New #blog post!

I install #FreeBSD 15.-0-RELEASE on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. You can too!

https://briancallahan.net/blog/20251216.html

#openbsd #netbsd #linux #unix #solaris #illumos #arm #arm64 #aarch64

oksh-7.8 is out! Sorry for the delay; was away at conferences.

https://github.com/ibara/oksh/releases/tag/oksh-7.8

#openbsd #netbsd #freebsd #dragonflybsd #bsd #linux #unix #solaris #illumos #macos #macosx #osx #aix #haiku #shell #ksh #oksh #sh #freesoftware #opensource #opensourcesoftware #oss

New #blog post. Let's write a peephole optimizer for #QBE that operates on #AArch64 assembly code. Three years ago, we did this for #AMD64 assembly code. But now that I have Arm machines, we can replicate the effort for another CPU architecture.

https://briancallahan.net/blog/20250901.html

#compiler #compilers #opensource #freesoftware #unix #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #dragonflybsd #linux #illumos #macos #assembler #assembly

You ever buy a Blu ray of a TV show on a whim, figure you'll watch one episode, then end up watching the whole thing in one sitting, only to realize that while you did also buy the second season, you won't have it for a week.

This is me right now :flan_sad:​

@alanc Noted!

I finally after multiple years of procrastination added dark mode to my website. It currently does auto-detecting based on your system; I'll have to add a little button or something. But it works.

@alanc I mention in the blog post my disbelief that GNAT had no general Solaris support. It really just seemed a case of no one tried gave way to people assumed it didn't work gave way to ossified "knowledge" that was in fact incorrect. And it takes someone to try to break the ossification, which I was happy to do.

(As an aside, I notice Solaris doesn't ship a gdc package. It would be trivial to add it as D already supports Solaris. If it's something I can do let me know and I will try to figure out IPS packaging.)

Two #blog posts in less than one week!

It was considered known that there is no support within GNAT (Ada) for illumos. We cross-build a complete native binutils+gcc toolchain for illumos to test out this claim.

...only to discover that illumos has full support within GNAT. Not a single test fails.

https://briancallahan.net/blog/20250817.html

#Ada #illumos #GNAT #GCC #GNU #freesoftware #unix #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #dragonflybsd #linux #compiler #compilers

A new #blog post appears!

I discovered that the GNU D compiler has been broken on FreeBSD 14 for over a year and it seems no one noticed. Let's discover the issue and brainstorm some solutions to it.

A great case study for why operating system package maintainers matter.

https://briancallahan.net/blog/20250813.html

#dlang #dlanguage #freebsd #bsd #openbsd #netbsd #dragonflybsd #unix #gcc #gdc #gnu #compiler #compilers #d #linux #opensource #freesoftware

@bsdtv @cadey @bsdcan That short I posted definitely used all of Xe's slides now that I see it.

Mfw some good software by @cadey just randomly appears in my YouTube shorts feed: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qcosij0dZcU

:flan_guitar:​:flan_whmage:​:flan_cheer:​

(It's about Anubis: https://anubis.techaro.lol/)

Someone ported oksh to #IRIX! That marks the last remaining mainstream #Unix to get support for everyone's favorite #OpenBSD ksh.

Finally got around to refactoring my little NYT Spelling Bee clone. No functional difference: https://github.com/ibara/freebee-cli/releases/tag/v3.1

@a_cubed @nataliyakosmyna @SubductionRheology I'm also thinking long-term here too. Less time and less effort for the individual assignment, maybe. But what about when they need to use those skills later on, in other classes or on the job? It may be too early now to really know.

@a_cubed @nataliyakosmyna @SubductionRheology Reminds me of the arguments from STS scholars about how domestic technology rarely reduces domestic labor (and actually sometimes even increases it!). I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of LLMs lately: would our students ultimately spend less time if they just, you know, did the work instead of relying on the AI?

@Okuna @nataliyakosmyna Closer to 5 million according to latest industry research. And we don't know if/how much LLMs can help. That's the whole point of doing research. I have a study (not even in preprint stage yet) that suggests that for human-facing cybersecurity tasks (e.g., security awareness training), LLMs can be more of a hindrance rather than a help.

@nataliyakosmyna Thank you for this. I am finishing a paper with my students on hands-on cybersecurity education where a major part of our argument is that we can't afford this kind of LLM malaise/cognitive debt in the field.

@aakoskin I did it just a few months ago: https://briancallahan.net/blog/20250329.html

Yes it takes time but that's not a big deal. Set it and forget it, and then you have binaries to distribute to everyone else.

@alexshendi If you have Leopard Xcode, you should have the Tiger SDK. Apple always provides at least n and n-1 versions of the SDK in Xcode.

@alexshendi It should, but it will use the Tiger SDK instead of the Leopard SDK. I don't have any machines running Leopard.

libppc would need to be extended to have 2 versions of the headers, one for Tiger and one for Leopard, if we were going to go down that route. If/when that happens, then a build of GCC specifically for Leopard becomes possible.