IBM has published the following new technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its DeveloperWorks and AlphaWorks websites. They cover a range of interesting (though not necessarily embedded) technical topics, primarily related to Linux and open source system and application development. Some require free registration.

• Don't overlook efficient C/C command line processing — Command-line processing is historically one of the most ignored areas in software development. Just about any relatively complicated software has dozens of available command-line options. The GNU tool gperf is a “perfect” hash function that, for a given set of user-provided strings, generates C/C code for a hash table, a hash function, and a lookup function. This article provides a reference for a good discussion on how to use gperf for effective command-line processing in your C/C code.
• Rich Client application performance — In this first installment, you'll learn how to measure the performance of Eclipse-based Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications, determine if slowdowns are caused by CPU or I/O bottlenecks, and keep the UI thread idle to maintain responsiveness. In part 2 takes a look at memory usage and how to chase down memory leaks.
• Expect plays a crucial role in network management — Expect is an indispensable tool for efficient system and network management, and it's also widely misunderstood. In this article, find out the benefits Expect provides in common use cases.
• Easing Configuration with Java — Configuration can be a maintenance mess and add to a developer's burden. This article introduces a framework with which developers can define their application's configuration in terms of high-level interface.
• Develop Web apps with Wicket and Geronimo — In this tutorial, learn how to set up your system to develop a simple Web application with Wicket, using Apache Geronimo as your application server and Apache Derby as the embedded database.
• Plans for the Rich Web Application Backplane — Both mashups and Ajax are now firmly entrenched in the Web landscape. Put them together and you have the makings for Rich Web applications. This article explains the Rich Web Application Backplane, currently a W3C Note, which is designed to bring standardization to the field, proving a set of common building blocks, or components, these applications tend to use.
• Large Linux cluster storage backend — Create a working Linux cluster from many separate pieces of hardware and software, including System x and IBM TotalStorage systems. Part 4 provides the second half of the instructions you need to set up the storage backend, including inuxinstalling General Parallel File System (GPFS) code on each node and configuring Qlogic adapters for storage nodes. Finally, this article takes you through the steps to create a GPFS cluster. Earlier installments in this series are here: Part 1: Introduction and hardware configuration; Part 2: Management server configuration and node; Part 3: Storage and shared file systems.
• Emacs editing, Part 5: Shape your Emacs view — This tutorial, the fifth in a series, shows you how to manage and manipulate the shape your Emacs session — examine how to partition the Emacs screen, create multiple X client windows for a single Emacs session, and display multiple buffers in each window, dividing the screen with horizontal and vertical divisions.
• Finally we get new elements in HTML 5 — Pure HTML enhancements grew hardly at all in the last eight years. It basicaly stopped in 1999 with HTML 4. Now the future looks bright. Recently, HTML has finaly came back to life. Eight years is a long time to wait for new features, especially in the fast-moving world of the Web. Take a look at how HTML 5 is restoring some of the excitement of the early days of the web with its new enhancements.

 
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