Developer Break: Lucene, Solr, Spring Roo, Node.js, PyQt 5 and more

Catch up on the smaller but important notes for developers, from libraries to APIs and from people to posts. In this edition: Updates for Lucene, Solr, Spring Roo and Node.js, Lua in a browser, Python for Qt 5.0, code recommendations, ARM CUDA, Codegeist winners, Google interviews and NHibernate's future.

Open Source Libraries and Tools

• Apache's Lucene search library and Solr search platform have had a bug fix update to version 4.3.1. The Lucene 4.3.1 update includes fixes for a deadlock bug and an optimisation, while Solr's 4.3.1 update offers many fixes for SolrCloud. Downloads for Lucene and Solr are available from the usual mirrors.

• Node.js is getting a very steady stream of point updates to version 0.10. Already this month we've had 0.10.10, 0.10.11 and this week sees 0.10.12; the latest update makes one handy change in that when using the command line interface in node.js, CTRL+L will now clear the screen. There are also updates to v8, net and npm.

• The Spring Roo developers have released the fourth maintenance update to the rapid application development platform. Thanks to community contributions a new Antlr 4.0 library allows Roo applications to now use Java 7; there are also a number of GWT improvements.

• Want a VM in your VM? The Lua VM project has ported the Lua 5.2.2 virtual machine and associated code to JavaScript by means of Emscripten, resulting in 200K of gzipped JavaScript. The developers are working to connect the resulting VM to the browser so it can be used to write web pages.

• Qt 5.0 users who work in Python can now use PyQt 5.0 from Riverbank Computing. PyQt 5.0 is available to download under the GPL or a commercial licence.

• Code Trails, the company behind Eclipse Code.Recommenders, is running a pilot project which records your code completion selections anonymously. That data will be mined by the company's [ctrl]Flow tools to produce recommendation tools and to reward participants, the company is also holding a draw for ten Raspberry Pi minicomputers.

Commercial Tools

• NVIDIA is highlighting its ARM support for CUDA in the latest CUDA 5.5 Release Candidate; this includes the CUDA C/C++ compiler, debugging tools, native and cross compilation and GPU accelerated libraries.

• Atlassian announced the winners of its Codegeist competition designed to generate new add-ons for the company's Marketplace. The last of the monthly best addon prizes of $10,000 went to Filepicker integration in May, but it was project management app Folio that won April's round and took the extra $15,000 prize to become best overall add-on. Storyflow, which links JIRA problems with Stash commits, won best Stash add-on.

Good Readings

• Hiring developers? Google's Laszlo Bock has admitted in a New York Times interview that its techniques of challenging applicants with brain teasers hasn't worked for them.

• An article on InfoQ talks about the uncertain future of NHibernate which now has only two significantly active developers who are working on preparing NHibernate 4 for .NET 4.0 – the version of .NET released three years ago.

(djwm)