Articles tagged 'el'
Visitations Apr 10 2006
Just a quick note to say that I’ve now had well over 100 unique visitors to the blog this month so far - not a massive amount, but much much better than previous months - and it’s only a third of the way through the month! I’m going to keep trying to blog regularly, as I’m enjoying it, and if anyone else gets something out of it too, then that’s a good thing :-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, personal, blogging
Building blocks Apr 10 2006
So before I get cracking with a few ideas I’ve got going on, I wanted to get my base framework and build environment sorted. After taking xFramework offline and turning all of the useful code I wrote into a more condensed, useful set of libraries, I then decided to work on a few build tools.
First up was to refine the unit-testing libs and console tool that was part of xFramework. Re-named, and re-built, I made it leaner and faster. Previously, there was one core library - this was the same one the console tool used to execute tests, and the client library containing the unit-tests referenced to tag unit-test classes. Now, it’s two separate libraries - a client framework lib referenced to mark up unit-test classes with attributes, and a console tool with core library (and a reference to the framework lib) to execute unit-tests themselves.
Secondly, I wanted a build server. I searched a while back, and came up short. There are plenty out there, but the criteria I’m after is:
- Automated build setup, with an easy-to-use configuration structure
- Plugin interface for a totally extensible build and reporting process
- Cross-platform, runs on both Linux and Windows, and preferably Mac OS X too
- Checkout a working copy from a Subversion repository, either using the “file” or the “svn+ssh” protocol. I’ll write further SCM support as and when I need it.
- Build the project, so far the only supported plugin is an MSBuild plugin, for building MSBuild project files such as Visual Studio 2005 solutions and projects (of course the API should be fairly similar to the XBuild tool for Mono, which was a port of MSBuild, and I’m thinking about a NAnt provider somewhere down the line)
- Run some code metrics, so far just a simple line counter for each file meeting the configured criteria, and a total line count
- Run unit-tests on the code, using my unit-testing framework, and a bridging plugin for the build system
- Generate some documentation, using my own documentation engine (see below)
- Cleanup after itself
Now that this is done, and tested, there are a few other plugins I want to write for it, but on the whole it’s good enough for me to develop with now. The build reports are also extendable - an interface is defined so that plugins can be written to deal with the build report, and so far I’ve written one provider that saves this report to file, and one that mails it to me, both of which I use. This means I now have my project building nightly, with everything automated, and me being notified of the results.
The third and final tool I’ve written, is a documentation engine. This came about purely because I tried writing an NDoc documentation plugin for my build system, to no avail (it didn’t like my .Net 2.0 assemblies). I browsed around, and found two things: 1) there is little or no activity currently occurring on the NDoc project, and 2) a few users are starting to modify the source themselves to provide a source distribution of NDoc with support for .Net 2.0. I took one look at the Xml documentation files that the C# compiler outputs (the ones that NDoc uses) and decided instead of using unsupportable, possibly unreliable user hacks to get my documentation needs accomplished, I’d write my own little engine, and in this way I’d get exactly what I needed. And so my third development tool in my toolchain, a core library defining a plugin interface for document generation, was born. It allows project files to be configured (defining the Xml document input files to use), and it allows plugin documentation generators that handle the actual output - I wrote one simple plugin to provide Html output for now, more advanced output could be Linux style man files, a Windows style help system, MSDN docs, or a multi-page Html documentation web site solution (currently it chews out one Html file, using JavaScript to allow expanding/collapsing of elements). I have written a console tool to build documentation from the project file, and of course the build server plugin is used to generate documentation directly from within the automated build process.
I now have an end-to-end build process, which, while some tweaking and a bit more code writing is necessary, does the job more than adequately for me. I feel far more confident going on to build upon a lot of my ideas, knowing I have the building blocks in place to write and develop applications more reliably.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, framework, “build tools”, “unit-testing”, “build server”, xframework, subversion, msbuild, xbuild, nant, ndoc Comments
Cool! Apr 9 2006
Now this is cool.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, ipod, “video ipod”, doom, half-life
The job Apr 7 2006
I think Steve McClaren should be seriously considered now for the England manager’s job when Sven Goran Erikkson vacates it after the World Cup. He’s showing that he can manage a team to great, hard-worked victories over international opposition time and again. Here’s hoping that Arsenal win the Champions League, and Middlesbrough take home the UEFA Cup - imagine that just before the World Cup, both European competitions won by English teams!
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, england, “english football”, “steve mcclaren”, “world cup”, “uefa cup”, “champions league”
Do the dirty bird Apr 6 2006
Today the new NFL schedules are released, and looking at the Falcon’s schedule for the 2006 season, I notice a couple of things. Firstly, it looks like they don’t play a SINGLE late Sunday game - they play two Monday night games (away to New Orleans, home to Dallas), and the rest are early Sunday games (1pm). Secondly, the schedule is obviously a bit easier than last year, thanks largely to our poor finish to the season, and the final 8 and 8 record. However, if it goes down to the wire, I don’t fancy the New Years Eve trip to Philadelphia on December 31st as the final game of the season…
Now it’s just a short while to the draft, and then the countdown to the new season can really begin!
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, nfl, falcons, “atlanta falcons”, draft
Muby, or Ronad Apr 6 2006
Two interesting points of view on a debate between two technologies that I didn’t think could be so comparable - Monad (MSH), and Ruby. Ted Neward puts forward his case for using Monad, because of its scripting ability, and provides some interesting usage of the scripting syntax to back his views up. Glenn Vanderburg says he’s sticking with Ruby however, and goes on to explain why, cleverly writing the same script that Ted did using Monad, in Ruby - just 17 lines of code, instead of 37 using MSH. Both posts are worth a read, however my opinion? I think Ruby has my vote all the way - it’s cross-platform nature, and the fact that it is a dedicated scripting language (rather than a shell with a neat syntactical scripting language to back it up) are really winning points for me. After all, I’d be happy combining Ruby with Rails to write a fully-fledged web application - but besides utilities/maintenance scripts, I don’t give Bash a run out very often. In the same way, I think at first people may say “look at how cool Monad is, look at what it can do!” but in the long-run, it’s use will be relegated to command line oriented tasks, and the “real code” will be written with languages like Ruby. My $0.02 on an interesting topic of conversation.
UPDATE: it looks like the original script in Ted’s article actually originated from a post by Lee Holmes - and since the debate, he has re-written the script, matching the Ruby version almost line for line - I guess that blows the whole lines of code argument out of the water then. Really it just comes down to what you are trying to write - in this case there’s not a lot between the two, however in other projects there may be a clear advantage to using one or the other. I’m happy to have both at my disposal :-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, monad, msh, ruby, rails, scripting
House Apr 6 2006
House just keeps getting better and better. We are a few weeks behind here in the UK, but the episode that was just on was really good. It had all the ingredients of a great House episode - a particularly nasty, yet intriguing case, along with some classic House lines:
Dr. Wilson: This guy’s name is Weber, not von Lieberman.
House: I call Weber “von Lieberman”. Way eviler.
Out of all the shows I enjoy watching on TV, I find House to be the most challenging, and that in itself is rewarding. I’ve only seen maybe ten episodes however, I really need to watch all of the first season, and then start over with the second to catch up. And I still find it amazing that Hugh Laurie is just so convincing in it as an American doctor, compared to, say, well his numerous roles through the four series and a few specials of Black Adder. Class act.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, house, “hugh laurie”, “black adder”, tv
I'm getting real Apr 6 2006
I’ve decided to get real - today I went ahead and purchased a copy of Getting Real from 37 Signals, and I plan to get stuck in over the next few days. Expect a review soon.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, “getting real”, “37 signals”, 37s
Sinful Apr 6 2006
I see that SiN Episode 1: Emergence has a release date now, and you can pre-order it using Steam, and start pre-loading (like with Half-Life 2). This will mean as soon as it’s released you can just unlock it, and play!
I pre-ordered my copy just now, you save a couple of bucks by doing so, and you get the original SiN/SiN multiplayer to boot! I’m looking forward to giving the original run-out again, I haven’t played many games recently and I’m thinking a straight-forward shooter might be just what I’m looking for :-) Plus, the new SiN looks amazing on the source engine, check out some of these shots for proof!
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, sin, “sin episodes”, valve, steam, source, “half-life 2”, hl2
Beta Boot Camp Apr 5 2006
Apple have launched a public beta of Boot Camp, a package to allow the installation of Windows XP Home, or Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 or later, on an Intel Mac computer. They have managed to put together what a group of hackers did a few weeks ago, although obviously I assume Apple’s effort comes with the natural style and panache I’ve come to expect from their products :-)
Interesting, none-the-less, however I agree with Dave Winer when he says some the anti-Windows spiel displayed on the Boot Camp pages are in poor taste.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, mac, apple, “boot camp”, “mac os x”, “windows xp”, “intel mac”
The greatest gig ever Apr 5 2006
So this is a bit delayed, but on Friday I went to the greatest gig I think I’ve ever been to. It was my girlfriend’s birthday, so we went out for a meal (mmm, American Hot pizza!), and then afterwards we nipped to a local pub, the Queens Head. My brother was playing an acoustic set there as the opening act for a night of music - just him, a guitar, an amp and a mic. He had already demo’d the songs he was going to do a few days before the gig, but listening to him play up there in front of a packed pub on a Friday night was just awesome. He was really cool, calm, and confident, and bantered with the audience between songs. His playing was nigh-on perfect, and the entire set was fantastic to watch. He’s in a band, and actually plays bass, but he’s a better guitarist than I think I will ever be, and he’s got a great singing voice to boot.
I’ve uploaded a couple of videos of the gig to YouTube - available here, and here. The second song in the set is the missing video of the three songs, and I’m working on getting that up shortly, so I’ll post the link for that here too. The videos don’t really do him justice, but they are just about good enough to get a feel for just how talented he is.
I was really proud of him, as he’s obviously got some set of stones to get up there and pull that off on his own - well done Luke.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, luke, gig, music, acoustic, “queens head”
n00bie Apr 5 2006
This guy is documenting his switch to a Macintosh, from a Windows machine. Interesting read, and this is something I’m currently considering doing. I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to completely switch, certainly not straight away, but, like MacNewbie, with the reassurance that I could always stick Windows XP on a brand new Intel Mac Mini or Intel MacbookPro, it certainly is getting tempting ;-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, macnewbie, mac, “mac os x”, “windows xp”, “intel mac”, “mac mini”, “macbook pro”
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