ScottK might have something to say ... » Debian

LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT 2.0 Support in Debian/Ubuntu

skitterman — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:10:00 +0000

A LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT 2.0 recently arrived at our house. Of course it only comes with proprietary support for Windows/Mac, so I set out to see what FOSS support for the hardware I could find.

I found nxt-python. It wasn’t packaged, so I packaged it up and uploaded to Debian (from whence it came to Ubuntu). It’s now in for the next release of both distributions (Wheezy/Precise).

This is a bit different than the provided software (which compiles code, downloads it to the NXT, and then runs it untethered). For nxt-python the nxt needs to be connected to your computer via USB or bluetooth. It’s a lot of fun and it’s given me a chance to introduced our youngest child to the idea that there’s more to computers than point and click.

Currently user level access to the device doesn’t work, it has to be accessed by root. Fixing that is on my TODO.

I hope someone else out there has an NXT and enjoys this too.

UPDATE: Added a udev rule and uploaded again, so anyone in plugdev can access the NXT brick.

python2.7 default python in wheezy

skitterman — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 19:53:16 +0000

python | 2.7.2-7 | wheezy | all
python | 2.7.2-7 | sid | all

This took a lot of work from a lot of people. Thank you everyone.

Fortunately there won’t be a python2.8, so we don’t have to do this again.

DNS and Python

skitterman — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:25:06 +0000

If you’ve ever needed to care about DNS and Python, you probably know about pydns (python-dns) and dnspython (python-dnspython). Both have been around a long time (dnspython hit 1.0 in 2003 and the origins of pydns are long enough ago that they are lost to the mists of time – I think dnslib.py, from which it is derived was initially developed with Python 1.5). They each have their advantages.
Until recently, if you needed DNS functionality and you’re interested in Python 3, you were out of luck. Last month I had some business travel with long airplane rides that I put to good use and I ported pydns to Python 3. Upstream took the changes and released it as py3dns, so now you have a Python 3 DNS option. Packages are available in Debian Wheezy/Unstable and in Ubuntu Natty as python3-dns. It passes all the tests (better than the existing pydns), but I know test coverage is incomplete, so take it for a spin and let me know if there are problems. The code isn’t pretty (it’s set of minimal changes to get to a working Python 3 port), but it seems to work OK.

Liquor and Guessing

skitterman — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:50:07 +0000

Those of us who work in technical areas like to believe that because we are engaging in technical endeavors rather than social endeavors, our work is defined and predictable. This hints that we know the future. I think Scott Adams captured the thought well:

We should not be so cocky. While the technical world is more structured and predictable than other areas, it has its limits too. One can only see so far down into complexity before predictability is lost in the detail. That’s where we get so called “Heisenbugs”. Looking out to the future we can only see so far as well.

Recently I’ve been reading The Black Swan. It is a useful reminder that the future isn’t as linear and predictable as we’d like to pretend it is. One idea that has stuck in my head is the idea that in order to take something into account that one will know in the future in one’s predictions, one must already know it. There is an inherent limit to how far we can see.

How is this relevant to distribution developers? Each time we set off to develop a new release, we make an assessment of how to best expend the available resources (our own, our company’s, our group of people we can talk into doing stuff) to make things “better”. We do the best we can, but we must always be mindful of the fact that we press forward using our best engineering judgement, but as we look into the future, eventually this is all just liquor and guessing too.

No, it’s not a bug in my site

skitterman — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:36:05 +0000

I maintain a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record testing tool. If you happen to use it and it says your record isn’t valid, your first action should not be to email me and ask if it’s a bug in the tool. That is all.

Hello Planet Debian

skitterman — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:57:34 +0000

This is the obligatory “Hello world” post. I’m a developer both in Ubuntu and Debian. In Debian most of my work has been in the Python world where I co-maintain python-defaults and python3 defaults as well as several modules, extensions, and applications. I’ve been contributing to Debian development for about 3 years now and recently became a DD.
Just so this post won’t be completely free of technical content …
Most of you will have heard that Python 2.6 is now the default in Sid. Once this transition is complete and migrated, the Python system that’s planned for Squeeze will be in place (I know this is a topic that is very dear to some people, but I don’t care to discuss the history of it in my blog and won’t approve comments in that direction).
Of more technical interest, I think, is that the core system around Python 3 is starting to appear. The current version of Debian Python Policy begins to address Python 3 issues for the first time and we now have a “supported” and “default” Python 3. There is more work coming between now and freeze time to more completely define how the Debian Python 3 system should work. While many upstreams don’t support Python 3 yet, we want to provide a solution that makes it easy for maintainers to provide Python 3 packages where they do.