Time flies and so here we already are on Day 3 at LinuxTag in Berlin. We are almost sold out on T-Shirts, lots of people are running around with a Gentoo button on their shirt and we are sitting in “Larry’s Hackcenter”, stabilizing packages and wrangling Security bugs.

Some pictures:

Fauli and sping approve of Gentoo

Windows Server 2008 running Gentoo Prefix, yay!

How did Knurt the Flying Saucer get there?

Robert (rbu) operating the button machine.

The view from Larry's Hackcenter to the rest of the world.

From June 24 – June 27 there will be the LinuxTag in Berlin, one of the biggest Linux and Open Source events in Europe. Last year, almost 12.000 visitors came to the show, and for this year we hope that even more people will come.

Of course, you’ll find Gentoo on the exhibitors list, special thanks to our main coordinator, Robert Buchholz (rbu) for organizing our presence.

Come visit the Gentoo folks in Hall 7.2a, Booth 101a
(that is right next to the entrance!)

Bring your friends and maybe a little gift for the hard working Gentoo devs. We are looking forward to interesting conversations!

To make the decision whether to come to LinuxTag even easier, here is a chance to…

Win free tickets! *

Here’s the deal: Send an e-mail to a3li <at> gentoo <dot> org with the reason why you should get one of our 5 free tickets.
Mabye you fixed a bug the other day or help our users a lot on IRC, be sure to include that reference.

We will pick the 5 submissions who we think have deserved it most. The competition ends Wednesday, June 17 at 2000 UTC.

The winners will be announced on Planet Gentoo and will receive an email with further instructions to claim the free tickets.

Nochmal auf Deutsch

Gentoo auf dem LinuxTag, vom 24. bis 27. Juni 2009. Ihr findet uns in Halle 7.2a, Stand 101a (gleich am Eingang).

Dazu verlosen wir 5 Freikarten, schreib eine E-Mail an a3li <at> gentoo <punkt> org und sag uns, warum gerade Du ein kostenloses Ticket verdient hast (vielleicht weil Du einen Bug gefixt hast oder anderen Benutzern häufig im IRC hilfst). Die fünf „fleißigsten” kriegen von uns Tickets. * Einsendeschluss ist Mittwoch, der 17. Juni 22.00 Uhr deutscher Zeit.

* There is no right of appeal. / Rechtsweg ausgeschlossen.

My fellow Rubyists,

No worries, I won’t give a uberlengthy speech.

It’s just, the speedy, shiny new Ruby 1.9.1 is soon to be released. Actually, it already should have been, but there are some things that need to be fixed, you know how it is…

Anyway, here’s how we are looking:

We have ebuilds for Ruby 1.9.1 up to RC2 up to patchlevel 129, they build fine, and we pass all but a few tests. ruby-config is replaced by an eselect module that allows seamless switching of Ruby 1.8 and 1.9 including the gem command. We are now verifying the ebuilds in the tree that already have the “build for ruby 1.9″ flag set, if they still work fine.

My personal ETA on when it will hit the tree is $release_time + 6 to 8 weeks. We want to be sure that our infrastructure works with the final release.

Want it now or want to help testing?

You can test-drive the release candidates, they are in the Ruby overlay. Via layman: layman -a ruby.

If you got any feedback, or questions, you can reach the Ruby team via mail or IRC.

Major packaging changes and Gentoo

Some well-known Ruby libraries are now included by upstream. Our beloved RubyGems is on board just as is Rake.
For us on Gentoo this means that we no longer have to rely on the auto_gem.rb magic that caused quite some trouble in the past.
On the other hand, with too much bundled software being a concern for us, we decided not to include rake, but to offer it – as before – in dev-ruby/rake.

For more information, here are some links:

• Getting code ready for Ruby 1.9
• Changes in Ruby 1.9 (eigenclass.org)
• Changes to the Standard Library in 1.9
• Ruby 1.9 – What’s new? What’s changed?