Google Hosts CIFS Workshop

By Jeremy Allison, Open Source Team and Samba Core Developer

Around sixty developers from over twenty different companies converged on Google's Mountain View Campus at the end of September to sample the free food. Oh yes, and also to test their implementations of the CIFS network protocol for interoperability.

CIFS, the Common Internet File System (that's Windows Networking to you and me), is the file sharing protocol build into all Windows versions, and also MacOS X, Linux, HPUX and now Solaris clients. Samba is the best known Free Software implementation of CIFS, and most of the Samba Team were there to help improve Samba3 and Samba4's interoperability along with the other CIFS vendors.

Over the three days much code was written, much beer was drunk, and the air was turned blue with cursing when bugs were found! As the Samba Team were mentoring several Google Summer of Code^TM students, we also got to record a podcast about our experiences participating in the program over the past three years.

Thanks to Google for hosting the event and setting up the gigabit networking required. The endless coffee supply was also essential when dealing with network protocol problems.

The best summary of the success of our testing occurred on the final day of the event, when a sad and frustrated CIFS client programmer wrote the following on our testing notes whiteboard:

"the server *hates* me :-) :-)"

It was great to see everyone coming together, even people from competing companies, to help fix problems with everyone's implementations of CIFS. Look for the resulting improvements in new versions of products and future releases of Samba.

The Samba Team takes a break during the CIFS Workshop.

(Photo Credit: Leslie Hawthorn)

Read More

Linux Kernel-Userland Interface Design, Testing, and Documentation: An Update from LinuxConf EU, and the 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

By Michael Kerrisk, Software Engineering Team

As you may know,Google allows its engineers to spend 20% of their time on projects independent of their regular day to day job. For my 20% time, I chose to continue and expand my work on maintaining the Linux man-pages.

Since April, we've managed to ship 21 new releases, with a dozen or so new pages, and around 400 major and minor improvements to existing pages.

My work on the Linux Man-pages project man-pages led me to talk about kernel-userland interface design, testing, and documentation at the recent LinuxConf Europe, where my Zurich colleague Roman Marxer also spoke about Google's recently open-sourced Ganeti virtual server management software.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the immediately following USENIX Linux Kernel Developers Summit, where I joined Google colleagues Andrew Morton, Paul Menage, and Martin Bligh to participate in the discussion of current topics related to kernel development, including the topic of kernel-userland API design, testing, and documentation.

You can read my talk, and in-depth coverage of the Kernel Developer Summit at LWN.net. It's available to LWN.net subscribers only until the 20th of September, but you can already see the obligatory group photo.



Googlers Andrew Morton and Paul Menage relaxing at the end of the Linux Kernel Summit, Cambridge, England

(photo credit: Michael Kerrisk)

Ed. note: Post updated to fix typo.

Read More

Google Funds COLLADA Support for Mac and Linux

By Christian LaForte, Feeling Software

COLLADA, the standard 3D interchange format, makes it much easier to translate complex animated 3D models across Google Earth, Google Sketch-Up, Adobe Photoshop, Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3, Autodesk Maya, and many other applications. COLLADA integrates 3D geometry, textures, complex material, complex skeletal and facial animation, physical simulations, and many more aspects. With such power comes complexity: integrating COLLADA from scratch in your application is not for the faint-hearted. Luckily developers have created reusable libraries to simplify this process, including FCollada, which is open-source, well tested, can import all versions of COLLADA and has been integrated into many applications.

We've worked on development of FCollada over the past two years, thanks to support from Google's Open Source Progams Office. Until recently, the library was only offered for Windows; it is now available for Mac OS X and several Linux distributions.

Google's sponsorship also enabled us to distribute and support two additional tools for Linux and Mac OS X enthusiasts:

• ColladaMaya, a complete COLLADA translator designed for Autodesk Maya. It's now available for all three major platforms under the MIT license.


• Feeling Viewer, a reference viewer for COLLADA content, supports all standard COLLADA features. A stand-alone version of the viewer is available for free on Linux and Mac.

Read More

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit @ Google

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

Last week, Google hosted the inaugural Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. More than 200 developers and community leaders converged for three days of talks and working group meetings, giving birth to many new synergies within the community. Of particular interest was an initiative formed to improve power management functionality in Linux. If you're interested in learning more about the results of the summit and the Linux Foundation's ongoing activities, you can check out the Linux Foundation's Summit wrap-up or the Foundation's Summit press release.

We'd like to thank all of our guests for attending the summit. It was our pleasure and privilege to help make the summit a success.

Read More

The Ubucon Boulder

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

Last weekend, Google's Boulder, Colorado engineering office hosted the first Ubucon to be held in Colorado. Around twenty Ubuntu developers, users and enthusiasts came together in unconference style to discuss topics from Launchpad to the new Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project. You can find more details, including an awesome group photo and links to session notes, in the Colorado LoCo team's Ubucon Boulder write-up.

Read More

Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series: Amit Singh

Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

For the next installment of the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series, we will welcome Amit Singh, software engineer on our Mac development team. On Thursday, May 24th, Amit will present on "MacFuse," an open-source Mac port of the FUSE mechanism for Linux. Much like FUSE, it enables developers to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program.

As with all sessions of the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series, Amit's presentation will be open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 PM at our Mountain View campus; guests should plan to sign in at Building 41 reception upon arrival. Refreshments will be served and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. Amit's presentation will also be taped and published along with all of the public Google Tech Talks on Google Video.

For those of you who were unable to attend our last session, you can watch the video of Andrew Morton's recent presentation on The State of the Linux Kernel.

Read More

Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series: Andrew Morton

Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

On Tuesday, May 1st, the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series will be pleased to host Andrew Morton, who will be presenting "The State of the Linux Kernel." Andrew, lead maintainer for the Linux public production kernel, will review trends in recent changes to the kernel. He will also examine the motivations of various contributors and discuss areas of the kernel which could use a bit more love.

As with all sessions of the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series, Andrew's presentation will be open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 PM at our Mountain View campus; guests should plan to sign in at Building 43 reception upon arrival. Refreshments will be served and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. Andrew's presentation will also be taped and published along with all of the public Google Tech Talks on Google Video.

And for those of you who were unable to attend the last session, you can watch the video of Alex Martelli's recent presentation on Python for Programmers.

Read More