PCLinuxOS Gets November 2019 ISO with Refreshed Themes, Latest Updates

The PCLinuxOS community released their monthly ISO snapshots for November 2019, a release that contains all the latest bug and security updates, as well as various improvements. PCLinuxOS 2019.11 is out now as the latest and most up to date installation medium for this independently developed and user-friendly GNU/Linux distribution, including a fully updated system with all the updates released as of November 12th, 2019, with refreshed themes for GRUB, bootsplash, and the desktop. PCLinuxOS 2019.11 is available in there different edition, with the KDE Plasma 5, Xfce, and MATE desktop environments. The PCLinuxOS 2019.11 KDE edition ships with the latest KDE Plasma 5.17.3 desktop environment, as well as the KDE Applications 19.08.3 and KDE Frameworks 5.64.0 open-source software suites.

Programming: GCC, RcppEigen and Python

• Introduce a new GCC option, --record-gcc-command-line

  I would like to propose the following patches which introduce a compile option --record-gcc-command-line. When passed to gcc, it saves the command line option into the produced object file. The option makes it trivial to trace back how a file was compiled and by which version of the gcc. It helps with debugging, reproducing bugs and repeating the build process.
  
  This option is similar to -frecord-gcc-switches. However, they have three fundamental differences: Firstly, -frecord-gcc-switches saves the internal state after the argv is processed and passed by the driver. As opposed to that, --record-gcc-command-line saves the command-line as received by the driver. Secondly, -frecord-gcc-switches saves the switches as separate entries into a mergeable string section. Therefore, the entries belonging to different object files get mixed up after being linked. The new --record-gcc-command-line, on the other hand, creates one entry per invocation. By doing so, it makes it clear which options were used together in a single gcc invocation. Lastly, --record-gcc-command-line also adds the version of the gcc into this single entry to make it clear which version of gcc was called with any given command line. This is useful in cases where .comment section reports multiple versions.
  
  While there are also similarities between the implementations of these two options, they are completely independent. These commands can be used separately or together without issues. I used the same section that -frecord-gcc-switches uses on purpose. I could not use the name -frecord-gcc-command-line for this option; because of a {f*} in the specs, which forwards all options starting with -f to cc1/cc1plus as is. This is not we want for this option. We would like to append it a filename as well to pass the argv of the driver to child processes.
  
  This functionality operates as the following: It saves gcc's argv into a temporary file, and passes --record-gcc-command-line <tempfilename> to cc1 or cc1plus. The functionality of the backend is implemented via a hook. This patch includes an example implementation of the hook for elf targets: elf_record_gcc_command_line function. This function reads the given file and writes gcc's version and the command line into a mergeable string section, .GCC.command.line.
  
  

• GCC Developers Discuss New Option For Recording Compiler Flags / Details In Binaries

  GCC developers recently have been discussing a new proposal over an option for preserving the command-line flags/options used when building a binary as well as the associated compiler version. The proposal sent out last week was over a --record-gcc-command-line option to save the compiler options into the produced object file. The proposal is in the name of helping debugging, reproducing bugs, and repeating build process. There is already a -frecord-gcc-switches option that is somewhat similar in behavior but with key differences as explained in the proposal.

• RcppEigen 0.3.3.7.0

  A new minor release 0.3.3.7.0 of RcppEigen arrived on CRAN today (and just went to Debian too) bringing support for Eigen 3.3.7 to R. This release comes almost a year after the previous minor release 0.3.3.5.0. Besides the upgrade to the new upstream version, it brings a few accumulated polishes to the some helper and setup functions, and switches to the very nice tinytest package for unit tests; see below for the full list. As before, we carry a few required changes to Eigen in a diff.

• “Higher Performance Python” at PyDataCambridge 2019

  I’ve had the pleasure of speaking at the first PyDataCambridge conference (2019), this is the second PyData conference in the UK after PyDataLondon (which colleagues and I co-founded 6 years back). I’m super proud to see PyData spread to 6 regional meetups and now 2 UK conferences.

today's howtos

• Find Text in Files on Linux using grep

• How to Configure Dropbox on CentOS 8 Headless Server

• How to Properly Shut down or Reboot a Debian 10 System

• W Command in Linux

• FISH – The helpful shell

• How to Reset Ubuntu to Factory State

• Linux Check User Password Expiration Date and Time

• How to easily install Flatpak apps on Elementary OS with Sideload

• How To Cherry Pick Git Commits