08 Apr 2026
Planet Debian
Jonathan Dowland: nvim-µwiki

In January 2025, as a pre-requisite for something else, I published a minimal neovim plugin called nvim-µwiki. It's essentially just the features from vimwiki that I regularly use, which is a small fraction them. I forgot to blog about it. I recently dusted it off and cleaned it up. You can find it here, along with a longer list of its features and how to configure it: https://github.com/jmtd/nvim-microwiki
I had a couple of design goals. I didn't want to define a new filetype, so this is designed to work with the existing markdown one. I'm using neovim, so I wanted to leverage some of its features: this plugin is written in Lua, rather than vimscript. I use the parse trees provided by TreeSitter to navigate the structure of a document. I also decided to "plug into" the existing tag stack navigation, rather than define another dimension of navigation (along with buffers, etc.) to track: Following a wiki-link pushes onto the tag stack, just as if you followed a tag.
This was my first serious bit of Lua programming, as well as my first dive into neovim (or even vim) internals. Lua is quite reasonable. Most of the vim and neovim architecture is reasonable. The emerging conventions about structuring neovim plugins are mostly reasonable. TreeSitter is, well, interesting, but the devil is very much in the details. Somehow all together the experience for me was largely just frustrating, and I didn't really enjoy writing it.
08 Apr 2026 8:31pm GMT
06 Apr 2026
Planet Debian
Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in March 2026
Debian LTS/ELTS
This was my hundred-forty-first month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian.
During my allocated time I uploaded or worked on:
- [DLA 4500-1] gimp security update to fix four CVEs related to denial of service or execution of arbitrary code.
- [DLA 4503-1] evolution-data-server to fix one CVE related to a missing canonicalization of a file path.
- [DLA 4512-1] strongswan security update to fix one CVE related to a denial of service.
- [ELA-1656-1] gimp security update to fix four CVEs in Buster and Stretch related to denial of service or execution of arbitrary code.
- [ELA-1660-1] evolution-data-server security update to fix one CVE in Buster and Stretch related to a missing canonicalization of a file path.
- [ELA-1665-1] strongswan security update to fix one CVE in Buster related to a denial of service.
- [ELA-1666-1] libvpx security update to fix one CVE in Buster and Stretch related to a denial of service or potentially execution of arbitrary code.
I also worked on the check-advisories script and proposed a fix for cases where issues would be assigned to the coordinator instead of the person who forgot doing something. I also did some work for a kernel update and packages snapd and ldx on security-master and attended the monthly LTS/ELTS meeting. Last but not least I started to work on gst-plugins-bad1.0
Debian Printing
This month I uploaded a new upstream versions:
- … epson-inkjet-printer-escpr to unstable.
- … sane-airscan to unstable.
- … printer-driver-oki to unstable.
Several packages take care of group lpadmin in their maintainer scripts. With the upload of version 260.1-1 of systemd there is now a central package (systemd | systemd-standalone-sysusers | systemd-sysusers) that takes care of this. Other dependencies like adduser can now be dropped.
This work is generously funded by Freexian!
Debian Lomiri
This month I continued to work on unifying packaging on Debian and Ubuntu. This makes it easier to work on those packages independent of the used platform. I am also able to upload Debian packages to the corresponding Ubuntu PPA now. A small bug had to be fixed in the python script to allow the initial configuration in Launchpad.
This work is generously funded by Fre(i)e Software GmbH!
Debian Astro
This month I uploaded a new upstream version or a bugfix version of:
- … libplayerone to experimental. For a list of other packages please see below.
I also uploaded lots of indi-drivers (libplayerone, libsbig, libricohcamerasdk, indi-asi, indi-eqmod, indi-fishcamp, indi-inovaplx, indi-pentax, indi-playerone, indi-sbig, indi-mi, libahp-xc, indi-aagcloudwatcher, indi-aok, indi-apogee, libapogee3, indi-nightscape, libasi, libinovasdk, libmicam, indi-avalon, indi-beefocus, indi-bresserexos2, indi-dsi, indi-ffmv, indi-fli, indi-gige, info-gphoto, indi-gpsd, indi-gpsnmea, indi-limesdr, indi-maxdomeii, indi-mgen, indi-rtklib, indi-shelyak, indi-starbook, indi-starbookten, indi-talon6, indi-weewx-json, indi-webcam, indi-orion-ssg3, indi-armadillo-playtypus ) to experimental to make progress with the indi-transition. No problems with those drivers appeared and the next step would be the upload of indi version 2.x to unstable. I hope this will happen soon, as new drivers are already waiting in the pipeline. There have been also four packages, that migrated to the official indi package and are no longer needed as 3rdparty drivers (indi-astrolink4, indi-astromechfoc, indi-dreamfocuser, indi-spectracyber).
While working on these packages, I thought about testing them. Unfortunately I don't have enough hardware to really check out every package, so I can upload most of them only as is. In case anybody is interested in a better testing coverage and me being able to provide upstream patches, I would be very glad about hardware donations.
Debian IoT
This month I uploaded a new upstream version or a bugfix version of:
- … pywws to unstable.
Debian Mobcom
This month I uploaded a new upstream version or a bugfix version of:
- … osmo-trx to unstable.
misc
This month I uploaded a new upstream version or a bugfix version of:
- … cc-tool to unstable.
- … mailio to unstable.
- … gnupg-pkcs11-scd to unstable.
- … odoo to unstable.
I also sponsored the upload of Matomo. Thanks a lot to William for preparing the package.
06 Apr 2026 5:45pm GMT
05 Apr 2026
Planet Debian
Dima Kogan: Simple gpx export from ridewithgps
The Tour de Los Padres is coming! The race organizer post the route on ridewithgps. This works, but has convoluted interfaces for people not wanting to use their service. I just wrote a simple script to export their data into a plain .gpx file, including all the waypoints. Their exporter omits those.
The gpx-from-ridewithgps.py script:
#!/usr/bin/python3 import sys import json def quote_xml(s): return s.replace("&", "&").replace("<", "<").replace(">", ">") print("Reading stdin", file=sys.stderr) data = json.load(sys.stdin) print(r"""<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <gpx version="1.1" creator="gpx-from-ridewithgps.py" xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1">""") for item in data["extras"]: if item["type"] != "point_of_interest": continue poi = item["point_of_interest"] print(f' <wpt lat="{poi["lat"]}" lon="{poi["lng"]}">') print(f' <name>{quote_xml(poi["name"])}</name>') desc = poi.get("description","") if len(desc): print(f' <desc>{quote_xml(desc)}</desc>') print(f' </wpt>') print(" <trk><trkseg>") for pt in data.get("route", {}).get("track_points", []): print(f' <trkpt lat="{pt["y"]}" lon="{pt["x"]}"><ele>{pt["e"]}</ele></trkpt>') print(" </trkseg></trk>") print("</gpx>")
You invoke it by downloading the route and feeding it into the script:
curl -s https://ridewithgps.com/routes/54493422.json | ./ridewithgps-to-gpx.py > out.gpx
Note that the route number 54493422 is in the url above. I uploaded this to caltopo for analysis, and easy downloading by others:
05 Apr 2026 12:21am GMT