inxi 3.0 is now ready for prime time. No substantial issues have been found over
the past week. All outstanding issues and bugs have been corrected. The man page
and help page have been edited fairly heavily to improve usability and readablity.
All work and development and support for inxi 2.3.56 is ended. No issues for
2.3.56 will be accepted since there is no way to support that version, it
being in a different set of languages (Gawk/Bash) than inxi 2.9/3.0 (Perl 5).
So the sooner you move your distro package pool to new inxi, the sooner your
users can get support for any issues with current inxi.
Beta and 2.9 prerelease testing is completed, and has resulted in a much
better inxi than I could have hoped for.
There are so many new features and enhancements in the new inxi that it's hard
to list them all. See previous commits for a more in depth record.
1. New options: --slots (PCI Slots); --usb
2. Exports to json/xml with --output options
3. Every line has been enhanced, with tighter output control, better key / value
pairings, more accurate values.
4. Line wrapping is now fully dynamic, which means inxi works down to 80 columns
and should basically never wrap (except for very long repo lines, but that's not
really fixable).
5. More controls, more user configuration options (see man page).
6. So many small new features that it's hard to list them all. Shows SSH in -I
if SSH. Shows sudo/su/login in -I if relevant and detectable. Shows disk partioning
scheme in some cases (more coming). Removes color codes if piped or redirected to
file.
7. All sizes are now shown in standardized KiB/MiB/GiB/TiB/PiB format, to avoid
ambiguity about whether M or MB or MiB is meant. All internal size math is done
using KiB, which further avoids confusion and error. Note that many disk makers
like using MB or GB instead of MiB or GiB because it makes their disks seem
'bigger'.
8. Sensors -s now supports IPMI sensors, in tandem with lm-sensors.
Anyway, the changelog will show better all the new features etc, I can't remember
them all.
All current issues and glitches have been fixed, any remaining are simply new issues,
just as they would be in old inxi.
Note that in the second and third weeks of beta testing a significant number of bugs
that are in inxi 2.3.56 were fixed. 2.3.56 has been moth-balled into the inxi-legacy
branch as binxi, to avoid mixing it up with inxi. The development branch is now
permanently inxi-perl, aka, pinxi, since that worked so well for beta and pre-3.0
2.9 testing and development.
This ends the pinxi/inxi development stage. All future development will proceed
using the inxi-perl branch, and will be the same in terms of new features as pre
inxi 2.9 was, they will be added, enhanced, as seems appropriate.
Remember, inxi is a rolling release program, like Arch Linux, Gentoo, Debian
Testing/Sid, and has no frozen release points, so this is simply the beginning of the
3.0 line of Perl inxi.
Thanks to everyone who contributed time, energy, effort, ideas, testing, debugging,
patience - inxi would not work without you.
like --sleep and -t.
Edits to layout and language, removed some legacy options and language from man and
inxi.
Added partition table detections, rough initial stage. Only works on systems with
udev present currently, will be expanded as we find fast tools. Since the systemd
method is literally up to 25x slower than the udev method, it's not being considered
except maybe as a last, last resort, and probably will never be used.
Many small bugs fixed.
Enhancements:
1. in some cases, will detect partition table type (GTP,MBR) either
with or without root. Uses fast method, which is not available on all systems.
2. Added IPMI sensors tools ipmitool and ipmi-sensors to -s for systems that
use IPMI.
3. Finished man page edits and corrections. Thanks Pete.
4. Added doubled word filter for main -NGA lines, only for Card items.
5. Gave more granular uptime output: like: uptime: 23d 5h 34m
Bugs fixed:
1. RAID - both mdraid and zfs bugs corrected. Issue #135
2. EPYC cpu wrong die count corrected, and also added support for the EPYC type.
Issue #135
3. Possible ARM data glitch that made reader fail on a non-existent file.
Man:
Ongoing updates and edits and corrections and cleanup. Slowly but surely.
1. Bug: cause unknown, but crashes on null file sent to reader, but all those files
have been checked. For now added return if file null.
2. Features: with -Ixxx: show Shell: csh (sudo|su|login) status; show
running in: xfce-terminal (SSH)
ssh session active on remote system.
Various help and man cleanups and additions.
Bugs fixed:
1. stray undefined value corrected
2. fixed BSD no pkg server case, now shows correctly that no pkg server files
were found, not that the OS is not supported.
Features:
1. -t c and m headers cleaned up and simplified
2. man page edits.
3. more standarization of key names for fields, some spelling
and upper/lower case corrections.
Bugs fixed:
1. json/xml outputter had a bug in it that made it validate path wrong.
2. -G -xx option: compositor: for gnome-shell had a bug that would make it show
as running when it wasn't, other strings were tripping the match on systems with
gnome-shell installed but not running,
3. Finally fixed bug with manjaro full version distro string, and tweaked output
to show Manjaro Linux instead of given string.
Features added:
1. --no-man - this lets users turn off man installs. Only really useful for -U
from master, since default is off for pinxi and dev 3 branch.
Man page/help updated to add this option.
Man features new section, configuration options, which lists the main config options
users would be likely to use.
This should help users who will never check the actual documentation web page
realize that there are many internal configuration options available.
Many edits in man, more to come I suspect.
Bug fixes in inxi:
1. removed a few stray debuggers that were creating debugging output
2. fixed a usb driver bug that would create warning messages from Perl (thanks Manjaro
for finding that one)
New Option:
1. Added: --indent-min - goes with the user configuration option: INDENT_MIN
and allows users to experiment with different indent settings. This is what trips the
auto line wrap of line starters. This may be revisited, and this switch will make it
easier for users to see for themselves which they prefer, what trip point, etc.
This will help determine pre 3.0.0 what the default auto wrap trip point, if any,
will be.
Added more data to debugger tool, more lsblk, which is going to need a lot more data
to solve a new issue with dm/encrypt/lvm, initial $MANPAGE data, to see if anyone
actually ever uses that environmental variable.
Special thanks to Manjaro for being as far as I know the first to package Perl inxi.
To get rid of some non-intuitive options, I've changed some of the --alt values
to more obvious argument names; --dmidecode --no-ssl --no-host --host
This makes them easier to remember, hopefully.
Updated help, man pages to cover this change as well.
Added some more lsblk debugger output to try to start building enough information to
really figure out dm/encrypted/lvm and how those are actually handled internally in
the system in terms of partitions, filesystems, etc.
features.
So now inxi and pinxi will grab the inxi.1 or pinxi.1 man file and install it on
systems that do not have -U blocked. The -U block of course remains the same.
New features:
1. now does not require root or 'file' to get unmounted fs type. Also, for many
mounted partitions, rather than showing the meaningless fuseblock it will usually
get the filesystem right.
2. -U now works with optional --man option to download man page for pinxi
and -U 3 dev server updates. This gets around the fact I had to remove the gz files
from master to get the size small enough to make maintainers happy. Non branch
inxi master works as before, updates both from github or from dev server, depending
on your selection.
3. Thanks very much to the people who have been contributing in a positve way,
helping to make inxi better. The untold number of small and large new features,
small glitches, etc, that have been fixed this week are simply too many too list.
Many to most were inxi bugs or weaknesses, now corrected.
4. binxi branch has now been made fully operational, though I do not plan on doing
any work beyond the mothballing of that venerable program (gawk->bash inxi), it's
fully operational, it updates, it gets its man page, but all as binxi, so you can,
as with pinxi, run all of them separately. This officially terminates my support
for Gawk/Bash inxi, which can be found as binxi in the inxi-legacy branch.
5. pinxi has been promoted to permanent development branch, where bug fixes, new
features, etc, will be tested, along with man page updates etc. This will help
reduce the number of commits to master branch.
6. Audio / Network usb cards now show the true driver(s). There are often more
than one for audio, that's a nice enancement.
7. inxi outputs to json / xml, which will probably interest some developers
eventually, well it already did, that was going to wait, but someone wanted it.
8. Apt repo handler now supports DEB822 format, which is not an easy format to
parse.
==========================================================
MAINTAINERS:
Note the following: despite my strong dislike for tags, every commit that touches
either inxi or inxi.1 man page will be tagged if I think they would be something
relevant to distro packagers. While github insists on calling my tags releases,
I want to be crystal clear: inxi has one and only one 'release', the current master
branch version. The tagged commits that github calls releases are NOT releases,
they are just tagged commits. The version I release tomorrow will be the current
master, and all previous versions will be obsolete and will not be supported.
The .gz files have been removed from the master branch history, thus shrinking it
a lot. I have removed for this reason the master-plain branch, which mirrored
master and provided a gz free branch, but apparently this was simply ignored so
there's no reason to keep it going. If you insist on grabbing all the branches and
find more data in there, then please correct your practices, you are only getting
the data from the master branch.
inxi is rolling release software and has no releases, so the tags are supposed
to create some illusion that a tag actually means something. Since it doesn't,
I decided to take the path of least resistance and just add an auto tagging tool
to my commit scripts and use it when it seems appropriate, like on this commit.
All development work now will happen via the pinxi branch, so that makes the process
a lot cleaner, since I can now basically beta test all new commmits to master.
pinxi and binxi are both standalone versions of inxi, they have their own config
and data directories, config files, man pages, etc.
-----------------------------------------------------
New Perl inxi is already way ahead of Gawk/Bash inxi, more features, more accurate,
and most bugs being fixed now are because a lot of people are contributing eyes and
testing, and are finding stuff that was wrong, or simply missing, on old inxi as
well as on Perl inxi. Fixes to Perl inxi (>2.9) will not be rolled into to binxi
since the entire reason I spent over 4 months on this project was to never have to
touch Gawk/Bash inxi again.
Most imporant, however, is that the simple fact was, Gawk/Bash inxi has been
nearly impossible to work on despite my following rigorous practices in coding,
and I simply won't work with that type of stuff anymore. Perl 5.x is a true delight
in comparison, and makes adding new features, enhancing others, far easier, or
even possible, where it wasn't before.
On a technical level, I have tested Perl inxi heavily, and it will run on all
Perl 5.x versions back to 5.008, which is the cutoff point. This was not that
hard to do, which is why I picked Perl 5.x as the language. This means that
you can drop, just as with binxi, Perl inxi onto a 10 year old system, or
older, and it will run fine, albeit a touch slowly, but must faster than binxi.
-----------------------------------------------------
So far users are really liking the new one, it's usually faster in most cases,
the output is cleaner, there's more data, more options, and basically it's
gotten the thumbs up from all the testers, and there have been a LOT, who have
helped. I want to give a special thanks to the following distros for their
exceptional support and testing:
0. the people who hang out on irc.oftc.net #smxi. Very patient, will test things
with astounding patience, so thanks to them. Archerseven, iotaka and KittyKatt
have been been incredibly helpful when it comes to testing and debugging, and
finding corner cases that I would never have found.
1. AntiX: they were the first to beta test pinxi, and found massive numbers of
bugs, and stuck with the testing for a long time. They made testing possible for
the next wave of testers, my hats off to them, I've always liked them.
2. Manjaro also was very helpful, and found more issues and enhancements.
3. Ubuntu forums users found more, and helped enhance many faetures
4. Mint users have been very helpful, and were the impetus for some nifty
new features, ilke switching all color codes off when output is piped or sent
to file. They have reminded me of how valuable people's views can be who may not
share the same tech world view as you, but are still very talented and observant
individuals.
5. Slackware users provided some very thoughtful feedback, which was no surprise
but welcome nonetheless, thanks.
6. Same with Debian forums, again, some very useful and constructive ideas and
observations, and some very arcane and odd hardware that exposed even more corner
case bugs.
And several other distros were also helpful, each in their own way. Solus for
example now has their package manager added in repos.
1. added tool lsblk, recommends, for -p and -o, shows better partition data than
df does. First choice for -p and -o, -p fall back df, -o fallback file.
2. fixed a big bug with user configs, that would make the configs break every time
the color editor was used.
3. Some smaller bugs.
and a small bug for blank files there.
Second, made the --output error message more clear for bad file structure now lists
the 3 requirements: must be full path, must be writeable directory, and must have
a file in it.
Third, another subtle thing, after a lot of research, am trying the MiB GiB format
because it's technically more accurate and less ambiguous than GB, which is used
either to refer to 1000 bite blocks OR to 1024 blocks, depending on the platform etc.
So rather than hope people get it, trying that slightly more wordy format, and maybe
if people wonder what it is.
