GNU Parallel 20110822 ('Utøya') released

[Ole Tange]

GNU Parallel 20110822 ('Utøya') has been released. It is available for
download at: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parallel/

Debian and Ubuntu people have complained GNU Parallel is not in their
official distributions.

Ubuntu people: Log into LaunchPad and on
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/740630 click 'This bug affect
me too'. (The link will only appear when you are logged in)

Debian people: This is the (2 years old) bug to push:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=518696

Several have suggested splitting moreutils into moreutils and
moreutils-parallel just like FreeBSD and RawHide have already done:
http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/moreutils-parallel/
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/15740186/dir/rawhide/com/moreutils-parallel-0.44-1.fc16.x86_64.rpm.html

To me that sounds like a good solution: Most people will never have
any problems and the few that install both GNU Parallel and packages
that depend on moreutils-parallel will be aware of it.


New in this release:

* --timeout implemented so that slow commands can be killed

* CPU detection improved for Mac OSX. Thanks to Wayne E. Seguin.

* Example of a parallel webcrawler in the man page.

* Backup up PostgreSQL with GNU Parallel. Thanks to Stephane Wirtel.
  http://wirtel.be/2011/07/15/rsync_parallel/

* Blog post in Japanese.
  http://dminor11th.blogspot.com/2011/08/gnu-parallel.html

* Blog post about optimizing JPEGs. Thanks to Thomas Jost.
  http://schnouki.net/2011/07/22/optimizing-jpeg-pictures/

* Bug fixes and man page updates.


= About GNU Parallel =

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one
or more computers. A job is can be a single command or a small script
that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical
input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of
URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from
a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into
commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to
use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If
you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to
replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several
jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as
you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it
possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpaiGYxkSuQ or
at http://tinyogg.com/watch/TORaR/ and http://tinyogg.com/watch/hfxKj/

When using GNU Parallel for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU Parallel - The Command-Line Power Tool, ;login:
The USENIX Magazine, February 2011:42-47.


= About GNU SQL =

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing
databases through all the different databases' command line clients.
So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login
information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number),
size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you
will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different
Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.


= About GNU Niceload =

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or
other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is
reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a
soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of
time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the
program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the
limit.