Planet Debian

• Dirk Eddelbuettel: qlcal 0.1.4 on CRAN: Fresh Upstream Updates

  The twenty-second release of the qlcal package arrivied at CRAN yesterday, and has been built for r2u as well as on r-universe.

  qlcal delivers the calendaring parts of QuantLib. It is provided (for the R package) as a set of included files, so the package is self-contained and does

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• Steinar H. Gunderson: Decompilation patterns, part 11: Irregular switch

  Here's one that m2c usually gets right itself, but sometimes cannot:

      if (var_v1_7 != 1) {
          if (var_v1_7 < 2) { 
              if (var_v1_7 != 0) {
                  spF0 = 40; 
              } else {
                  vram_x = cmt46->vram_x;
                  vram_y = cmt46->vram_y;
                  spF0 = 40;
              }
          } else if (var_v1_7 != 2) {
              if (var_v1_7 != 3) {
  

  Repeated comparisons against the same variable, especially in a nested form that could be binary search, should remind you of one thing: A switch. Usually, the compiler

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• Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in September 2026

  Welcome to the September 2026 report from the Reproducible Builds project!

  In our reports, we try to outline the most important things that we have been up to over the past month. As a quick recap about what problem our project intends to solve, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, almost all software is distributed to end users as pre-compiled binaries. The motivation behind the reproducible builds effort is

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• Russ Allbery: Review: Ties That Bond in Gretna Green

  Review: Ties That Bond in Gretna Green, by Linzi Day

  Series:	Midlife Recorder #3
  Publisher:	Linzi Day
  Copyright:	February 2023
  ISBN:	9798376517017
  Format:	Kindle
  Pages:	616

  Ties That Bond in Gretna Green is a self-published fantasy novel and the third book in the Midlife Recorder

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• Freexian Collaborators: Debian Contributions: New experimental backend for autopkgtest using pconr, DebConf site visit and more! (by Anupa Ann Joseph)

  Debian Contributions: 2026-09

  Contributing to Debian is part of Freexian’s mission. This article covers the latest achievements of Freexian and their collaborators. All of this is made possible by organizations subscribing to our Long Term Support contracts and consulting services.

  DebConf

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• Dirk Eddelbuettel: RQuantLib 0.4.29 on CRAN: New QuantLib, Plus Small Fixes

  A new release 0.4.29 of RQuantLib arrived on CRAN this evening, had already been built for r2u as well as on r-universe and has just been uploaded to Debian.

  QuantLib is a rather comprehensice free/open-source library for quantitative finance. ...

• Matthew Garrett: Linux Lockdown and Hibernation (again)

  (This is an updated version of an older post - the introduction remains the same, the technical details are different)

  Linux draws a distinction between code running in kernel (kernel space) and applications running in userland (user space). This is enforced at the hardware level - in x86-speak¹, kernel space code runs in ring 0 and user space code runs in ring 3...

• Steinar H. Gunderson: Decompilation patterns, part 10: return var_v0

  The v0 register on MIPS is special in that it is the return register (like rax is on x86-64), so when you see code like this:

  if (x == 3) {
      var_v0 = 1;
  } else if (y == 4) {
     ...
      var_v0 = 3;
  }
  var_v0 = 5;
  return var_v0;
  

  then you have to consider the possibility that the intended match is:

  if (x == 3) {
      return 1;
  } else if (y == 4) {
     ...
      return 3;
  } else {
      return 5;
  }
  

  Whether you put the last return in an else block or not is irrelevant for the match, of course, it's purely a matter of taste.

• Maytham Alsudany: Menus without JavaScript

  This is more of a note to myself since I keep forgetting and "rediscovering" this technique every time I need it, but if it helps you, great!

  The JavaScript way is to toggle displaying the menu based on a button click. For instance, here's an example in Svelte:

  [This interactive/preview is only available on the website.]

  <script lang="ts">
  	let showMenu = $state(false);
  </script>
  
  <button onclick={() => (showMenu = !showMenu)}>
  	{#if showMenu}
  		Hide menu
  	{:else}
  		Show menu
  	{/if}
  </button>
  <nav

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• Steinar H. Gunderson: Decompilation patterns part 9, sign extension

  Today, for something completely different:

  s.x = (s16) ((s32) (temp_v0 << 0x10) >> 0x11);
  

  MIPS has 16-bit loads and stores, but not 16-bit (signed) arithmetic, so if it wants to do that, it needs to sign-extend to 32-bit first. And it does that by first shifting up by 16 so that the 16-bit sign bit is at the 32-bit sign bit, and then it can do an arithmetic shift afterwards. So what you want is:

  s16 temp_v0;
  
  s.x = temp_v0 >> 1;
  

  Sometimes, it can be pretty stubborn, and you'll need to go through memory or similar before GCC

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