the old DDB.
This means that kernel options and sysctl names that used to contain "DDB"
now contain "KDB".  The exception is that the kernel option DDB remains,
but now it indicates that DDB should be included as a KDB backend.

As a side note, this was a marathon committing spree; the first of some 70
commits was at 17:47 UTC and the last was at 04:39 the next morning.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407101840.i6AIeCAV035547
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407101747.i6AHlMJu033711
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407102347.i6ANlKB5047187

Multi-byte character support added to regex library and many utilities
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim J. Robbins (tjr) added support to the the regex library, as well as
many system utilities, for multi-byte characters.  The improved utilities
include tr, hexdump, od, split, csplit, and expr.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407120735.i6C7Zx2f005903

GEOM_STRIPE gains FAST mode
---------------------------
Pawel Jakub Dawidek (pjd) added a new FAST mode for the GEOM_STRIPE RAID
0 code.  The FAST mode uses mode memory, but it is about 10 times faster
for small stripes than other RAID 0 implementations, since it ensures that
only one I/O request is sent to each drive.  If you want to use the old
mode (ECONOMIC), you can set the sysctl kern.geom.stripe.fast to 0.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407091430.i69EU9qE059040

tcsh version 6.13.00 imported
-----------------------------
Mark Peek (mp) imported tcsh version 6.13.00, replacing the old 6.11.
6.13 adds a number of minor bugfixes and improvements, the most important
being better support for internationalization.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407110223.i6B2Nc1G052677

AMD (am-utils) v6.0.10p1 imported
---------------------------------
Martin Blapp (mbr) committed version 6.0.10p1 of the Berkeley Automounter
utilities, replacing the old version 6.0.9.  The automounter can mount and
unmount filesystems automatically, falling back to other filesystems if
remote servers are inaccessible.  The new version adds some minor bugfixes
and support for an nfs_allow_insecure_port option.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407061255.i66tjbo021517

NgATM ATM subsystem 1.0 imported
--------------------------------
Hartmut Brandt (harti) imported the user and kernel parts of NgATM, the
subsystem for interfacing with ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network
connections.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407081638.i68GcbMo019165
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407081639.i68Gd3Wv019190

===============
Notable changes
===============
Ruslan's man page rampage
-------------------------
I mentioned Ruslan Ermilov (ru) having made many man page cleanup commits
last week; this week was even busier, with another big bunch of commits
from Ruslan cleaning up man pages all over the system.  Many of last
week's commits were machine-generated, but this week's were generally
manual.

(many, many, many)

Major Bmake framework cleanup
-----------------------------
David O'Brien (obrien) committed a major cleanup to the Bmake framework,
used to build the GNU binutils, like the assembler and linker.  He removed
a lot of old, unsupported code, and reduced code duplication as far as
possible.  This also fixes make buildworld on the PowerPC platform.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407081705.i68H5Ykh020695

=================
Committer changes
=================
Randy Pratt (rpratt) and Jonathan Mini (mini) have returned their commit
bits for safekeeping.

===================
Important bug fixes
===================
-O2 optimization bug in libalias fixed
--------------------------------------
Dag-Erling Smorgrav (des) fixed a bug in libalias, the library that
handles packet aliasing for NAT, that was resulting in incorrect code
being generated with gcc at optimization level -O2.  This was one of the
last known -O2 bugs, so it may be possible to build the world and kernel
entirely with -O2.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407060922.i669MJua014841

===============
Other bug fixes
===============
Peter Edwards (peadar) fixed a bug in the filesystem code that resulted
in file corruption under very specific circumstances; specifically, "when
read(2)ing from a 'hole' in a file where a previous page of the read
block had already been faulted in".  This bug was triggered by the fsx
(filesystem exerciser) tool, but it's unlikely that other applications
would have had trouble.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200407062340.i66NeeLd042771
Received on Wed Jul 14 2004 - 02:04:47 UTC

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