Hammer’s ‘undo’ now has the ability to index and automatically diff historical versions of files for you, thanks to a patch from Joel K. Pettersson.  (He’s got more ideas, too.

Mathtew Dillon has added an automatic building and testing environment for AMD64 support.  This one command will build an entire boot image, along with qemu to run it in, though some issues with compiling qemu remain.  (Related)

Hasso Tepper has updated the DRM code (from FreeBSD) with some caveats.

Please welcome our newest DragonFly developer with commit access: Stathis Kamperis

Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has a student working on a Linux port of Hammer.  This will lead to a breakout of Hammer from the DragonFly tree, too.

Peter Avalos has a large number of changes to libc in his tree.  He’d like to have other eyeballs looking at them, so please read over and comment.

• Dru Lavigne has an excellent presentation: “Now What?” for the Open Source Noob
• I’ve heard about this before, but: Eric Scott Raymond thinks the GPL can be replaced by the BSD license, safely.   The counter-argument on that page is totally weaksauce.  (via)
• The Q2 2009 issue of BSD Magazine is out, focusing on PC-BSD.  (via)
• Hey, a “sequel” to wmii: i3 – someone tell me if this works on DragonFly, please.  It’s in pkgsrc-wip…   (via)

If you’re a student, you have from now until the 3rd of April to apply for a Summer of Code slot.

There is, of course, DragonFly project ideas for Google’s Summer of Code.  There are also idea pages up for FreeBSD and NetBSD, both also participating this year.

Joerg Sonnenberger is making some structural changes to pkgsrc, the result of which is that you should not mix pkgsrc-wip and pkgsrc-2008Q4 packages.

The next branch, pkgsrc-2009Q1, won’t have that issue.  In fact, the preparatory two-week freeze for that branch starts today.

Here’s an article on chiptunes.  (What’s that?.)  The writing is very exacting, but the page has been liberally sprinkled with video examples of the source material.  Read the dry text while being serenaded.  Highlights: comparisons of Metallica to a 1988 C64 game, and compilation of crack screens.   (via I lost track of it, sorry)

Thanks to Archimedes Gaviola, I’ve changed out the slide presentations (that didn’t work) on the Presentations page.

I’ve also linked all 5 BSDTalk interviews of Matthew Dillon on that page – previously, only one was linked there.

Not only is Hasso Tepper doing regular bulk builds as he fixes up more pkgsrc packages for DragonFly, he’s also posting diffs that show progress. (Every line prefixed with a – is another working package.)

Dmitry Komissaroff has posted a port of wlan, ath_hal and if_ath from FreeBSD. It’s not finished because he lacks the hardware. If you’ve got the hardware, the inclination, or both, please assist.

If you’d like to mentor for DragonFly, as several people have expressed interest, sign yourself up at the Summer of Code site and request mentoring for DragonFly. If you sign up before the 23rd, when students can start applying, you’ll get added to the private mentors mailing list.

DragonFly BSD is a participating organization in Google’s Summer of Code 2009. (See the lists of participating organizations at the Google site.)

I have an announcement message with more details on the mailing lists; the next important date is the 23rd, when students can apply. If you’re a student, start putting your proposal together and talking with others. If you can mentor, sign yourself up on the Google site and request a mentoring spot.

Off the beaten path: Jason Brown is giving a talk called “Paranoid Machines”.

When: Sat, April 4, 7pm – 9pm
Where: 300 Nevins St, Brooklyn
Free. Organized by Machine Project, Los Angeles

Jason Brown’s talk will examine contemporary gnostic mythologies of technology and paranoia, focusing on Vannevar Bush as a self-embodied allegorical emblem of information perversity. Bush’s famed “memex” and the modern UFOs are both hypothetical machines—devices which use association and performativity to spin information out of noise. In modern techno-myths, this process is often represented as an alchemical self-destruction resulting in god-like power. Not coincidentally, all these issues are illustrated with disturbing density and prescience in the 1981 Disney film “Tron.”

This is just old-school enough to be interesting to some readers, and I like to think I find things you won’t see on Reddit or Slashdot. (via my second favorite magazine)

Alex Hornung has done some preliminary work with llvm/clang, and has successfully compiled a GENERIC DragonFly kernel, and completed a buildworld, using it. He also has some very nice notes available detailing the work. There’s potential for cross-BSD work with FreeBSD on this one, too.

If you’re using growisofs (or K3b) to burn your DVDs and having some trouble, here’s some tips that may get it working.