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Epic Games and Google have agreed to settle their long-running antitrust lawsuit. The settlement converts Judge James Donato's United States-only injunction into a global agreement extending through June 2032. Google will reduce its standard app store fees to either 20% or 9% depending on the transaction type. The company will also create a program in the next major Android release allowing alternative app stores to register and become what Google calls first-class citizens. Users will be able to install these registered app stores from a website with a single click using neutral language. The settlement addresses Epic's concerns about friction and scare screens that discouraged sideloading. Google will charge a 5% fee for transactions using Google Play Billing, separate from its service fee. Alternative payment options must be shown alongside Google Play Billing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux security entered new territory in 2025. Espionage groups that once focused on Windows began treating Linux as equal ground. The Russia-aligned Curly COMrades, tracked by Bitdefender and CERT Georgia, led that move with a string of well-coordinated campaigns.

Misc news about the gedit text editor, mid-September edition! (Some sections are a bit technical).

Next version will be released when Ready

While the release of GNOME 49.0 was approaching (it's this week!), I came to the conclusion that it's best for gedit to wait more, and to follow the Debian way of releasing software: when it's Ready. "Ready" with an uppercase letter 'R'!

So the question is: what is not ready? Two main things:

• The rework of the file loading and saving: it is something that takes time, and I prefer to be sure that it'll be a solid solution.
• The question about the Python support for implementing plugins. Time will tell what is the answer.

Rework of the file loading and saving (next steps)

Work continues to refactor that part of the code, both in libgedit-gtksourceview and gedit.

I won't go into too much technical details this time. But what the previous developer (Ignacio Casal Quinteiro, aka nacho) wrote (in 2011) in a comment at the top of a class is "welcome to a really big headache."

And naturally, I want to improve the situation. For a long time this class was used as a black box, using only its interface. Time has come to change things! It takes time, but I already see the end of the tunnel and I have good hopes that the code will be better structured. I intend to write about it more once finished.

But I can reveal that there is already a visible improvement: loading a big file (e.g. 200 MB) is now super fast! Previously, it could take one minute to load such file, with a progress bar shown and a Cancel button. Now there is not enough time to even click on (or to see) the Cancel button! (I'm talking about local files, for remote files with a slow network connection, the progress bar is still useful).

To be continued...

If you appreciate the work that I do, you can send a thank-you donation. Your support is much appreciated! For years to come, it will be useful for the project.

Intro:

Hi everyone, it’s the end of GSoc! I had a great experience throughout this whole process. I’ve learned so much. This is essentially the ‘final report’ for GSoC, but not my final report for this project in general by a long shot. I still have so much more I want to do, but here is what I’ve done so far.

Project:

JSON, YAML, and/or XML emitting and parsing integration into Vala’s compiler.

Mentor:

I would like to thank Lorenz Wildberg for being my mentor for this project, as well as the Vala community.

Description:

The main objective of this project is to integrate direct syntax support for parsing and emitting JSON, XML, and/or YAML formats in Vala. This will cut back the boilerplate code, making it more user-friendly and efficient for developers working with these formatting languages.

What I’ve done: Research

• I’ve done significant research in both JSON and YAML parsing and emitting in various languages like C#, Java, Rust and Python.
• Looked into how Vala currently handles JSON using JSON GLib classes, and I then modelled the C code after the examples I collected.
• Modelled the JSON module after other modules in the codegen, specifically, mainly after Dbus, Gvariant, GObject, and GTK.

Custom JSON Overrides and Attribute

• Created Vala syntax sugar specifically making a [JSON] attribute to do serialization.
• Built support for custom overrides as in mapping JSON keys to differently named fields/properties.
• Reduced boilerplate by generating C code behind the scenes.

Structs

• I’ve created both Vala functions to deserialize and serialize structs using JSON boxed functions.
• I created a Vala generate_struct_serialize_func function to create a C code function called _%s_serialize_func to serialize fields.

• I then created a Vala function generate_struct_to_json to create a C code function called _json_%s_serialize_mystruct to fully serialize the struct by using boxed serialize functions.
  

• I created a Vala generate_struct_deserialize_func function to create a C code function called _%s_deserialize_func to deserialize fields.
• I then created a Vala function generate_struct_to_json to create a C code function called _json_%s_deserialize_mystruct to fully deserialize the struct by using boxed deserialized functions.

GObjects

• I’ve created both Vala functions to deserialize and serialize GObjects using json_gobject_serialize and JSON generator.

• I then created a Vala function generate_gclass_to_json to create a C code function called _json_%s_serialize_gobject_myclass to fully serialize GObjects.
  

• I created a Vala generate_gclass_from_json function to create a C code function called _json_%s_deserialize_class to deserialize fields.

Non-GObjects

• I’ve done serializing of non-GObjects using JSON GLib’s builder functions.
• I then created a Vala function generate_class_to_json to create a C code function called _json_%s_serialize_myclass to fully serialize non-objects that aren’t inheriting from Object or Json.Serializable.

Future Work: Research

• Research still needs to be put into integrating XML and determining which library to use.
• The integration of YAML and other formatting languages not only JSON, YAML, or XML.

Custom Overrides and Attributes

• I want to create more specialized attributes for JSON that only do serialization or deserialization. Such as [JsonDeserialize] and [JsonSerialize] or something similar.
• [JSON] attribute needs to do both deserializing and serializing, and at the moment, the deserializing code has problems.
• XML, YAML, and other formating languages will follow very similar attribute patterns: [Yaml], [Xml], [Json].

Bugs

• unref c code functions are calling nulls, which shouldn’t be the cause. They need proper types going through.
• Deserializing prompts a redefinition that needs to be corrected.
• Overridden GObject properties need to have setters made to be able to get the values.

Links

• Here is the JSON module that has majority of the code.
• Here is the merge request.