Kevux Systems and Software - News - 2024
Author: Kevin Day
Description: News posts for the year 2024.
Keywords: Kevin Day, Kevux, FLL, Featureless, Linux, Library, Distribution, Open-Source, News, 2024

# Year 2024 News

## 2024 / 10 / 01 - FLL 0.6.12 Release

The Featureless Linux Library stable version `0.6.12` is released.

This release provides some significant polishing, bug fixing, and corrections (or clarifications) to the project, the standards, and the specifications. Much of this work is done to pave the way for forward compatibility with improvements and changes introduced in the `0.7` development branches. I try to avoid making such changes in the specifications for stables releases but I feel these specific changes are merited.

This increases the correctness of the FSS processing code, specifically with the FSS read functions. The previous behavior only cared whether or not the tests produce equivalent results in terms of reading and writing. I back ported the `0.7` runtime tests and found that it would be better to have consistent and correct output in regards to white space. Doing this also exposed several bugs and mistakes in the FSS processing code.

The FSS Embedded Read, in particular, was completely forgotten about by me. The previous releases have been marked stable but I forgot to actually verify the proper functioning of the FSS Embedded Read program. The back porting of the runtime tests exposed significant problems with the FSS Embedded Read program.

I did some experimentation and found that I could get this project to build and run on an Android environment. I generally do not want OS-specific build files in the core FLL project, but I have made an exception here. This should help build more support for the Android environment and help pave the way for future projects that may help those users unfortunate enough to find themselves in an Android environment. This Android functionality is not well tested nor is it well supported. The Android support has been tested to build using `bootstrap.sh` and then using `fake`.

I recently discovered that the `golang` supports some command line based compilation. The `golang` is now supported in the most basic way, but this support is not well tested. Use the `example_go` project as a point of reference. I have only tested the basic build and I have not done anything more complex than that.

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## 2024 / 08 / 11 - FLL 0.6.11 Release

The Featureless Linux Library stable version `0.6.11` is released.

This release brings in fixes for problems exposed by more regular use of and by active development on the `0.7.x` development branch. In particular, the Controller program has seen a lot of fixes and improvements.

I have been working on additional projects, such as Tacocat. This project has a different structure and has revealed some bugs or mistakes in the `fakefile` and `settings` standards for the Featureless Make program. I have already been aware of this potential problem but I had been hoping that I would not need to implement a new feature in the standard. Unfortunately, I have concluded that I do in fact need a new feature. The `fakefile` and `settings` standards now support a new Object called `stage`. I chose the word stage to avoid conflicts with existing build focused Object names. This new feature in the standard fixes a bug where multiple `settings` might conflict with each other. I opted to classify this new feature as a bug fix. This change further exposed an oversight where slashes are not supposed to be supported in the build name Object and the version Objects. The new `stage` Object as well as the `build_name`, `version_major`, `version_major_prefix`, `version_minor`, `version_minor_prefix`, `version_micro`, `version_micro_prefix`, `version_nano`, `version_nano_prefix` and `version_target` Objects now explicitly prohibit slashes.

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## 2024 / 07 / 14 - Time and Numbers

The Kevux projects are predominately specification driven programming, also called standards driven programming. Most of the standards are focused around logic and a specific goal. Some of the standards, however, are focused on math and its application. Today, I have decided to discuss some of the mathematical based, or number based, standards. I planned on a more extensive article but the events of Yesterday, July 13, 2024, are historic and troubling for the United States of America. I have found that rather distracting and I am opting for a shorter article.

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## 2024 / 06 / 14 - A Living Standard is a Dead Standard

I like to encourage following a standard while simultaneously being free to not follow a standard. At least so long as one doesn't claim to follow the standard when they don't actual follow that standard. This article is about my personal opinions on a "Living Standard". The HTML5 standard is used throughout this article as an example of a "Living Standard".

Once upon a time there were reasonably smart people who made the HTML language. The browser wars happened and long story short the world ended up with HTML5. The latest iteration of the HTML standard, HTML5, has been a big improvement in overall but the ball has also been dropped in several ways. The solution chosen to fix the adoption and compliance problems has been to make the HTML5 specification a "Living Standard".

As a "Living Standard", there no longer is an honest way to know if some software is in compliance. If a standard may change at any point in time, then how can a "Living Standard" be truly called a standard? On Tuesday some software might be in compliance, on Wednesday some software might cease to be in compliance, and then on Thursday some software might be in compliance again. Whether or not such a sudden, and perhaps extereme, would happen is not the concern. Instead, the concern is is that a "Living Standard" allows for this kind of behavior. A "Living Standard", for all intents and purposes, is a dead standard.

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## 2024 / 05 / 25 - FLL 0.6.10 Release

The Featureless Linux Library stable version `0.6.10` is released.

This release brings in fixes exposed by more regular use and by active development on the `0.7.x` development branch.

Fix problems with the FSS Extended Write where the quote characters that are not selected during the write are not being quoted. These must still be quoted.

Fix problems regarding the latest GCC release (`14.1.1`).

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## 2024 / 03 / 03 - FLL 0.6.9 Release

The Featureless Linux Library stable version `0.6.9` is released.

This release address newly discovered bugs and problems that have been exposed by unit tests from the `0.7` development branch and some real world use cases.

This brings in some security related problems and upgrading is recommended.

A significant amount of development in the `0.7` development code base has yielded a number of changes worth back porting into this `0.6` stable code base.

The firewall program has seen some considerable review and bug fixes.

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## 2024 / 02 / 24 - Programming Happenings

The new year has yielded a large amount of development progress in several of my projects. I have also seen some bad happenings and good happenings in the technology world. With my projects moving into the next stages, I have decided to begin releasing more details of my plans going forward.

This is a longer than usual read and so let me first summarize the topics at hand. The fundamentals of my ideas driving my work and life are now being formalized into what I am calling Project Lighthouse. This is itself not actually a project but instead is an idea from which one may follow with their own projects in not just software technology. My programs and libraries follow these ideas represented by Project Lighthouse and extend into what I call Actual Accessibility. That is to say, the ability to access. My network related code is slowly progressing but it is progressing. My TacocaT program is a small tool that I am using to help brainstorm how I am going to write the network related code. This ultimately shall become the foundation for the Furl program as well as more complex projects. The Controller program is going to see some major work to both utilize this network related code as well as improvements to make it a functional way to break free of the nonsense that is SystemD. I finally got around to setting up https://git.kevux.org and making all of my code available there as well as a few others that are not my projects.

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