site  contact  subhomenews

Vim text editor supports Zig

October 28, 2024 — BarryK

I didn't know!!! Scarthgap has the Vim text editor available via PKGget (compiled in OE). I have overlooked it, as always thought that it is a terminal-mode application, like its predecessor 'vi'. However, it also has a gtk3 GUI, when started with "gvim" or "vim -g".

I installed it, and discovered that it supports Zig syntax highlighting out-of-the-box. Snapshot:

img1

Here is my earlier post, looking around for text editors that support Zig:

I also mentioned that "Dude the Builder" uses NeoVim; this is one of many "successors" to Vim. Though, the original Vim remains a very active project. Vim homepage:

https://www.vim.org/

This is the Zig support, that is already builtin to Vim:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig.vim

I will be very happy to remove VSCode from the 'devx' SFS. VSCode is a PET package, so anyone can install it with PKGget if they wish.

Vim is quite small, so might put it into easy.sfs, so offering an alternative to Geany. Just need to tweak a few things -- like, it currently creates menu entries in the "Utility" category.   

Note, I will likely post some simple getting-started tutorials for Zig soon.  

Tags: easy

EasyOS Scarthgap and Daedalus version 6.4

October 28, 2024 — BarryK

I'm currently maintaining three Linux distributions; EasyOS Scarthgap-series, EasyOS Daedalus-series and QV (Quirky Void). maybe in a year or so, that will be rationalized down to one "winner", but for now, there are three to choose from.

Scarthgap
Scarthgap is the main guy, packages compiled entirely from source in my fork of OpenEmbedded (here). The other two are newcomers, and Scarthgap is most mature and likely to continue to be my main focus going forward. So if you are new to EasyOS, I recommend choose Scarthgap.

Scarthgap release notes:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.4/release-notes.htm

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.4/

Mirror in Europe, thanks to the Netherlands Linux/Unix User Group:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.4/

There is also a mirror in Australia, though right now 6.4 hasn't arrived there:

https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/

If you are new to EasyOS, you might find it helpful to read the announcement for 6.0, the start of the 6.x versions:

Forum feedback for Scarthgap is welcome here.

Daedalus
Daedalus-series has been built with Devuan Daedalus (Debian Bookworm) DEB packages, with some Kirkstone OpenEmbedded-compiled packages. The main advantage is that PKGget, the the package manager, has access to the large Devuan/Debian package repository (Scarthgap has a much smaller repository, but both have support for AppImages, Flatpaks and SFS files).

There are no release note; just read recent blog posts:

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2024/6.4/

Forum feedback welcome here.

QV
This is totally different. EasyOS is experimental; QV is experimental on steroids. It does not use aufs or overlay layered filesystem. It uses BTRFS and exploits the snapshot capability. PKGget has access to the fairly large Void Linux package repository. The project page at github has some introductory notes:

https://github.com/bkauler/woof-quantum-vis

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky-void/amd64/releases/base/

Version-numbering is by date, most recent is 24-10-07. There is supposed to be an update mechanism, but I haven't got around to that yet.

Forum feedback is welcome here.

A final note: I have been exploring ways to add another package repository to Scarthgap. KDE apps for example, are wanted by some users; though, they are available as AppImages and Flatpaks. Anyway, I do intend to explore strategies for offering more packages in Scarthgap.

Have fun!   

Tags: easy

Zig development in Scarthgap devx

October 27, 2024 — BarryK

Zig was introduced a few days ago:

Fascinating language; decided to go with it and Zig development support will be in the "devx" SFS in Easy Scarthgap 6.4 (coming very soon).

The devx SFS will have Zig version 0.13.0, which is the current stable release. It will also have VSCode text editor with Zig syntax highlighting. Also there is 'zls' language server, which can be used with VSCode.

Note that VSCode also supports Nim language syntax highlighting. Geany text editor does support Nim but not Zig -- there is an experimental Zig support in a branch of the Geany source repository; however, it doesn't work.

There are several text editors with Zig support. Here are some that I found:

Helix
https://helix-editor.com/
https://github.com/helix-editor/helix

Lapce
https://lapce.dev/

micro
https://micro-editor.github.io/
https://github.com/squeek502/micro-zigfmt

Sublime
https://www.sublimetext.com/
https://github.com/ziglang/sublime-zig-language
https://github.com/aidenfoxivey/sublime-zig-unofficial --i'm using this

Zag
https://github.com/seanpm2001/Zag

Zenith
https://codeberg.org/zenith-editor/zenith

VSCode
https://code.visualstudio.com/
https://github.com/ziglang/vscode-zig

Sublime is a commercial product, supposedly free for a limited time; yet no cutout date is published for the free personal usage. I have made it into a PET and it will be installable via PKGget.

ZLS is a Zig Language Server, which I have also made into a PET, which will be builtin to the devx. ZLS project:

https://zigtools.org/zls/

A language server does more than just syntax highlighting; such as code completion. See the Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol

I don't know if VSCode will automatically use it, if found in the $PATH.

So, after Easy Scarthgap 6.4 is released, install the 'devx' SFS and you are good-to-go with learning Zig. The previous blog post has links to some getting-started tutorials. I also found a superb YouTube channel, by "Dude the Builder":

Zig in Depth (50 videos)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtB7CL7EG7pCw7Xy1SQC53Gl8pI7aDg9t

Zig Master (24 videos)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtB7CL7EG7pDKdSBA_AlNYrEsISOHBOQL

... the first series was done with Zig 0.11.0, latter with 0.12.0 (current release is 0.13.0). Dude the Builder uses NeoVim, which is another editor that supports Zig.    

Tags: easy

Kernel 6.6.58 compiled for Scarthgap

October 26, 2024 — BarryK

Bumping from 6.6.52. Kernel source, patches and build scripts here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/source/kernel/6.6.x/6.6.58-20241026/

There are also matching nvidia and kernel source SFS files, that will be available via SFSget, and broadcom PET installable via PKGget.    

Tags: easy

Continue explore integrate APT in Scarthgap

October 26, 2024 — BarryK

Previous related post yesterday:

Some more work; including a wrapper around 'dpkg'. This is 'dpkg-wrap':

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/blob/main/easyos/easy-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/bin/dpkg-wrap

...the original 'dpkg' gets renamed to 'dpkg.bin' and 'dpkg-wrap' to 'dpkg'.

I built Scarthgap and attempted to use 'apt' in a terminal. Hmmm, showing just one of the problems:

# apt install dolphin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libkf5configwidgets-data : Depends: perl:any
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Package 'libf5configwidgets-data' has only one dependency, 'perl', and any version of perl. Alright, take a look at perl:

# apt install perl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
perl is already the newest version (5.38.2).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1149 not upgraded.

Yes, perl is installed, and apt also thinks so. Yet, if I run "apt install libf5configwidgets-data", it gives the same error message about perl being an unmet dependency.

About a week ago, I stress-tested XBPS, the Void package manager, and found it to be inadequate:

Looks like I am heading in the same direction with APT. Similar situation; a bit of an unusual situation, and the package manager falls apart.

Yeah, I can't be bothered. Not going to bother trying to integrate APT into EasyOS Scarthgap. Got much more productive things to do.    

Tags: easy

Infrastructure support apt package manager in Scarthgap

October 24, 2024 — BarryK

EasyOS Scarthgap-series is built with packages compiled from source in OpenEmbedded (OE), a repository of about 1,800 packages. Quite small, but Easy also supports installing Flatpaks and AppImages. There are actually four package managers, see here:

https://easyos.org/user/package-manager-concepts.html

Even so, users are requesting access to more packages. A couple of users have been installing Debian DEB packages and finding that they work, though it is a bit haphazard finding the dependencies.

I'm having a go at formalizing this, putting in infrastructure to support installing Devuan Daedalus .deb packages.

It is intended that Easy Scarthgap 6.4 will have the 'apt' and 'dpkg' package management packages installed.

WoofQ is the EasyOS build system, and what it will now do is examine all of the builtin packages, in easy.sfs, those compiled in OpenEmbedded, and inform dpkg and apt of their existence. So, when a package and its dependencies are installed by apt, the already-existing dependencies will be recognized.

This is quite a difficult operation to achieve. The Debian developers have the habit of changing the names of packages, and they split packages into smaller ones, often several smaller ones. So, if for example there is the 'djvulibre' OE package; Debian provides that as these split-up packages:

djview djview3 djvulibre-bin djvulibre-desktop djvuserve libdjvulibre-dev libdjvulibre-text libdjvulibre21

So, dpkg and apt have to be told that all of those packages are installed, and the version.

I have tackled this. There is a new script /usr/local/petget/debget/deb-names.sh that matches the OE package name to the Debian packages:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/blob/main/easyos/easy-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/local/petget/debget/deb-names.sh

There is another script that registers these packages with dpkg, informing that they are already installed. It does this by creating empty .deb packages and installing them.

Note that there is a Debian package named 'equivs' that does this operation of installing dummy .deb packages; however, it has too many dependencies and is cumbersome. It is easy to create and install empty .deb packages from basic principles.

Package version is tricky. For example, there is the 'acl' OE package, but in the Devuan package database there is 'acl' and 'acl2'. The correct Devuan package has to be chosen that matches the version number of the OE package.

This is a very non-trivial exercise, but is working so far. The script that creates these dummy .deb packages and installs them is /usr/local/petget/debget/reg-oe2deb.sh:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/blob/main/easyos/easy-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/local/petget/debget/reg-oe2deb.sh

Before releasing Scarthgap 6.4, I want to integrate dpkg/apt with PKGget. At least in a basic way, that might need refinement later. So that if install a package and its dependencies using 'apt', they will be seen as installed by PKGget, and PKGget will be able to uninstall them. Will probably just do that much for 6.4. Later, maybe PKGget will be able to install DEBs from the Devuan repository, acting as a frontend to apt.

Must qualify this; it is an experiment, yet to be decided whether it is going to be retained past 6.4.    

Tags: easy

Scarthgap recompile in OpenEmbedded

October 24, 2024 — BarryK

EasyOS Scarthgap-series is built with packages compiled from source, using a fork of OpenEmbedded/Yocto. Scarthgap version 5.0.4 has been released:

https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Releases

I have just completed a full recompile, about 1,800 packages. Took a couple of days. Not many version changes since 5.0.3:

apr             1.7.4      1.7.5
chromium-x11 127.0.6533.99 129.0.6668.100
cryptodev-linux 1.13+git   1.14
cups            2.4.9      2.4.10
exiv2           0.28.0     0.28.3
expat           2.6.2      2.6.3
go              1.22.5     1.22.6
go-runtime      1.22.5     1.22.6
libadwaita      1.5.1      1.5.2
libldb          2.8.0      2.8.1
linux-firmware  20240312   20240909
mariadb         10.11.7    10.11.9
mbedtls         3.6.0      3.6.1
mtpaint         3.50.09    3.50.10
openssl         3.2.2      3.2.3
ptest-runner    2.4.4+git  2.4.5+git
python3         3.12.4     3.12.6
python3-django  5.0.4      5.0.9
ruby            3.2.2      3.3.5
samba           4.19.6     4.19.8
vim             9.1.0114   9.1.0698
webkitgtk       2.44.1     2.44.3

Uploading the new binary packages. They all have "-r3" in their name, for example 'zstd-1.5.5-r3-nocona-64.tar.xz'. This will be used to build EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.4.   

Tags: easy