Plasma, NodeJS, pip, Grep update in Tumbleweed

Three openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots arrived this week and the snapshots provided a few major version upgrades and several minor updates with newer features.

The latest snapshot was 20200218. This snapshot updated a subpackage for btrfsprogs to version 5.4.1 and fixes the docbook5 builds. The Linux Kernel updated to 5.5.4 and had a few changes for KVM on arm64. The update of glibc 2.31 now supports a feature test macro [_ISOC2X_SOURCE](https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/mirrors/sourceware/glibc/-/commit/777d75fbc07b98115f4868c3290eb8a5d1f3a5b2) to enable features from the draft ISO C2X standard. Command line utility grep 3.4 fixed some performance bugs and adds a new –no-ignore-case option that causes grep to observe case distinctions, overriding any previous -i (–ignore-case) option. The DBus-activated daemon controlling mobile devices and connections, ModemManager fixed the handling of hexadecimal 0x00 bytes at the end of GSM encoded strings in version 1.12.6. There were several other packages updated in the snapshot. Among the packages to be updated were flatpak 1.6.2, GNOME’s web browser epiphany 3.34.4, email client mutt 1.13.4, strace 5.5, sudo 1.8.31 and whois 5.5.5. With less than a week to go until a rating is finalized, a rating of 92 was initially released for the snapshot, according to the snapshot reviewer.

Snapshot 20200214 updated both Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird to versions 73.0 and 68.5 respectively. The new major version of the browser addressed six Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) that included one bug fix that affected the memory. The new release includes new features that help users view and read website content more easily by enhancing the page zoom feature. The version also added NextDNS as an alternative option for DNS over HTTPS. The Thunderbird email client addressed seven CVEs and added support for client Identity IMAP/SMTP Service Extension and for OAuth 2.0 authentication for POP3 accounts. KDE users had multiple package updates from Plasma Framework 5.67.0; Kirigami removed the header top margin from private ScrollView and properly expanded the fillWidth items in mobile mode. The KTextEditor fixed the drag and copy function, and the framework’s package also fixed a crash in the variable expansion with the use of external tools. The package for the JavaScript runtime environment, nodejs12 updated to version 12.16.0 added a new core module for a WebAssebly System Interface as an experimental feature. The NodeJS version also added Hash.prototype.copy making it possible to clone an internal state of Hash object. Text editor nano 4.8 improved the handling of lock files on start-up. Two other major version updates in the snapshot were python-packaging 20.1 and python-pip 20.0.2;  the new pip version switches to a dedicated command-line interface tool for vendoring dependencies and the changelog points out that the wheel cache is not retro-compatible with previous versions and that pip will continue to take advantage of existing legacy cache entries until pip 21.0 is released. Version control tool mercurial 5.3 fixed some bugs and added a new Large File Storage experimental feature. The utilities package for controlling TCP / IP networking and traffic control in Linux, iproute2, updated to version 5.5.0, which added four patches and a new timestamp format. Other packages that updated in the snapshot were babl 0.1.74, ccache 3.7.7 and gegl 0.4.20. The snapshot is currently trending moderately stable at a rating of 80, according to the Tumbleweed snapshot reviewer.

A little more than half a dozen packages were updated in snapshot 20200213. The interactive Python accessibility explorer package accerciser 3.34.4 updated translations and documented a new python-xlib dependency. The update elfutils 0.178 package fixed variable references in specfile and added a RISC-V disassembler. Windows Server 2019 support was added with the update of vm-install 0.10.08. The snapshot recorded a moderately stable rating of 75, according to the Tumbleweed snapshot reviewer.

The previous week’s 20200211 snapshot recorded a rating of 71 and brought KDE’s plasma5-desktop 5.18.0, which will be the version in openSUSE Leap 15.2 when it’s released. The new Plasma 5.18 Long Term Support (LTS) is even more user-friendly and filled with more features. The new Emoji Selector is just two keystrokes away. Hold down the Meta key and press the period (.) and it will pop up. The version also provides a new Night Color feature to relax users eyesight. KDE Applications was also updated in the snapshot. The 19.12.2 version update provided a big release of KDevelop 5.5, which is the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that makes writing programs in C++, Python and PHP easier. . PHP gets PHP 7.4’s typed properties and support was added for array of type and class constant visibility. In Python, support was added for Python 3.8.