Category: Projects

Proceedings from International track of WFS 2006 Porto Alegre

Here are elements of proceedings of the papers presented in the International track of the 7th Workshop on Free Software held during the FISL 7 in Porto Alegre (Brazil) on 21st of April 2006.

I will try and add pointers to the papers and slides as soon as the authors have made it available.

News from the EDOS Project: Improving the Maintenance of Free Software Distributions
Roberto Di Cosmo (Universite Paris 7),
Paulo Trezentos (Caixa Magica),
Berke Durak (INRIA) et al.
The EDOS project is a research effort whose goeal is to contribute to ensure the quality of a free software distribution. This is a major technical and engineering challenge, owing to the size and complexity of these distributions (tens of thousands of software packages). We present here some of the challenges that we have already tackled, and some of the advanced tools that are already available to the community as an outcome of the first year of work.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF – Note : see also the following post I’ve made concerning EDOS (links to the video).

Case Studies in Linux Ports to Embedded Platforms
Claudio Matsuoka (Mandriva),
Gustavo Boiko (Mandriva),
Thiago Galesi (Mandriva).

This paper details the technical issues found in late 2005 when porting Linux to two different embedded platforms, namely an XScale-based rugged handheld device for industrial and military applications (previously running Windows CE) and a PowerQUICC-based board used in a private branch exchange (PBX) system. Both ports are based on kernel 2.6, and the latter makes use of real-time capabilities provided by RTAI.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF

Evaluation of Data Conversion of Vectorial Geographic Features in Topographic Maps using Free Software Tools
Helton Uchoa (OpenGEO Consultoria),
Maurício de Paulo (IME),
Luiz Coelho (UERJ),
Paulo Roberto Ferreira (UFRJ).
This paper is related to a common problem found when trying to convert huge geodatabases that were extracted according to old or proprietary techniques still employed in Geographic Institutes and Services around the World. The libraries used for this task pertain to the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL), a free library kit for performing geographic operations. An application was developed in order to import traditional maps delivered in a proprietary vectorial format, and convert them trying to preserve their original features. The results of this approach are commented throughout the text.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF
The Open 3D GIS Project A Free Tool to Enable 3D Geographic Systems on the Web
Helton Uchoa (OpenGEO Consultoria),
Maurício de Paulo (IME),
Luiz Coelho (UERJ),
Paulo Roberto Ferreira (UFRJ).
This paper describes the first steps taken in order to create an Open Source project that enables MapServer to display 3D objects (and in the near future, perform analysis on them) on the web. 3D objects are exported to a viewer (integrated to the browser) in the X3D format, which is the preferred format for displaying 3D objects, according to the World Wide Web Consortium. In this paper, the first results related to the development of this solution are shown, as well as the basic procedures in order to prepare a 3D database to be fit within Open3DGIS’ specifications.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF

Integrating Open Source Tools for Developing Embedded Linux Applications
Raul Fernandes Herbster (UFCG),
Hyggo Oliveira de Almeida (UFCG),
Angelo Perkusich (UFCG),
Dalton Serey Guerrero (UFCG).
The development of embedded Linux applications have been supported by several open source tools. In order to make the programming activity less complex and more productive, such tools should be easy to install, configure and use. However, using the available open source tools, developers still have to understand and use different kinds of user interfaces and environments. Time and effort are spent on configuration issues rather than on programming. In this paper we present how to integrate open source development tools for programming embedded Linux applications. We introduce an Eclipse plug-in to support the development of embedded Linux applications using a single and integrated environment.
Deployment of a Wireless Hybrid and Mobile Network for VoIP Services Based on Open Source Software
Olympio Silva Filho (UFCG),
Danilo Santos (UFCG),
José Luís Nascimento (UFCG),
Angelo Perkusich (UFCG).
This article describes the M-VoIP (Mobile Voice over the Internet Protocol) project, which provides a hybrid wireless and mobile network infrastructure for the deploy a VoIP solution. The solution is entirely based on open source software and the Linux operating system. The characteristics of the architecture of the system, its main components, as well as the development process used is presented.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF

An Embedded Communication Platform Based on Linux for Automotive Systems
Fernando Ataide (UFRGS),
Alan Carvalho (UFRGS),
Carlos Eduardo (UFRGS),
Fabiano Carvalho (UFRGS).
In the last years, important research has presented different approaches in the real-time embedded communication domain aiming to cover the growing demands of performance, predictability and reliability of emerging applications. Such requirements involve low latency, reduced jitter, time composability, fault-tolerance and finally, support for future modifications. Mainly in the automotive domain which is considering the possibility of replacing the major part of mechanical and/or hydraulic systems for electronic systems, the importance of predictable behavior with some degree of flexibility plays a key role. This paper presents a prototype implementation of the FTT-CAN protocol over Freescale ColdFire platforms running RTAI as an embedded Linux a work in the scope of the Baja-by-Wire1 project which is being developed at Electrical Engineering Department of UFRGS. Some design issues together with latency and jitter results are provided and discussed. The project was developed entirely with open source tools.

In addition to these papers, and to conclude the session, I made a presentation of some findings of Software Engineering research in Libre Software, to give an overview of some findings of research projects like CALIBRE.

Report from FISL 7 in Porto Alegre

(French version here)
I’m back from Porto Alegre (Brazil), where they held the FISL (Forum International Software Livre), the largest Brazilian Libre Software event. It was my second participation, and this time as the chair for the international track of the academic Workshop (WFS/WSL) held during the Forum.

So for a quick report. Libre Software definitely has momentum in Brazil. Situation is quite comparable to France and Europe, even if I think that it’s been a more recent adoption maybe, considering the number of very young people present in the audiance (my own perception of the average age of participants, nothing official ;). It’s too bad that Porto Alegre is so far from Europe (20 000 km trip from Paris) as there would be plenty of oportunities for collaboration, I think… but without physical encounters, it’s hard, unless you do pure software development.
The Porto Algere FISL was this time again a huge event with more than 5500 participants, and tens of conferences, among which a great part in Portugueze/Brasilian. Many countries were represented (4 french people !), and all continents were there. Btw, the African fellows (also french-speaking) were very special guests of the show, in particular with the excellent speech by Pierre Ouédraogo from AAUL after the signature of a partnership agreement between Brazilian and African associations.

Last year, the OpenSource Initiative was particularly prominent with numerous speakers, and this time, you could meet many more members from the (several) Free Software Foundation(s) (US, Europe, Latin America), mainly due to the special second general public workshop about GPL V3 held during the FISL (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fisl-gplv3.html), in order to get the best feedback and comments on the future version of the main licence of Libre Software.

Among the interesting things I’ve seen, in random order (I’ll add other items as I remember things… jetlag hurts 😉 :

  • The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project presented the status of the project. No, this is no hoax, the $100 laptop for children in developing countries seems on his way. With lots of innovations on the technical side. I have recorded the presentation, so I’ll try to upload it somewhere (en VO).
  • The EDOS European project of my collegue Roberto Di Cosmo, which proposes very interesting results on quality of Distributions. I’ve posted specifically on EDOS here.
  • A project of cluster based on standard components which seems very interesting. More details (in french) in another post of my personnal blog.
  • The port of libre versions of GNU/Linux (at least Linux and other tools… maybe not so much GNU 😉 on Motorola phones which is going on, with work among others, of my roomate at the FISL, Harald Welte.
  • I know a bit more, also, thanks to Harald, on the biometric passports using RFID chips, and what can be done with Libre Software.
  • And also : the DIY LEDs gadget : http://ledtoy.sourceforge.net/

On the Workshop side, the local sessions were huge, but I couldn’t attend them for lack of translation, my portuguese/brasilian being REALLY limited :(. And on the international track side, everything went well, with excellent presentations, I think. But I’ll post on that subject later.

I must thank the local organizers, and specially Adenauer Yamin and Celso Maciel Da Costa, who took great care of me 😉 I’m looking forward to going back to FISL next year.

Adenauer and me at FISL 7

For more pictures, cf. : http://www.indicefoto.com/sala.php?evento=fisl ou encore http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/fisl/I’ll add more as time goes by and I remember things, and when I see slides or videos appear online.

Improving quality of distributions : EDOS brings new tools

The EDOS project, a R&D project funded by the European Commission under IST FP6 proposes new tools to help enhance the quality of GNU/Linux Distributions.

Roberto Di Cosmo, leader of the project, has presented a paper in WFS 2006 in Porto Alegre, discussing the issue of packages dependencies, and presenting in particular the tools they have developped to check installability problems.

For instance, for Debian, conflicts between packages may lead to uninstallable packages whenever another package is changed (because this conflict relationship works in both directions). Another issue is when a same file path contained in several packages leads to overwritten files, thus conflicts.

For examples of the tools developped, see for instance ARA or ANLA. For instance, in ANLA, we can see that the stable release of Debian contains many uninstallable packages, but most are just depending on a non-free (Java) program, not included in the distribution. What’s surprising though, is that some packages are in different problems, like wzdftpd-mod-perl (check its lifetime in the tool).
What’s interesting is that the formal theory applied in their tools should provide completeness of the quality checks. And furthermore, these tools are really fast, which would allow almost realtime checking of tens of thousands of packages in the distribution (typically 3 minutes for checking everything on a PIII laptop !!!).

For more details, see the following documents : “News from the EDOS Project: Improving the Maintenance of Free Software Distributions“, the paper presented at WFS 2006 (PDF), and the slides of the presentation (to come), and also the more detailed document “Report on Formal Management of Software Dependencies” (Deliverable WP2-D2.2 of the project) (PDF 180 pages).

I have also recorded a video of the presentation at WFS, which should be uploaded here soon.

Presentation on Software Engineering and Libre Software at WFS 7 in Porto Alegre

Borrowing much material from Gregorio Robles, I made a presentation at the academic workshop during WFS 7 in Porto Alegre, of several figures obtained by Dr Robles during his PhD Thesis, to illustrate the kind of results obtained when studying Libre Software from a Software Engineering perspective. Some of this work was made during the CALIBRE project, btw.
The audiance was a bit shallow, but I hope that the recording will be available soon on the net to offer a bigger audiance. Here is the link to the slides (in PDF, or in OOo Impress, for the source).

See also the reports (in french) I’ve made from the trip to FISL/WFS in my personal blog.

me presenting my talk

Transparents intervention à Autour du Libre 2006 : “Résumé rapide de quelques travaux en Génie Logiciel sur le logiciel libre”

Je suis intervenu lors de Autour du Libre 2006 la semaine dernière à Brest, pour y faire une présentation rapide de quelques résultats en matière de recherche académique sur le Logiciel Libre, et plus spécifiquement du côté génie logiciel.

Je tiens à remercier Gregorio Robles qui m’a permis d’utiliser une grande partie des figures que j’ai présentées, qui sont issues de son mémoire de thèse de doctorat portant sur l’analyse du logiciel libre, qu’il a soutenue récemment.

Voici le lien vers les slides que j’ai présentés : en PDF, et le source en OpenOffice.org (attention, gros document). Update : une version anglaise des slides est disponible.