Hello,
Welcome to the 50th issue of TMPDIR, a weekly newsletter 📰 covering Embedded Linux, IoT systems, and technology in general. Please pass this on to anyone else you think might be interested. Suggestions and feedback are welcome at ✉️ info@tmpdir.org.
Thanks for reading!
Khem and Cliff
Quote for the week
For all men, not just architects, are capable of appreciating quality; but there is a difference between laymen and architects in that the former cannot know what a building will be like unless he has seen it completed; while the architect knows perfectly well what it will be like ... from the instant he conceives it in his mind, and before he begins it." -- Vitruvius, 1st century B.C.
Linux
Yoe 2023.01 release 🚀
This is the first Yoe release of 2023, and we have switched to using
mickledone for all layers which will be the next Yocto release tentatively in
April 2023. This release contains more fixes for supporting 64-bit time_t on
32-bit architectures. Rust patching has been cleaned up so the patches are
applied consistently across different Rust compiler recipes. Additionally, the
Rust compiler is upgraded to 1.66.1. C++17 is the default standard for GCC 12
and the upcoming Clang 16, and there are several patch fixes for packages to get
them going with the C++17 standard so that when Yoe gets the Clang 16 upgrade,
these fixes will have already been applied. Binutils have been upgraded to 2.40
which is also a major toolchain component. Provisions to enable 64-bit time_t
at the distro level have been added to the core layer, and a variable
GLIBC_64BIT_TIME_FLAGS is introduced to control the flags.
IoT
SIOT ADR-4: Time storage/format considerations ⌚️
There are many ways to store time. Some have resulted in serious issues in the past and near future:
- two-digit year -> Y2K problem in the year 2000
- 32bit seconds since Unix Epoch -> Y2038 problem
We have finished our analysis of time storage and decided to stick with the standard protobuf time format for NATS messages and a single 64-bit ns since Unix epoch for time in the database. See the above ADR for a review of various ways time is stored and more discussion.
Other
Configuring TIO serial setup 📜
Khem shared his tio config, which illustrates an excellent way to configure all
the USB serial devices you might want to attach to without remembering long
names or looking in dmesg for the name of the device you just plugged in.
Demo of Neovim Kickstart
This video is a demonstration of Cliff's Neovim configuration and illustrates how you can get close to having all the Visual Studio language server functionality yet retain the speed and efficiency of Vim. The nvim-lua/kickstart plugin provides an easy way to get started with modern Neovim with Language Server integration and the latest Lua plugins. Using Lua for Neovim plugins seems to be working out well:
- many of the new plugins are being written in Lua now.
- it is fast.
- Lua is a capable language, so complex logic is now being implemented in plugins.
- Lua is increasingly used as the Neovim config file syntax.
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