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The Drop Times: Latest Breakthroughs in the Drupal Starshot Initiative
Zato Blog: How to correctly integrate APIs in Python
Understanding how to effectively integrate various systems and APIs is crucial. Yet, without a dedicated integration platform, the result will be brittle point-to-point, spaghetti integrations, that never lead to good outcomes.
➤ Read this article about Zato, an open-source integration platform in Python, for an overview of what to avoid and how to do it correctly instead.
More blog posts➤Golems GABB: Scaling and Performance Optimization of Drupal
The future is not distant anymore, so what kind of "good Drupal performance and scalability" can we expect in 2024? Moreover, what implementations can be done via Drupal's features and options to impress an online audience?
Nowadays, in the era of digital content, a website should be ultramodern in both presentation and performance. Consumers prefer easy experiences. Hence, the ability of an organization to do this for them is a critical factor in service delivery. Regarding the user side of the services, sites should hold up with rapid traffic growth, constantly upgrade, and provide users with a wide range of features.
Moreover, such a growing level of cross-communication may not only meet those expectations but also go far beyond them to help organizations grow in the digital domain.
Freexian Collaborators: Monthly report about Debian Long Term Support, July 2024 (by Roberto C. Sánchez)
Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.
Debian LTS contributorsIn July, 13 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:
- Bastien Roucariès did 20.0h (out of 20.0h assigned).
- Chris Lamb did 18.0h (out of 18.0h assigned).
- Daniel Leidert did 5.0h (out of 4.0h assigned and 6.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 5.0h to the next month.
- Guilhem Moulin did 8.75h (out of 4.5h assigned and 15.5h from previous period), thus carrying over 11.25h to the next month.
- Lee Garrett did 51.5h (out of 10.5h assigned and 43.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 2.0h to the next month.
- Lucas Kanashiro did 5.0h (out of 5.0h assigned and 15.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 15.0h to the next month.
- Markus Koschany did 40.0h (out of 40.0h assigned).
- Ola Lundqvist did 4.0h (out of 10.0h assigned and 14.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 20.0h to the next month.
- Roberto C. Sánchez did 5.0h (out of 5.25h assigned and 6.75h from previous period), thus carrying over 7.0h to the next month.
- Santiago Ruano Rincón did 6.0h (out of 16.0h assigned), thus carrying over 10.0h to the next month.
- Sean Whitton did 2.25h (out of 6.0h assigned), thus carrying over 3.75h to the next month.
- Sylvain Beucler did 39.5h (out of 2.5h assigned and 51.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 14.0h to the next month.
- Thorsten Alteholz did 11.0h (out of 11.0h assigned).
In July, we have released 1 DLA.
August will be the month that Debian 11 makes the transition to LTS. Our contributors have already been hard at work with preparatorty tasks and also with making contributions to packages in Debian 11 in close collaboration with the Debian security team and package maintainers. As a result, users and sponsors should not observe any especially notable differences as the transition occurs.
While only one DLA was released in July (as a result of the transitional state of Debian 11 “bullseye”), there were some notable highlights. LTS contributor Guilhem Moulin prepared an update of libvirt for Debian 11 (in collaboration with the Old-Stable Release Managers and the Debian Security Team) to fix a number of outstanding CVEs which did not rise to the level of a DSA by the Debian Security Team. The update prepared by Guilhem will be included in Debian 11 as part of the final point release at the end of August, one of the final transition steps by the Release Managers as Debian 11 moves entirely to the LTS Team’s responsibility. Notable work was also undertaken by contributors Lee Garrett (fixes on the ansible test suite and a bullseye update), Lucas Kanashiro (Rust toolchain, utilized by the clamav, firefox-esr, and thunderbird packages), and Sylvain Beucler (fixes on the ruby2.5/2.7 test suites and CI infrastructure), which will help improve the quality of updates produced during the next LTS cycle.
June was the final month of LTS for Debian 10 (as announced on the debian-lts-announce mailing list). No additional Debian 10 security updates will be made available on security.debian.org.
However, Freexian and its team of paid Debian contributors will continue to maintain Debian 10 going forward for customers of the Extended LTS offer. Subscribe right away if you sill have Debian 10 systems which must be kept secure (and which cannot yet be upgraded).
Thanks to our sponsorsSponsors that joined recently are in bold.
- Platinum sponsors:
- TOSHIBA (for 106 months)
- Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 74 months)
- VyOS Inc (for 38 months)
- Gold sponsors:
- Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 116 months)
- Linode (for 110 months)
- Babiel GmbH (for 100 months)
- Plat’Home (for 99 months)
- CINECA (for 74 months)
- University of Oxford (for 56 months)
- Deveryware (for 43 months)
- EDF SA (for 28 months)
- Dataport AöR (for 3 months)
- Silver sponsors:
- Domeneshop AS (for 121 months)
- Nantes Métropole (for 115 months)
- Univention GmbH (for 107 months)
- Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 107 months)
- Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 101 months)
- Exonet B.V. (for 91 months)
- Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 85 months)
- Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (for 69 months)
- Cloudways by DigitalOcean (for 58 months)
- Dinahosting SL (for 56 months)
- Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 50 months)
- Platform.sh SAS (for 50 months)
- Moxa Inc. (for 44 months)
- sipgate GmbH (for 42 months)
- OVH US LLC (for 40 months)
- Tilburg University (for 40 months)
- GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH (for 31 months)
- Soliton Systems K.K. (for 28 months)
- THINline s.r.o. (for 4 months)
- Bronze sponsors:
- Evolix (for 121 months)
- Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 121 months)
- Intevation GmbH (for 118 months)
- Linuxhotel GmbH (for 118 months)
- Daevel SARL (for 117 months)
- Bitfolk LTD (for 116 months)
- Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 116 months)
- Greenbone AG (for 115 months)
- NUMLOG (for 115 months)
- WinGo AG (for 114 months)
- Entr’ouvert (for 105 months)
- Adfinis AG (for 103 months)
- Tesorion (for 98 months)
- GNI MEDIA (for 97 months)
- Laboratoire LEGI - UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 97 months)
- Bearstech (for 89 months)
- LiHAS (for 89 months)
- Catalyst IT Ltd (for 84 months)
- Supagro (for 79 months)
- Demarcq SAS (for 78 months)
- Université Grenoble Alpes (for 64 months)
- TouchWeb SAS (for 56 months)
- SPiN AG (for 53 months)
- CoreFiling (for 49 months)
- Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod (for 44 months)
- Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble (for 40 months)
- Tem Innovations GmbH (for 35 months)
- WordFinder.pro (for 34 months)
- CNRS DT INSU Résif (for 33 months)
- Alter Way (for 26 months)
- Institut Camille Jordan (for 16 months)
- SOBIS Software GmbH
Freexian Collaborators: Debian Contributions: autopkgtest/incus builds, live-patching, Salsa CI, Python 3.13 (by Stefano Rivera)
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.
autopkgtest/Incus build streamlining, by Colin WatsonColin contributed a change to allow maintaining Incus container and VM images in parallel. Both of these are useful (containers are faster, but some tests need full machine isolation), and the build tools previously didn’t handle that very well.
This isn’t yet in unstable, but once it is, keeping both flavours of unstable images up to date will be a simple matter of running this regularly:
RELEASE=sid autopkgtest-build-incus images:debian/trixie RELEASE=sid autopkgtest-build-incus --vm images:debian/trixie Linux live-patching, by Santiago Ruano RincónIn collaboration with Emmanuel Arias, Santiago continued the work on the support for applying security fixes to the Linux kernel in Debian, without the need to reboot the machine. As mentioned in the previous month report, kpatch 0.9.9-1 (and 0.9.9-2 afterwards) was uploaded to unstable in July, closing the Intent to Salvage (ITS) bug. With this upload, the remaining RC bugs were solved, and kpatch was able to transition to Debian testing recently. Kpatch is expected to be an important component in the live-patching support, since it makes it easy to build a patch as a kernel module. Emmanuel and Santiago continued to work on the design for Linux live-patching and presented the current status in the DebConf24 presentation.
Salsa CI, by Santiago Ruano RincónTo be able to add RISC-V support and to avoid using tools not packaged in Debian (See #331), the Salsa CI pipeline first needed to move away from kaniko to build the images used by the pipeline. Santiago created a merge request to use buildah instead, and it was merged last month. Santiago also prepared a couple of more MRs related to how the images are built: initial RISC-V support, that should be merged after improving how built images are tested. The switch to buildah introduced a regression in the work-in-progress MR that adds new build image so the build job can run sbuild. Santiago hopes to address this regression and continue with the sbuild-related MRs in August.
Additionally, Santiago also contributed to the install docker-cli instead of docker.io in the piuparts image MR, and reviewed others such as reprotest: Add –append-build-command option, fix failure at manual pipeline run when leaving RELEASE variable empty and Fix image not found error on image building stage.
Python 3.13 Betas, by Stefano RiveraAs Python 3.13 is approaching the first release, Stefano has been uploading the beta releases to Debian unstable. Most of these have uncovered small bugs that needed to be investigated and fixed.
Stefano also took the time to review the current patch set against cPython in Debian.
Python 3.13 isn’t marked as a supported Python release in Debian’s Python tooling, yet, so nothing has been built against it, yet. Now that the Python 3.12 transition has completed, the next task will be to start trying to build Debian’s Python module packages against Python 3.13, to estimate the work required to transition to 3.13 in unstable.
Miscellaneous contributions- Carles Pina updated the packages python-asyncclick, python-pyaarlo and prepared updates for python-ring-doorbell and simplemonitor.
- Carles Pina updated (reviewing or translating) Catalan translations for adduser, apt-listchanges, debconf and shadow.
- Colin merged OpenSSH 9.8, and prepared a corresponding release note for DSA support now being disabled. This version included some substantial changes to split the server into a listener binary and a per-session binary, and those required some corresponding changes in the GSS-API key exchange patch. Sorting out the details of this and getting it to work again took some time.
- Colin upgraded 11 Python packages to new upstream versions, and modernized the build process and/or added non-superficial autopkgtests to several more.
- Raphaël Hertzog tweaked tracker.debian.org’s debci task to work around changes in the JSON output. He also improved tracker.debian.org’s ability to detect bounces due to spam to avoid unsubscribing emails that are not broken, but that are better than Debian at rejecting spam.
- Helmut Grohne monitored the /usr-move transition with few incidents. A notable one is that some systems have ended up with aliasing links that don’t match the ones installed by base-files which could lead to an unpack error from dpkg. This is now prevented by having base-files.preinst error out.
- Helmut investigated toolchain bootstrap failures with gcc-14 in rebootstrap but would only discover the cause in August.
- Helmut sent a MR for the cross-exe-wrapper requested by Simon McVittie for gobject-introspection. It is a way of conditionally requesting qemu-user when emulation is required for execution during cross compilation.
- Helmut sent three patches for cross build failures.
- Thorsten Alteholz uploaded packages lprint and magicfilter to fix RC-bugs that appeared due to the introduction of gcc-14.
- Santiago continued to work on activities related to the DebConf24 Content Team, including reviewing the schedule and handling updates on it.
- Santiago worked on preparations for the DebConf25, to be held in Brest, France, next year. A video of the BoF presented during DebConf24 can be found here.
- Stefano worked on preparations for DebConf24, and helped to run the event.
The Last Month in GSoC
I’ve realized that it’s been nearly a month since the last update about my GSoC project, so it’s time to publish a new one.
I’ve been upstreaming the Python bindings to their corresponding repositories and addressing the comments. Many thanks to Nico, Christophe, Volker, Ben and Carl (my mentor) for their comments! The CMake part has improved a lot and it’s almost ready to be merged. CI support should be ready for FreeBSD and Linux. We can add support for Windows if people are interested.
I’ll probably write a tutorial on how to add Python bindings to a library next week.
Ravi Dwivedi: How My Schengen Visa Was Refused by Austria
Vienna - the capital of Austria - is one of the most visited cities in the world, popular for its rich history, gardens, and cafes, along with well-known artists like Beethoven, Mozart, Gödel, and Freud. It has also been consistently ranked as the most livable city in the world.
For these reasons, I was elated when my friend Snehal invited me last year to visit Vienna for a few days. We included Christmas and New Year’s Eve in my itinerary due to the city’s popular Christmas markets and lively events. The festive season also ensured that Snehal had some days off for sightseeing.
Indians require a visa to visit Austria. Since the travel dates were near, I rushed to book an appointment online with VFS Global in Delhi, and quickly arranged the required documents. However, at VFS, I found out that I had applied in the wrong appointment category (tourist), which depends on the purpose of the visit, and that my travel dates do not allow enough time for visa authorities to make a decision. Apparently, even if you plan to stay only for a part of the trip with the host, you need to apply under the category “Visiting Friends and Family”.
Thus, I had to book another appointment under this category, and took the opportunity to shift my travel dates to allow at least 15 business days for the visa application to be processed, removing Christmas and New Year’s Eve from my itinerary.
The process went smoothly, and my visa application was submitted by VFS. For reference, here’s a list of documents I submitted -
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VFS appointment letter
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Duly-filled visa application form
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Original passport
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Copy of passport
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1 photograph
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My 6 months bank account statement
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Cover letter
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Consent form (that visa processing will take up to 15 business days)
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Snehal’s job contract
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My work contract
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Rent contract of Snehal
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Residence permit of Snehal
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A copy of Snehal’s passport
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Invitation letter from Snehal
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Return flight ticket reservations
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Travel insurance for the intended travel dates
The following charges were collected from me.
Service Description Amount (Indian Rupees) Cash Handling Charge - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)0
VFS Fee - India - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)1,820
VISA Fee - India - SAC Code:7,280
Convenience fee - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)182
Courier Service - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)728
Courier Assurance - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)182
Total10,192
I later learned that the courier charges (728 INR) and the courier assurance charges (182 INR) mentioned above were optional. However, VFS didn’t ask whether I wanted to include them. If you apply for a visa through VFS, remember to request them to remove courier assurance charges from your bill.
My visa application was submitted on the 21st of December 2023. A few days later, on the 29th of December 2023, I received an email from the Austrian embassy asking me to submit an additional document -
Subject: AUSTRIAN VISA APPLICATION - AMENDMENT REQUEST: Ravi Dwivedi VIS 4331
Dear Applicant,
On 22.12.2023 your application for Visa C was registered at the Embassy. You are requested to kindly send the scanned copies of the following documents via email to the Embassy or submit the documents at the nearest VFS centre, for further processing of your application:
- Kindly submit Electronic letter of guarantee “EVE- Elektronische Verpflichtungserklärung” obtained from the “Fremdenpolizeibehörde” of the sponsor’s district in Austria. Once your host company/inviting company has obtained the EVE, please share the reference number (starting from DEL_____) received from the authorities, with the Embassy.
Kindly Note: It is in your own interest to fulfil the requirements as indicated above and submit the missing documents within 14 days of the receipt of this email. Otherwise a decision will be taken based on the documentation available. “Sie werden in Ihrem Interesse ersucht, die gekennzeichneten Mängel so schnell wie möglich zu beheben bzw. fehlende Unterlagen umgehend nachzureichen, um die weitere Bearbeitung des Antrages zu ermöglichen. Sollten Sie innerhalb 14 Tagen die gekennzeichneten Mängel nicht beheben bzw. die fehlenden Unterlagen nicht nachreichen, wird über den vorliegenden Antrag ohne diese Unterlagen bzw. Mängelbehebung entschieden.” Austrian Embassy New Delhi
R.J/ Consular Section +91 11 2419 2700 EP-13, Chandragupta Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110 021, India bmeia.gv.at/botschaft/new-delhi facebook.at/AustrianEmbassyNewDelhihttp://www.facebook.at/AustrianEmbassyNewDelhi | twitter.com/MFA_Austriahttp://www.twitter.com/MFA_Austria
[refocus1][Signatur_V+30]https://www.bmeia.gv.at/en/european-foreign-policy/foreign-trade/refocus-austria/[Logo_AT_IN_22px]
I misunderstood the required document to be a scanned copy of the letter of guarantee form signed by Snehal, and responded by attaching it.
Upon researching, Snehal determined that the document is an electronic letter of guarantee, and is supposed to be obtained at a local police station in Vienna. He visited a police station the next day and had a hard time conversing due to the language barrier (German is the common language in Austria, whereas Snehal speaks English). That day was a weekend, so he took an appointment for Monday, but in the meantime the embassy had finished processing my visa.
My visa was denied, and the refusal letter stated:
The Austrian embassy in Delhi examined your application; the visa has been refused.
The decision is based on the following reason(s):
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The information submitted regarding the justification for the purpose and conditions of the intended stay was not reliable.
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There are reasonable doubts as to your intention to leave the territory of the Member States before the expiry of the visa.
Other remarks:
You have been given an amendment request, which you have failed to fulfil, or have only fulfilled inadequately, within the deadline set.
You are a first-time traveller. The social and economic roots with the home country are not evident. The return from Schengen territory does therefore not seem to be certain.
Neither my travel agent nor the VFS application center mentioned this document, called the Elektronische Verpflichtungserklärung (EVE). Additionally, the required documents list from the VFS website leads to a dead link. Snehal also told me that his wife’s visa was approved earlier without this document. I suggest that the Austrian visa authorities fix that URL and write instructions on how hosts can obtain that document.
Credits to Snehal and Contrapunctus for editing, Badri for proofreading.
Tidy First? Recommendation to read Kent Beck's book
Most of the time programmers do not write new code. Instead, they read, try to understand, extend, and fix bugs in existing code. While some parts of KDE are pretty new and follow modern standards, many parts are more then two decades old -- following obsolete coding principles, using outdated ways of solving problems, and having additions from several persons with different styles. Often when we read code, we immediately spot things we could improve.
Kent Beck's approach is applying a series of small tidyings that leads to structural change and an overall better software design. In his new book Tidy First? he describes his idea in three parts: Tidyings, how to manage tidyings, and software design theory.
In the first part the author introduces generic tidyings like dead code removal, moving declaration and initialization together, introducing new interfaces, or explicit parameters. Most proposals are not new, but it is a good reminder to follow them and fix these things wherever you come across them in code you are working with. After reading the first part, I felt motivated to create some tidying commits right away. For KDE more specific tidying could be added: Fix deprecation warnings from Qt and KF, replace C-style code by C++, use modern C++ (range-base for loop, initialization lists), fix compiler warnings.
The second part gives hints on how to organize and commit tidyings. Separate tidyings from new features or behavioral changes. Find a balance between asking for review of your tidyings too often or with too extensive reviews.
In the third part Kent Beck offers some basic ideas from software design, especially future options and code coupling.
The book is worth reading for both commercial and open-source developers. Both are facing similar issues. Open-source developers are not worrying about costs, but precious spare time dedicated to coding for their pet project. Every projects has bit rot and profits from regular tidyings by their developers.
People interested in software design will recognize the ideas from classic books like Structured Design or Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code. Nevertheless, Tidy First? makes the knowledge easily accessible. Most chapters are only one to three pages long and the book stays below a hundred pages.
This is the first book of a planned series of small books. Kent Beck develops his ideas in his blog (partially pay-walled) and discusses his views with his readers. Some blog post make it into Kevin's weekly web reviews.
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