Tech News - Application Development

The .NET team has announced that have completely moved the .NET Core platform to RyuJIT, the compiler written in-house by Microsoft. The team had been long working on this shift to make the compilation faster for .NET Core applications given that web applications today take time to start up. JIT compiler is a program that converts the instructions written in .NET Core to native machine code so that it can be sent to the processor for processing action. The JIT compilers have become a standard to support the compilation for various platforms. They are an improvement over the traditional compilers which require the programs to re-compile when using on different computer systems. RyuJIT is developed by the .NET Core team as the next generation 64-bit compiler that will compile programs twice as fast. The .NET Core compiled with this JIT compiler is recorded to have 30% improved faster start-up time. Also the apps compiled with the RvyJIT produce great code that run efficiently on the servers. The most important factor that helped the performance was basing the RyuJIT to x64, shifting from x86 codebase. One of the major stability factors this will bring is that .NET programs will perform consistently across various architectures and will provide compatibility for .NET programs across the platforms like ARM, mobile, among others. This will help developers maintain a codebase that compiles on both 64-bit and 32-bit compilers and perform on both types of systems. The .NET team has promised the stability of the platform after this move and are expecting the performance to improve. The team is inviting developers to join the community and has put the documentation for the RyuJIT on the GitHub repository. Applying Single Responsibility principle from SOLID in .NET Core Microsoft Open Sources ML.NET, a cross-platform machine learning framework What is ASP.NET Core?

LLVM is a collection of tools used to develop compiler front ends and back ends. LLVM 7.0.0 has now been released with new tools and features such as performance measurement, optimization and others. The Windows installer in LLVM 7.0.0 no longer includes a Visual Studio integration. Now, there is a new LLVM Compiler Toolchain Visual Studio extension on the Visual Studio Marketplace. This new integration method supports Visual Studio 2017. The libraries are renamed from 7.0 to 7. Note that this change also impacts downstream libraries like lldb. The LoopInstSimplify pass (-loop-instsimplify) is removed in this release. When using Windows x or w IR mangling schemes, symbols starting with ? are no longer mangled by LLVM. A new tool called llvm-exegesis has been added. This new tool automatically measures instruction scheduling properties and provides a principled way to edit scheduling models. Another new tool llvm-mca is a static performance analysis tool that uses information to statically predict the performance of machine code for a specific CPU. The optimization of floating-point casts is also improved. It provides optimized results for code that relies on the undefined behavior of overflowing casts. The optimization feature is on by default and can be disabled by specifying a function attribute: "strict-float-cast-overflow"="false" This attribute can be created by the clang option -fno-strict-float-cast-overflow. To detect affected patterns code sanitizers can be used. The clang option for detecting only this problem alone is -fsanitize=float-cast-overflow. A demonstration is as follows: int main() {  float x = 4294967296.0f;  x = (float)((int)x);  printf("junk in the ftrunc: %f\n", x);  return 0; } And the clang options is run: clang -O1 ftrunc.c -fsanitize=float-cast-overflow ; ./a.out ftrunc.c:5:15: runtime error: 4.29497e+09 is outside the range of representable values of type 'int' junk in the ftrunc: 0.000000 LLVM_ON_WIN32 is no longer set by files in llvm/Config/config.h and llvm/Config/llvm-config.h. If you have used this macro before, now use the compiler-set _WIN32 instead, which is set exactly when LLVM_ON_WIN32 used to be set. The DEBUG macro has been renamed to LLVM_DEBUG, but the interface remains the same. SmallVector<T, 0> is shrunk from sizeof(void*) * 4 + sizeof(T) to sizeof(void*) + sizeof(unsigned) * 2. It is smaller than std::vector<T> on 64-bit platforms. The maximum capacity for it is now restricted to UINT32_MAX. Experimental support is added for DWARF v5 debugging. This includes the new .debug_names accelerator table. The opt tool supports the -load-pass-plugin option to load pass plugins for the new PassManager. Support is added for profiling JIT-ed code with perf. In LLVM 7.0.0 support for the .rva assembler directive for COFF targets is added. For Windows, the llvm-rc tool has also received minor upgrades. There are still some known missing features but it should be usable in most cases. On request, CodeView debug info can now be emitted for MinGW configurations. There are also changes to variety of targets like AArch64 Target, ARM, x86 among others. For a complete list of updates, visit the LLVM website. JUnit 5.3 brings console output capture, assertThrow enhancements and parallel test execution Mastodon 2.5 released with UI, administration, and deployment changes ReSharper 18.2 brings performance improvements, C# 7.3, Blazor support and spellcheck

The Qt team released Qt 3D Studio 2.1 earlier this week. Qt 3D Studio 2.1 explore features such as sub-presentations, scene preview, and runtime improvements. Qt 3D Studio 2.1 is a design tool that is used for creating 3D user interfaces as well as for adding 3D content into Qt-based applications. Qt 3D Studio helps with easily designing the 3D content look & feel, animations and user interface states. New Editor features There are two new features added in the Editor in Qt 3D Studio 2.1, namely, Sub-presentations and Scene Preview. Sub-presentations This feature provides an option to embed another Studio presentation or a QML file within a Studio presentation. For example, you can divide the design work into smaller projects and make reusable components. Managing the Sub-Presentations as well adding them into views is easy with the Qt 3D Studio 2.1. There’s a project browser option that shows all the Qt Quick files (.qml) as well as the Qt 3D Studio presentations (.uip) that have been imported to the main project. These files can then be added to a scene layer or as a texture to an object by dragging them from the project browser onto the scene. Sub-Presentations can now be easily viewed in the scene view allowing you to see the whole user interface while creating the design. Scene Preview Qt 3D Studio 2.1 release comes with a new option used for Scene Preview for times when you’re working with different camera views (perspective, top etc.). This is super handy when aligning objects in the scene. Runtime The runtime side in Qt 3D Studio 2.1 mainly focuses on performance and stability improvements. The Qt team is working on writing a new API that will help replace the old runtime in the Qt 3D Studio Editor. In the future releases, the new API will also be capable of performing dynamic content creation from the application side. Support for compressed textures which is already a feature in Qt 5.11 has been also added to the Qt 3D Studio runtime. So you can improve the loading time and also save memory in devices supporting  ETC2 or ASTC Compressed textures by compressing the textures. Asset compression management feature will also be added in the Editor side in the future releases of Qt 3D Studio. For more information, check out the official documentation. Qt Creator 4.7.0 releases! Qt for Python 5.11 released! WebAssembly comes to Qt. Now you can deploy your next Qt app in the browser

The Apache NetBeans team has announced the latest release of the Java IDE Apache NetBeans 9.0 (incubating). This release focuses on two main objectives, the IP clearance of the Oracle code donation and Java 9 and 10 Support. It also adds other new features, such as support for local variable type inference and the Jigsaw module system, a new Java Modular Application project type, and Java Shell support. The ASF Incubator is the official entry path for projects and codebases that want to become a part of the ASF. This is the process through which those projects are screened to make sure they comply with the ASF legal standards and their support communities adhere to the ASF's guiding principles. The primary focus of this release is IP clearance of the code Oracle donated to the ASF. Local Variable Type Inference support Apache NetBeans (incubating) 9.0 adds support for Java 10 with new hints, error handlers, and refactorings for transforming to the new JDK 10 var type. New hint to convert explicit variable type to var. New hint to Convert var type back to explicit type. Var is not supported in a compound variable declaration. This hint helps correct compilation error by splitting the declaration into separate statements. New Error Hint for var Array declaration. This hint helps correct compilation errors by converting to an explicit type by inferring the type of data in an array. Support for the Jigsaw model Apache NetBeans 9.0 adds support for the Java Platform Module System (JPMS) which a central component of Project Jigsaw. NetBeans 9 adds ModulePath as a paradigm to NetBeans in addition to Classpath. Project Jigsaw was established with the goal to improve the security and maintainability of Java SE Platform Implementations and the JDK. It was made with the purpose to make it easy for developers to construct and maintain libraries and large applications. Java Modular Application project type Apache Netbeans 9.0 also adds a new Java Modular project type, which enables the development of several JDK 9 modules in one NetBeans project. The advantage of this type over other Java SE projects is that dependencies are managed by declaring the appropriate exports and requires, and all modules and the project are compiled at the same time. Java Shell support Apache Netbeans 9.0 also adds an integrated console-like UI to the Java Shell to leverage NetBeans editor capabilities. Java Shell introduces REPL (read-eval-print-loop) capabilities to Java and is included in JDK9 and defined in JEP 222. NetBeans also extends the capabilities of the command line tool, allowing developers to execute the shell as an agent on the debugged or run application. The Snippets written in JShell can be redefined and tested, even against a running code. Apache NetBeans 9.0 is available for download from your closest Apache mirror. For this release no installers are provided, you need to just download the binaries and unzip them. Source: incubating-netbeans-java-9.0-source.zip ( PGP ASC, SHA-1) Binaries: incubating-netbeans-java-9.0-bin.zip ( PGP ASC, SHA-1) More information about this release is available on the Apache NetBeans blog post. Apache NetBeans 9.0 RC1 released! What can you expect from the upcoming Java 11 JDK? The NetBeans Developer’s Life Cycle

Yesterday, Google released Android Studio 3.4, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE). Version 3.3 was released earlier this year. This release is the continuation of 'Project Marble’, Google’s initiative to improve Android Studio features. Android Studio 3.4 has an updated Project Structure Dialog (PSD). It also replaces Proguard with R8 as the default code shrinker and obfuscator. This release also supports the Android Q Beta and Intellij 2018.3.4. New features in Android Studio 3.4 Project Structure Dialog: This is a new user interface front end to manage Gradle project files. PSD allows developers to see and add dependencies to their project at a module level. Additionally, it displays build variables, suggestions to improve build file configuration etc. New Resource Manager: The resource manager is a new tool to visualize the drawables, colors, and layouts across your app project in a consolidated view. In addition to visualization, the panel supports drag & drop bulk asset import, and bulk SVG to VectorDrawable conversion. R8 replaces Proguard: R8 is now used as the default code shinker for new projects created with Android Studio 3.4. R8 code shrinking helps reduce the size of your APK by getting rid of unused code and resources as well as making your actual code take less space. Additionally, in comparison to Proguard, R8 combines shrinking, desugaring and dexing operations into one step. Import Intentions: Android Studio 3.4 will now recognize common classes in Jetpack and Firebase libraries. It will also suggest, via code intentions, adding the required import statement and library dependency to your Gradle project files. Android Emulator Skin updates and Android Q Beta Emulator System Image: Users can now download Android Q Beta emulator system images for app testing on Android Q. Android Studio 3.4 also includes the latest Google Pixel 3 and Google Pixel 3 XL device skins. Read more about this release on the Android Developers Blog. You can download the latest version of Android Studio 3.4 from the Android download page. Android Studio 3.3 released with support for Navigation Editor, C++ code lint inspections, and more Google announces the stable release of Android Jetpack Navigation Android Q will reportedly give network carriers more control over network devices

Qt team released Qt Creator 4.7.0 yesterday. The latest release includes features such as C++ Support, Test Integration, Windows Hosts and other improvements. The highlights of this latest release are: C++ Support Clang code model has now been turned on by default. The built-in model, earlier, wasn’t able to keep up with the developments in the C++ language and the tooling around it. You can still continue to use the built-in model by disabling the ClangCodeModel plugin. Clang code model has been upgraded to Clang 6.0. and provides information for the document used for the symbols dropdown, outline pane and “.” locator filter. There’s a new tool in Debug mode (Analyze > Clang-Tidy and Clazy) with the help of which you can run checks over your entire code. You can check the warnings and errors from the code model in the Issues pane. Test Integration For cases when your text cursor in the C++ editor is inside a test function, an individual test can be directly run with the new Run Test Under Cursor action. The location of failed tests is also marked by test integration in the editor. Google Test provides support for filtering. Windows Hosts The scanning for MSVC compilers on Windows has been improved. Issue leading to short-term freezes during Windows debug stream has been fixed. Now, saving files on network drives should work in all configurations. Other Improvements The kit options are put in their own top-level entry in the preferences dialog. Now, easily choose if you want Qt’s automatic scaling by enabling or disabling the new option in Environment > Interface ( for HiDPI screen on Windows or Linux). The File System is equipped with new options which show folder on top as well as turn off the base folder synchronization. New folders can be created directly in the File System view. The open source version of Qt Creator 4.7.0  is available on the Qt download page. You can find commercially licensed packages on the Qt Account Portal. Qt Creator 4.7.0 is also available through an update in the online installer. Apart from these major updates, there have been many other improvements and fixes. Check out the official changes file for more coverage on Qt Creator 4.7.0. How to create multithreaded applications in Qt How to Debug an application using Qt Creator Qt 5.11 has arrived!  

This month at the Twilio SIGNAL 2019 conference, Twilio, announced Verified By Twilio which help customers to know caller details. Verified By Twilio will also help them know which calls are real and which are fake or spam calls. For this, the company is partnering with major call identification apps like CallApp, Hiya, Robokiller, and YouMail to help more than 200 million consumers. Verified By Twilio is expected to be fully available by early 2020. Verified by Twilio aims to show genuine callers Due to privacy concerns, customers usually tend to reject a number of business calls daily, be it legitimate or illegitimate. As per Hiya’s State of the Phone Call report, Americans answer just a little more than 50% of the calls that they receive on their cell phones. As per a recent Consumer Reports survey, around 70% of consumers do not answer a call if the number flashes up as anonymous.   But in this case, if the customer knows in advance as to who is calling and why then there is a possibility of such business calls not going unanswered. The project Verified by Twilio aims to let users know about why are they getting a call even before they actually press the answer button. It also aims to verify the business or organization that is calling for each of the calls. The official press release reads, “For example, if an airline company is trying to contact a customer about a cancelled flight, as the call comes in, the consumer will see the name of the airline with a short note indicating why they are calling. With that information, that person can make the decision about stepping out of a meeting or putting another call on hold to answer this critically important call.” Jeff Lawson, co-founder and chief executive officer, Twilio, said in a statement, “At Twilio, we want to help consumers take back their phones, so that when their phone rings, they know it's a trusted, wanted call.”  Lawson further added, “A lot of work is being done in the industry to stop unwanted calls and phone scams, and we want to ensure consumers continue to receive the wanted calls. Verified By Twilio is aimed at providing consumers with the context to know who's calling so they answer the important and wanted calls happening in their lives, such as from doctors, schools, and banks.” How Twilio plans to verify businesses? Twilio is now creating a repository for hosting verified information of businesses and organizations as well as their associated brands that will populate the screens as soon as a call comes in. With the programmability of the Twilio platform, it will be possible for businesses and organizations to dynamically assign a purpose for each call to give better context. Twilio plans to involve no costs for businesses and organizations who would want to join the private beta.  With Verified By Twilio, businesses and organizations might improve their overall engagement with their customers as the chances of their calls getting answered would be high and in this way, they would establish trust in traditional communications. To know more about this news, check out the official post. What’s new in Application development this week? Microsoft announces its support for bringing exFAT in the Linux kernel; open sources technical specs Introducing ActiveState State Tool, a CLI tool to automate dev & test setups, workflows, share secrets and manage ad-hoc tasks JavaScript will soon support optional chaining operator as its ECMAScript proposal reaches stage 3

JetBrains announced on Wednesday that they’re starting an Early Access Program (EAP) for their popular IDE IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. The IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP explores features such as better IDE navigation, revamped plugin preferences page, Run Anything, and multiline TODO comments among others. You can download the IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 EAP with the help of Toolbox App. Let’s discuss the key features in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP. Better IDE navigation The IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 offers better IDE navigation with an all-new Search Everywhere dialog. The new search dialog has an enhanced UI which is resizable and movable. It comprises of Go to class, Go to file, Go to symbol, and Find action. This new feature has made the search process faster. Run Anything dialog There’s a new Run Anything action in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. Run Anything lets you run a command in the IDE, launch any run configuration, and run any terminal commands. This dialog allows you to select a recent command, a preconfigured run configuration and reopen recent projects. With the Run Anything dialog, you can hold down the Shift key to switch to the Debug Anything mode, which allows you to run a debug configuration. Multiline TODO comments There’s an added support for multiline TODO comments in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP. Earlier, only the first line of a multiline TODO comment was handled as a todo comment. Now, the first line along with all the other todo comment lines can be highlighted in the editor and listed in the TODO Tool Window. Plugins page Now there’s a new Plugins page in Preferences/Settings, making it easier to manage, install, uninstall, and update plugins. You can now search for plugins by name or tags, and sort the results by downloads, name, rating, featured, or updates. Additionally, you can also view the new and updated plugins, top downloaded plugins, as well as top-rated plugins. Installed Tab allows you to check all the downloaded and bundled plugins in different areas.  You can view all the plugins that need to be updated in the Updates tab. Structural Search There’s a new simplified Structural Search & Replace dialogs in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. Structural Search comes with a drop-down menu under the search icon to display the search history. There’s also a Scope configuration which is easier and more flexible. Editing variables/filters is possible with the help of Structural Search & Replace dialogs. The Edit Variables dialog is replaced by a Filters panel. JVM Debugger IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 comes packed with various debugger improvements. You can now see all the available processes for attaching in the “Attach with Java Debugger To” action list. Now, there’s a new Auto restart option for the remote debug configurations so the IDE can automatically restart a configuration while debugging a remote process. Maven You can now delegate all your build and run actions to Maven in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. To enable the new option, delegate the IDE build/run actions to maven, by going to Preferences / Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Build Tools | Maven | Runner. Editor There’s now a way to configure the default indent in projects on the Tabs and Indents tab in Preferences / Settings | Editor | Code Style | Java. There’s also a newly added status bar indicator which points out if the current file indentation differs from the project’s default. To choose actions that control the current indentation, there’s a status bar popup. Java There are a lot of new Java inspections and quick-fixes in the IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP. The inspection support for Java Stream API has been improved.  IntelliJ IDEA is now capable of detecting cases where redundant sorted calls are made before the subsequent min call. You can quickly remove the unnecessary sorted call with the new IDE. You can convert streams into loops when the downstream collector is collection-based (toSet/toList/toMap/toCollection/groupingBy) and can be processed by itself. Also, to completely remove static import, use * and add qualifiers to the usages in the code instead. Run Configurations There’s an added support for macros in run configurations. Currently, the IDE supports only the “Application” and “npm” run configurations. You can use text/log file as input by enabling the Redirect input in the Run/Debug Configurations dialog, After this, simply specify the path to the file which has the input data. Version Control Earlier, the IDE only showed file history up to the selected commit. With InteliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP, it can now display the full history. You simply need to switch “Show All Branches” on the toolbar. This step is particularly useful in case the file gets deleted later. Other than that, you can now ignore the whitespace changes while merging with a new ignore Whitespaces option. It also comes with a new Ignore drop-down menu with options to hide or trim whitespace changes that occur on merge. You can also copy a file easily from one Git branch to another. For more information, check out the official IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP documentation. Reading Next What’s new in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.2 How to set up the Scala Plugin in IntelliJ IDE [Tutorial] How to work with the Selenium IntelliJ IDEA plugin

The official LLVM monorepo repository was officially published on Github on Tuesday. Now is a good time to modify your workflows to use the monorepo as soon as possible. Any current SVN based workflows will be supported for at the most one more year. The move from SVN to GitHub for LLVM has been long under consideration. After positive responses in the mailing threads and in favor of the GitHub community, LLVM has finally decided to set the migration plan in motion. Two round-table meetings were held this week with the developers to discuss SVN to GitHub migration. Below are some highlights of these meetings. The most important outcome from the meetings is an agreed upon timeline for completing the transition. The latest monorepo prototype will be moved over to the LLVM organization Github project and has now begun mirroring the current SVN repository. Commits will still be made to the SVN repository just as they are currently done. All community members are advised to begin migrating their workflows relying on SVN or the current git mirrors to use the new monorepo. As for CI jobs or internal mirrors that pull from SVN or http://llvm.org/git/*.git they should be modified to pull from the new monorepo instead. Changes are advised to also make them work with the new repository layout. Developers are advised to begin using the new monorepo for development. The provided scripts should help to commit code. These scripts will enable you to commit to SVN from the monorepo without having to use git-svn. The commit access will be turned off to the SVN server and commit access to the monorepo will be enabled in a year. At this point, the monorepo will be the only source for the project. Keep an eye on the LLVM monorepo GitHub repository. There is a getting started guide to work with a GitHub monorepo and for more details you can take a look at the mailing list. LLVM will be relicensing under Apache 2.0 start of next year A libre GPU effort based on RISC-V, Rust, LLVM and Vulkan by the developer of an earth-friendly computer LLVM 7.0.0 released with improved optimization and new tools for monitoring

Yesterday, the team behind Sublime Text released Sublime Text 3.2, a text editor that comes with Git integration, improved diff markers, new theme functionality and much more. What’s new in Sublime Text 3.2? GIT integration With this release, the files and folders in the sidebar will now display badges for indicating Git status. In this release, the ignored files and folders are de-emphasized. In Sublime Text 3.2, the Git branch and number of modifications are displayed in the status bar. The commands have now been added to open a repository. Now there are few themes that customize the display of sidebar badges and status bar information. A new setting show_git_status has been added that disables Git integration. Improved editor control This release comes with block_caret setting. The positioning and sizing of gutter icons have now been improved. This release comes with improved IME support for Windows and improved input method (IM) support - fcitx, ibus, etc for Linux. Improved diff markers With this release, diff markers now display added, modified and deleted lines. A new setting called mini_diff now controls incremental diff behavior. With the new Git functionality, diffs can now be calculated against HEAD or the index. Few diff-related commands such as Next Modification, Previous Modification, and Revert Modification have been added. Improved files and folders For Windows, the paths are treated as case-sensitive and the unlock directories are closed. Enhanced themes/UI This release comes with added support for variables and revised JSON format with variables key. Performance has been improved with large numbers of rules in a .sublime-theme. Also, support for macOS native tabs has been added. Window placement and resize performance has been improved. API This release comes with View.set_reference_document() and View.reset_reference_document() for controlling diff generation. Phantoms can now be  drawn correctly in conjunction with draw_centered. Major bug fixes In this release, the Goto Symbol in Project has been fixed. The draw_minimap_border setting is now working. Few users are comparing the performance of Sublime Text with VScode as they think VScode is better. One of the users commented on HackerNews, “I hope Sublime steps up their game, as I think VScode is standing on their shoulders, and competition is good.” Few others think that Sublime is the best editor. Another comment reads, “If all I needed was a great text editor, I would use Sublime. It's everything I want in an editor.” To know more about this news, check out Sublime Text’s blog post. Meet Sublime Merge, a new Git client from the makers of Sublime Text Introducing R-Factor, a refactoring tool for React and Redux Typescript 3.3 is finally released!

Last month, CERN, one of the leading scientific research organizations planned to stop using Microsoft-based programs to look out for affordable open-source software. For the past 20 years, CERN has been using Microsoft products at a discounted "academic institution" rate. Things changed in March when its previous contract was ending and Microsoft revoked CERN's academic status and as per a CERN’s blog post, under the new contract, licensing costs have been increased.  Meanwhile, CERN is now focusing on its year-old project known as, Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) and plans to migrate to open-source software. MAlt’s principles of engagement are: delivering the same service to every category of CERN personnel, avoiding vendor lock-in for decreasing risk and dependency, keeping hands-on data and addressing the common use-cases. The official post reads, “The Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) started a year ago to mitigate anticipated software license fee increases. MAlt’s objective is to put us back in control using open software. It is now time to present more widely this project and to explain how it will shape our computing environment.” https://twitter.com/Razican/status/1138818892825055233 This summer, MAlt will start with a pilot mail service for the IT department and volunteers. CERN plans to migrate all of its staff to the new mail service and also move the Skype for Business clients and analogue phones to a softphone pilot. Microsoft agreed to increase CERN's fees over a ten-year period so that the institution could adapt but it was still unsustainable as per CERN. Emmanuel Ormancey, a CERN system analyst, wrote in a blog post, “Although CERN has negotiated a ramp-up profile over ten years to give the necessary time to adapt, such costs are not sustainable.” Considering CERN’s collaborative nature and its wide community, a large number of licenses are required for delivering the services to everyone. The costs per product becomes unaffordable when traditional business models on a per-user basis are applied. It got unaffordable for CERN to go for commercial software licenses with a per-user fee structure. While many other public research institutions have previously been affected by this new licensing structure.  While few users still think Microsoft was a better choice and are on the point that it would be difficult for CERN to migrate. A user commented on HackerNews, “Migrating away from Microsoft won't be easy. Despite high licensing costs, Windows, AD and Exchange are still great solutions with millions of people familiar with them, good documentation and support.” Few others are happy about CERN’s decision to support open source. Another user commented, “It is awesome to see how CERN is supporting open source. They have been long time users of our open core GitLab with 12,000 users https://about.gitlab.com/customers/cern/” To know more about this news, check out the official post. Softbank announces a second AI-focused Vision Fund worth $108 billion with Microsoft, Apple as major investors Why are experts worried about Microsoft’s billion dollar bet in OpenAI’s AGI pipe dream? Ex-Microsoft employee arrested for stealing over $10M from store credits using a test account

Three days ago, Fedora announced the first preview release of the open-source project Fedora CoreOS as a secure and reliable host for computer clusters. It is specifically designed for running containerized workloads with automatic updates to the latest OS improvements, bug fixes, and security updates. It is secure, minimal, monolithic and is optimized for working with Kubernetes. The main goal of Fedora CoreOS is to be a reliable container host to run containerized workloads securely and at scale. It integrates Ignition from Container Linux technology and rpm-ostree and SELinux hardening from Project Atomic Host. Fedora CoreOS is expected to be a successor to Container Linux eventually. The Container Linux project will continue to be supported throughout 2019, leaving users with ample time to migrate and provide feedback. Fedora has also assured Container Linux users that continued support will be provided to them without any disruption. Fedora CoreOS will also become the successor to Fedora Atomic Host. The current plan is for Fedora Atomic Host to have at least a 29 version and 6 months of lifecycle. Fedora CoreOS will support AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, GCP, OpenStack, Packet, QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware, and bare-metal system platforms. The initial release of Fedora CoreOS will only run on bare metal, Quick Emulator (QEMU), VMware, and AWS on the 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set (x86_64) only. It supports provisioning via Ignition spec 3.0.0 and the Fedora CoreOS Config Transpiler, and will provide automatic updates with Zincati and rpm-ostree, and will run containers with Podman and Moby. Benjamin Gilbert from Red Hat, who is the primary sponsor for FedoraOS wrote a mail archive announcing the preview. Per Gilbert,  in the coming months, more platforms will be added to Fedora CoreOS and new functionalities will be explored. He has also notified users that the Fedora CoreOS preview should not be used for production workloads, as it may change before the stable release. Since Fedora CoreOS is freely available, it will embrace a variety of containerized use cases while Red Hat CoreOS will continue to provide a focused immutable host for OpenShift. It will be released and life-cycled at the same time as the platform. Users are happy with the first preview of Fedora CoreOS. https://twitter.com/datamattsson/status/1151963024175050758 A user on Reddit comments, “Wow looks awesome”. For details on how to create Ignition configs, head over to the Fedora Project docs. Fedora Workstation 31 to come with Wayland support, improved core features of PipeWire, and more Fedora 30 releases with GCC 9.0, GNOME 3.32, performance improvements, and much more! Fedora 30 Beta released with desktop environment options, GNOME 3.32, and much more

Yesterday, GNOME 3.34 was released as the latest version of GNOME, the open-source desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems GNOME 3.34 comes 6 months after the release of GNOME 3.32, with features such as custom folders, tab pinning, improved background panel, Boxes, and much more. This release also offers support for more than 34 languages with at least 80 percent of strings translated. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]Fun Fact: GNOME 3.34 release is termed “Thessaloniki” in recognition of GNOME’s primary annual conference GUADEC which was held in Thessaloniki, Greece.[/box] What’s new in GNOME 3.34? Visual refreshers This release includes visual refreshes for a number of applications, including the desktop. The background selection settings have been redesigned and it is now easy to select custom backgrounds. Custom folders This release introduces custom folders in the application overview where users can simply drag an application icon on top of another for creating a folder. Once all the icons have been dragged out, folders are automatically removed. Tab pinning GNOME 3.34 brings tab pinning, so users can now pin their favorite tabs and save them in the tab list. Improved ad-blocking In this release, the ad-blocking feature has now been updated to use WebKit content filters.  Improved box workflow GNOME’s virtual and remote machine manager, ‘boxes’ has received a number of improvements. Separate dialogs are now being used while adding a remote connection or external broker. The existing virtual machines can now be booted from an attached CD/DVD image so users can now simulate dual-booting environments. Game state can now be saved GNOME’s retro gaming application, ‘Games’ can now support multiple save states per game. Users can save as many game state snapshots as they want. Users can also export the Save states and share them or move them between devices. Improved Background panel The Background panel has been redesigned and it shows a preview of the selected background that is in use under the desktop panel and lock screen. Users can now add custom backgrounds by using the “Add Picture… button”. Improvements in Music application Music can now watch tracked sources including the Music folder in the Home directory for new or changed files and will now get updated automatically. This release features gapless playback and comes with an updated layout where the album, artist and playlist views have now been updated with a better layout. https://youtu.be/qAjPRr5SGoY Updates for Developers and System Administrators Flaptak 1.4 releases in sync with GNOME 3.34 Flatpak 1.4 has been released in sync with GNOME 3.34. Flatpak is central to GNOME’s developer experience plans and is a cross-distribution, cross-desktop technology for application building and distribution. New updates to Builder In this release, Builder, a GNOME IDE has also received a number of new features; it can now run a program in a container via podman. Even the Git integration has now been moved to an out-of-process gnome-builder-git daemon.  Sysprof has been integrated with core platform libraries In this release, Sysprof, the GNOME instrumenting and system profiling utility has been improved; it has now been integrated with a number of core platform libraries such as GTK, GJS, and Mutter. New applications: Icon Library and Icon Preview  In this release, two new applications, Icon Library and Icon Preview have been released, Icon Library can be used for browsing symbolic icons and Icon Preview helps designers and developers in creating and testing new application icons.  Improved font rendering library Pango, the font rendering library now makes rendering text easier as developers will now have more advanced control over their text rendering options.  To know more about this news, check out the release notes. Other interesting news in Programming GitHub Package Registry gets proxy support for the npm registry Project management platform ClubHouse announces ‘Free Plan’ for up to 10 users and a new documentation tool The Eclipse Foundation releases Jakarta EE 8, the first truly open-source, vendor-neutral Java EE    

Apache foundation announced the RC release of NetBeans 9.0. They also announced the feature set and tools applicable for Java development, including Java Swing, JavaFX, and the support created specifically for Java 9. Apache in its release note mentioned that the focus for this release is mainly on: IP clearance of the Oracle code donation Support for the latest Java SE versions - Java 9 and Java 10 The following are some of the most important features that will be the part of NetBeans 9.0 release: Supporting Local Variable Type Inference: The type inference associated with local variables is used by JDK for definition inside methods, initialization blocks, for-loops, and other blocks like if-else. Supporting the Jigsaw Module System: The Jigsaw module system was announced under Project Jigsaw with a primary goal of making the development easy for large applications that include calling a lot of libraries. It was implemented to maintain libraries, secure and maintain the Java SE platform, and scale the performance of JDK based on the size of the applications. NetBeans 9.0 will be supporting the modules system for Project Jigsaw. New Java Modular Application project type: The modularity feature is considered to be one of the most emerging technology features introduced in Java 9. It helps developers to build productive and easily maintainable software that uses Java, especially for enterprise applications. NetBeans 9.0 will see the full support for modularity. Java Shell support: Java Shell (jShell) is a command line introduced in Java 9 to help write smaller programs efficiently without the hassles of declarations, creating classes, etc. NetBeans 9.0 provides integrated console-like UI for the Java Shell and hence making the development, a bit more hassle-free. You can read more about the known issues in the RC release on the confluence page. The source and binaries for NetBeans 9.0 RC1 can be downloaded from Apache’s mirrors. What can you expect from the upcoming Java 11 JDK? Forget C and Java. Learn Kotlin: the next universal programming language

WSL was a great effort towards emulating a Linux Kernel on top of Windows. But due to certain differences between Windows and Linux, it was quite impossible to run the Docker Engine and Kubernetes directly inside WSL. So, the Docker Desktop developed an alternative solution with the help of Hyper-V VMs and LinuxKit to achieve the seamless integration. On 16th June, Docker announced WSL 2 with a major architecture change where the company will provide a real Linux Kernel running inside a lightweight VM instead of emulation. This approach is architecturally similar to LinuxKit and Hyper-V but  WSL 2 has an additional benefit that it is more lightweight and tightly integrated with Windows. Even the Docker daemon runs properly on it with great performance. The team further announced that they are working on new version of Docker Desktop that would leverage WSL 2 and the public preview will be expected in July. The official blog reads, “We are very excited about this technology, and we are happy to announce that we are working on a new version of Docker Desktop leveraging WSL 2, with a public preview in July. It will make the Docker experience for developing with containers even greater, unlock new capabilities, and because WSL 2 works on Windows 10 Home edition, so will Docker Desktop.” In context with integration of Microsoft the blog reads, “As part of our shared effort to make Docker Desktop the best way to use Docker on Windows, Microsoft gave us early builds of WSL 2 so that we could evaluate the technology, see how it fits with our product, and share feedback about what is missing or broken. We started prototyping different approaches and we are now ready to share a little bit about what is coming in the next few months.” The future of Docker Desktop will have WSL 2 The team will replace the Hyper-V VM by a WSL 2 integration package. The package will offer the same features as the current Docker Desktop including automatic updates, transparent HTTP proxy configuration, VM: Kubernetes 1-click setup, access to the daemon from Windows, etc. This package will contain both the server-side components that are required to run Docker and Kubernetes and the CLI tools to interact with those components within WSL. WSL 2 will enable seamless integration with Linux With WSL 2 integration, users will experience seamless integration with Windows, but even Linux programs that are running inside WSL will be able to do the same. This creates a huge impact for developers that are working on projects related to the Linux environment, or with a build process for Linux. Now there won’t be a need for maintaining both Linux and Windows build scripts. For example, a developer at Docker can now work on the Linux Docker daemon on Windows, using the same set of tools and scripts as a developer on a Linux machine. The bind mounts from WSL will now support inotify events (inotify is a Linux kernel subsystem) and will have almost identical I/O performance as on a native Linux machine. This will solve one of the major Docker Desktop issues with I/O-heavy toolchains. This feature will benefit NodeJS, PHP and other web development tools. Improved performance and reduced memory consumption The VM has been setup to use dynamic memory allocation and schedule work on all the Host CPUs. It will be consuming lesser memory which would be in the limit of what the host can provide. Docker Desktop will leverage this for improving its resource consumption and use CPU and memory as per its needs. The CPU/Memory intensive tasks such as building a container will also run much faster. Leveraging WSL 2 Docker desktop will support bind mount One of the major problems that the users have with Docker Desktop is the reliability of Windows file bind mounts. The current implementation is dependent on Samba Windows service, which could be deactivated, blocked by enterprise GPOs or even blocked by 3rd party firewalls etc. But Docker Desktop with WSL 2 solves these issues by leveraging WSL features to implement the bind mounts of Windows files.   Few users seem to be unhappy with this news, one of them commented on HackerNews, “So, I think the main sticking point here is the lock-in of Hyper-V. By making a new popular feature completely dependent on a technology that explicitly disables the use of competitive hypervisors, they're giving with one hand and taking with the other. If I was on VM-Ware's executive team, I'd be seriously thinking about filing an anti-trust complaint and the open source community should be thinking about whether submarining virtualbox is worth what Microsoft is doing here.” Others think that WSL 2 is a full Linux kernel that runs in Hyper-V. Another comment reads, “WSL 2 is a full Linux kernel running in Hyper-V rather than an emulation layer on top of NT.” To know more about this news, check out the official post by Docker. How to push Docker images to AWS’ Elastic Container Registry(ECR) [Tutorial] All Docker versions are now vulnerable to a symlink race attack Docker announces collaboration with Microsoft’s .NET at DockerCon 2019