The Probe daemon was rewritten to allow fast and easy ports. Moreover it now supports network statistics reporting on NetBSD, and volume checking should follow soon as NetBSD 3.0 switched to the statvfs() interface. The source code is found at:
http://www.defora.org/project/browse/44

The mail client page now also offers a couple screenshots. The direct link to the project is:
http://www.defora.org/project/download/268

The file browser page now offers a few screenshots.
Check them out at:
http://www.defora.org/project/download/230

Downloads are now directly available from their respective project homepages. They can currently propose screenshots and source code archives. Some work is still necessary on the administration side to ease upload and management, however it should help to spread the software without the extra burden of the CVS access, and the not-so-attractive "not yet" pages.
More generally speaking, DaPortal has had a fair load of fixes since the last news, along with a few optimization attempts, and will certainly experience some code cleanup when given the chance.

Since I discovered only recently that I missed one level of logging (namely E_NOTICE) in my PHP development environment, I figured it would be a nice move to try to initialize variables before using them </shame>. Things are already fixed in some places, but it will take some time to spot them all.
Having just installed myself a new OS, I wanted to avoid the installation of MySQL or PostgreSQL while still being able to code on DaPortal. I found it interesting to support a third database backend support, namely SQLite. After a few frustrating steps I could manage to have something useful out of it. I can not pretend it is complete, but it works well enough for a basic setup.

An experimental web browser can be found there:
http://people.defora.org/~khorben/projects/surfer/
Its integration into DeforaOS tree is not likely as is, since it relies on an apparently unmaintained port of WebCore to Gtk+ 2.0. A re-packaged version of the port is being worked on, and will be available there as well, as it may turn out to be easier to compile and install than the original.

I would much rather work on graphical applications based on a new, cleaner toolkit, but Gtk+ got a lot better in its 2.6 revision, since they finally integrated relevant widgets from the GNOME project. I don't know if I like 2.8 much however, since it introduces lots of new dependencies. About the port of WebCore, a full featured browser cannot be developped around it as it is, but it is almost there (the biggest problem being probably the flexibility of Curl as connectivity backend).

The 0.0.4 revision of configure is available [1], its changelog includes:

• added .PHONY pseudo-rule
• filters out some essential libraries as required on the platform
• supports basic config.{h,sh} automatic generation
• added C++ support

[1] http://people.defora.org/~khorben/projects/configure/

I've been thinking about whether to do this or not for a long time, and it finally happens: sponsoring information for the project is available [1]. There is no PayPal link or anything, it's more like a way to say "thanks" with more sense than the former top page links.

[1] https://www.defora.org/sponsor.html

A Gtk+ 2 based file browser made its way into the project [1]. Even though a fresh new toolkit would be preferred to Gtk+2, this code (originally based on gtk-demo GtkIconView sample) seems to be alright. As a start it features browsing through files and launching applications, according to the corresponding MIME type.

[1] https://www.defora.org/index.php?module=project&action=display&id=230

Efforts were concentrated on the assembler lately, and it can now:

• generate valid x86 ELF32 object files (and ELF64 too normally);
• handle about 150 valid opcode and operands combinations on x86.

This was tested only with disassembly programs to date.
Next problems to tackle are with endian-ness, different x86 addressing modes, mod r/m operands on x86, variables, and why not some kind of pre-processing or another architecture support (who said sparc?).
Another release is on its way.

On another front, configure's OS detection was checked and improved a bit, and it will soon allow networked projects to compile on Solaris as well.