Doc Martin's Coding Stuff

There is someone on your team like "John"...

2012-01-12T13:20:00.001Z

Reference: use of the F bomb lyrics - skip to "use as adjective"

the "crawling over broken glass for a mile"series

2011-08-20T19:36:00.000Z

This is merely a trailer for the series of posts on situations that still baffle my right brain, though I nonetheless observe and accept they occur and (right brain-bafflingly ) endure.

Example usage:

X would "crawl over broken glass for a mile rather than write a unit test".

And with one mighty bound he was free!

2011-08-20T19:32:00.000Z

I'm think I'm up to the psychological threshold of making the great leap forward..

I have my 15 year's worth of code / rambling / doodles, that have been on the "Grand Tour" of source control systems; A directory "somewhere trusted"*, Visual Source "Safe" [cough], CVS (briefly, to be fair), Subversion and now git..

As usual, I see no reason to not simply run "that $0 -> $1 upgrade script" - (supply your favoured SCM systems in chronological order).

And I encountered the issue people have encountered before with file:///, the repo FS version no. and git svn clone using quite elderly subversion binaries.

http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/issues/detail?id=253

Solution: it (finally) occurred to me why I'd chosen to use the svn protocol, way back when: compatibility between server and clients.

So, forget using the file:/// transport, simply temporarily fire up an svn server and connect
over that.

Here are the steps.

put your repo call it REPO_NAME - in a dir called svn - call *that* REPO_PARENT
i.e. final repo root is C:\Users\Patrick\Desktop\migrate\svn\source

svnserve -d --root REPO_PARENT

and in another session in the directory you want to contain the git repo

git svn clone svn://localhost/REPO

This results in a git repo in a folder called REPO in that directory.

And, with one mighty bound, I am free to dabble in the realm of DVCS.

Assumptions - you don't want to go back - this is a migration - that URL was intended as a throw-away.

Other people have suggestions for what you might want to do next, like create a bare clone of that new repo:

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/154892

http://forums.pragprog.com/forums/64/topics/2244

* when you only have one machine, and can only dream of external storage...

Finally, there is hope for a smartphone battery with over 10 hours standby!

2011-08-08T22:15:00.002Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14405122

Caveat: it will require the space shuttle to come out of mothballs and AM containment technology needs some development...

branching - the Marmite of source control

2011-06-11T16:34:00.000Z

branching - the Marmite of source control.

As it turns out, I have a few opinions on the matter.

Nevertheless, there is controversy, but my observation is the tools are getting the usual drive-by shooting in the fallout out of an ongoing unresolved conversation departments have on this matter.
It would seem to centre on the tension between the fear of a collapse of discipline and the desire to have degree of latitude.

I lean towards giving the developers freedom to act, but safely.
If an organisation finds itself having to add hooks and features and backup procedures and post mortems in order to work around the possibilities of developers creating issues when they check into "the one, true /trunk"...

Well, then I suggest that organisation needs to focus on how it allowed the conditions that created that mentality to arise.

It could be worse ... 24.9999% worse

2011-06-09T22:06:00.000Z

It's link curating time: I love this story

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/754story.html

And ironically, given the many wasted hours I've spent perusing the Oracle docs site, here is a gift to the world.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html

Great moments in blogging history #345

2011-06-09T21:56:00.000Z

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/matt_pietrek/archive/2005/05/05/415070.aspx

humour, humility, awe and a bonus funny link

more ins and outs of SVN

2011-04-06T21:58:00.000Z

Re-visiting the task in

http://docmartinscodingstuff.blogspot.com/2008/09/extracting-and-importing-between.html

I find that using the current GNUWin32 utils I need to add a key parameter -b

see http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/compile.html#Text_files_and_binary_files for the details

Introducing the "Marmite" theme - an occasional series

2011-04-06T21:42:00.000Z

As in X - the Marmite of Y

There seems to be quite a few topics in software engineering that cleave the world, and this will be my series on some of these topics.

* And for our international readership - Marmite is used to evoke the feeling of raging irreconcilable controversy - see here

Dear Game Designers...

2011-02-28T22:11:00.000Z

The phrase "All progress since the last save will be lost" (occasionally observed in red plumage) is a meme that seems to run from Mass Effect 2 to Lego Star Wars 2.
I was going to write "two games in very much the same league", though *actually* Lego Star Wars is way more hard core about making you work for your points...

Small children have learnt to fear the dread words (or at least feign fear) when it's time to stop half way through.

And this in the context of games that nowadays universally employ savepoints automatically.
One might even say with maniacal regularity..

"How about "The past 5 seconds of complete inactivity will be lost" - bonus points for noting the true elapsed time and true controller inactivity.
However the real deal is spotting there was no progress to be lost. C'mon, how hard can *that* be:

bad guys downed : 0
clodser obtained: 0 (Lego Studs)
distance moved: 0

As an added bonus, this would work for people struggling to make progress, for whom the unintentional salt in the wounds merely stings all the more...

The search may finally be over...

2011-02-28T22:00:00.001Z

For _quite some time_ now, I've been looking for a desktop OS on a no-fuss Eee901 (read: replaceable without tears from Daddy) that will work for the kids.

I temporarily got excited about Xandros, Ubuntu, Chromium OS and Windows XP and then simply gave up and tried to simply keep the thing usable on Windows. For the record, Xandros OOTB simply filled up due to poor partition choices too easily, Ubuntu's netbook remix and default desktop were too fiddly or not mouse-twitch resilient enough (important for kids), Chromium OS was plagued with little issues and Wifi drop-outs, and Windows XP is fine with nothing loaded, but getting long in the tooth; and you can't *have* nothing loaded nowadays.

Now, there was nothing fancy required, simply basic desktop management; ability to run TuxPaint and iPlayer and *perhaps* other stuff, if I was feeling generous. But I was noticing that the kids were growing up enough to overcome the software defects faster than the software itself.
A sobering thought.

Anyroadup, in the end I have stumbled upon http://www.jolicloud.com/.

It installed very simply, and let me try first, of course.
It starts simply: you can even dispense with password at startup for a family machine.
It starts quickly. And finally, it gets straight to a very simple "dashboard of fun" once it has started.

So far, no-one has managed to render the toolbars unusable or twitch all the desktop shortcuts into the Trash Can. So good there. I persuaded TuxPaint onto it and iPlayer was trivial, of course.

It seems to be just about right.
Shame it took so long to find that the battery is 50% exhausted.
Again, kudos to jolicloud's app for telling me that.

My *one* niggle is that I would love the TuxPaint shortcut available on the front page, but that does not seem to be the design route they took, so it's a little hard to find.

Edit: yes, I spotted it's running Ubuntu

Merry Xmas 2010

2010-12-25T11:53:00.000Z

Mickey is convinced he's the only reader of this blog, and even then, I'm not convinced he reads it.
So, by way of a check: Merry Xmas readers (and Mickey)!

Is Raymond Chen secretly the Proudest Uncle Ever?

2010-12-08T15:30:00.000Z

Just a thought...

A simple batch template

2010-08-10T22:13:00.001Z

Now, why would anyone bother with this?

Well, no-one really seems to be lurking on alt.dos.batch anymore, though sometimes I think we should.

It lifts an approach from the "Unix way"
Bodging a quick hack is actually very costly and counter-productive.
It's simple, transportable (across Windows versions), and effective.

This script reads an ini file style input file named after the root name of the file of the format:

; this is a comment
TESTPROP=hi!

Again, thanks to Pygments

@echo example driver script
@echo off
setlocal

:: set up a simple macro
set __OUTPUT=echo [%~n0]: 

%__OUTPUT% starting
:: delete log file
del /q %~n0.log 2>nul 

%__OUTPUT% %DATE% %TIME%
%__OUTPUT% setting environment...

call :getini

:: check for required parameter
if NOT DEFINED TEST_PROP %__OUTPUT% test property not defined & exit /b 2

%__OUTPUT% creating structure
>>%~n0.log echo doing something & set >>%~n0.txt

%__OUTPUT% exiting with error %errorlevel% 

exit /b

:: start of utility function

:getini

:: note this will set more environment variables than it knows about
:: which may be useful, but should be used judiciously

if not exist %~n0.ini %__OUTPUT% %~n0.ini missing && exit /b 2
FOR /F "eol=; delims== tokens=1,2" %%I IN (%~n0.ini) DO (
  set %%I=%%J
  )

%__OUTPUT% reporting standard variables...

:: note that  sets reports matching variables - so _SYS matchs _SYS and _SYSTEM
set TEST_PROP

goto :eof

Maisy Eco Warrior

2010-08-10T21:34:00.000Z

I think the 10:10 initiative is a thing of genius: a simple comprehensible and what's more: an achievable proposition. And that's why I signed up to it.

Happily, we here at le Manoir Doc already tick a lot of the boxes for the simple steps that a family could take to make an impact.

Nevertheless we signed up and we made a start last year by replacing our old efficiency E boiler last summer and getting smart radiator valves, and we've had the double glazing recently renewed.

This has resulted in almost flat gas consumption last year compared to before, which I think is not bad given the last very cold winter. However although I have little doubt that in the long term we have met our 10:10 commitment, morally the case is weak.

So, more effort needed.

Here's the rub: we use an xbox 360 for games/DVDs and the power consumption was pretty crazy - using the power monitor it's the lion's share of the instantaneous power consumption in the summer.

Enter the tiny, cute spanner in the works: now that little "S" is getting older and into her films, the clamouring for Maisy, Nemo and Thomas is becoming more insistent.

This has made the use of the xbox spike up from a few hours a day to sometimes most of the day, I have to report. A knock-on effect is that the remaining operational lifetime of the device seems to have been exhausted in just a few months!

Now, here's the crazy thing: for what is a pretty cheap consumer item, the pay-back time for the initial outlay in getting a more efficient device (DVD player, HTPC, etc.) based purely upon the power savings is in the region of a decades. Electricity is just too cheap for people to really register they should turn things off.

So, Microsoft to the rescue!

The new xbox 360 "s" is yes, quieter (praise the Lord) - and prettier - and has Wifi - and goes "ping", but in addition the power consumption is much, much lower.
It's lower even than I had been lead to believe - it looks like easily over 100W lower than the old one.
That's around 20% drop in our peak consumption, and the peak consumption was the dominating scenario.

So, killing 3 birds with one stone I bought one achieving:

a quieter life (acoustically speaking)
my concerns over the creaky old xbox
oh yes, and my commitment to "showing willing" on saving the planet

Result!

It's not due to deliver a return on investment for quite some time - maybe 5 years - but we have made our 10:10 commitment.

And all it took was a bit of retail therapy.

And a spreadsheet.

Oh, and it's already scratched, but *please* keep that to yourself...

Turning the tables on "DLL Hell"

2010-07-30T08:57:00.001Z

In my view "Dll Hell" gets a bum rap: you *are* required to known what you're doing when you create native code dynamically linked libraries.

End.
Of.
Story.

Sorry!

And because this is true, the reasons it happens are also the reasons it can be fixed, because all LoadLibrary does is follow the rules, which have been highlighted enough times.

To illustrate: simple example, based upon a true story from an application installer.
Note this code all pre-dates the fun of SxS and dll manifests, so don't be surprised to find those niceties missing.

So: at install time, you want to utilise a utility in a dll - call it U.dll that has a vital static dependency.
Sadly, the binary dependency comes in 2 flavours, only one of which is suitable*. The correct one is ultimately installed as a private binary for the application, but before we get that far, we have some work to do.

So, our problem is we don't actually want the either empty or potentially poisoned system path to supply our dependency for U.dll: we want ours, which isn't there and perhaps we don't plan to install into the system path.

It turns out U.dll is loaded dynamically by the installer package, so the "one-line solution" is to load the dependency you want into process before you load A.dll.
This pre-loaded dll is the one that is used.
Of course, it's a "two-line solution" - you also need to temporarily have the dependency available in a known location for the installer actions - for the Windows Installer peeps a dummy type 1 Custom Action should do.

Take home message:

Don't know exactly what your dependencies are and how they're satisifed? That is dll hell.

* This can arise when dlls don't get renamed after key changes in implementation, when arguably they should have.

Before making the leap into hyperspace...

2010-07-29T14:19:00.000Z

Please check the navigational computer...

Although it might (! - always ?) occur that a re-factoring exercise is found to get bigger than initially anticipated, please consider before simply using a branch to get out of the hole. yes, you can skip out of trunk (or wherever) and into a nice new sandbox, but think of the endgame.

So, the built-in function "Create branch from WC" is very appealing, but think about the audit trail.

The ideal (IMHO) is to create a branch from the same base checkout and switch your WC to that branch, then commit the pending changes.

This is, of course, another "occasionally tedious SVN task".

So here's the script. You will notice that I am experimenting with making batch scripts easily readable *and* have decent error handling

@echo off

:: some macros to improve legibility
set CHECK_DELETE= || ( echo deletion failed - exiting & exit /b )
set CHECK_CREATE= || ( echo creation failed - exiting & exit /b )
set CHECK_COMMIT= || ( echo commit failed - exiting & exit /b )
set CHECK_READ= || ( echo read failed - exiting & exit /b )
set CHECK_RENAME= || ( echo rename failed - exiting & exit /b )

:: clean up
if exist ScratchRepo ( ( echo prior repo - deleting & rmdir /s /q ScratchRepo)
%CHECK_DELETE% )

if exist trunk ( echo prior checkout exists - deleting & rmdir /s /q trunk)
%CHECK_DELETE% )

if exist testbranch ( echo prior checkout exists - deleting & rmdir /s /q testbranch)
%CHECK_DELETE% )

:: init from scratch
( echo creating scratch repo & svnadmin create ScratchRepo
%CHECK_CREATE% )

:: generate the URL style REPO url
set REPO_URL=file:///%CD:\=/%/ScratchRepo

echo setting up example project in repository
echo this is the very first commit to this location > scratch.txt
( svn mkdir %REPO_URL%/trunk -m"creating trunk" --username Admin 1>nul
%CHECK_COMMIT% )
( svn mkdir %REPO_URL%/branches -m"creating branches" --username Admin 1>nul
%CHECK_COMMIT% )
( svn import scratch.txt %REPO_URL%/trunk/scratch.txt -m"initial revision" --username Admin 1>nul
%CHECK_COMMIT% )

echo checking out trunk
( svn co %REPO_URL%/trunk trunk 1> nul
%CHECK_READ% )

echo modifying trunk
echo some changes to this file > trunk\scratch.txt

echo copying trunk to branches/testbranch
( svn copy %REPO_URL%/trunk %REPO_URL%/branches/testbranch -m"copying trunk" --username Admin 1>nul
%CHECK_COMMIT% )

echo switching WC to branches/testbranch
( svn switch %REPO_URL%/branches/testbranch trunk 1>nul
%CHECK_COMMIT% )
ren trunk testbranch %CHECK_RENAME%

echo committing change to branches/testbranch
( svn commit testbranch -m"committing modifications" --username Admin 1>nul
%CHECK_COMMIT% )

echo checking out a clean trunk
( svn co %REPO_URL%/trunk trunk 1> nul
%CHECK_READ% )

echo merging testbranch back into clean trunk
svn merge %REPO_URL%/branches/testbranch trunk > nul

Quick Plug for a hotfix

2010-07-29T10:42:00.002Z

I mention Subversion a lot, so it's alarming it corrupts your disk under Windows 7... Wait! Get back here - I was only kidding!

It is true that you can easily get NTFS corruption *notifications* simply performing an SVN update on Windows 7. Other apps might exhibit this, but it is purely a numbers game; your mileage may vary.

The resulting requirement to suffer a full chkdsk on the next reboot is a major annoyance.
Further, to work around this you may not want to turn off all those useful facilities like say, Indexing Server and Anti Virus etc...

Fortunately the underlying issue is known and a fix exists: hurrah!

http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3574

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982927

Now, that checkout I could never get close to completing* is grinding away quite happily.

Nice one, everyone!

* I was not planning to rely upon svn up & svn up & svn up & svn up & svn up & svn up & svn up & svn up & ...

GTAC 2008 Tech talk slide deck

2010-07-20T09:19:00.002Z

Following up on
http://docmartinscodingstuff.blogspot.com/2009/03/holy-sound-check-batman-tech-talk.html

here are the slides

Handy TestComplete Trick

2010-07-19T15:39:00.000Z

Sometimes (!) you can get caught up in what's in front of you.

Let's say you have a generic UI process taking widely varying times to execute.

You may be tempted to modify the recorded script to create the bionic version
- now you have 2 problems at least, when the UI logic changes...

Or you may be tempted to code up the logic by hand.
- now you have (at best) 2 problems...

Both of these are not for the faint of heart on the test team.

Or, you could cut to the chase.

If you're lucky enough that the process is CPU intensive and you're just waiting for completion of failure, simply monitor

Process.CPUUsage

wait until it's under 5% (say).

Get Thee to Staples!

2010-07-19T15:26:00.001Z

I would argue that at least one of the most influential software providers today exists in part due to the fact that despite the human race's ability to store data down to complete insignificance effectively for time immemorial, we *do* seem to struggle to find important facts again.

The next week.

When it matters most and Bob who wrote it down has left the building.

The issue afflicts us generally: my "sub-Euro solution": The Little Black Note book (LBN) and a cheap but comfortable Biro or propelling pencil.

The LBN has the usual many physical affordances of the good old book, plus you can scribble on it, and it can't be brought down by corporate IT or hacked (via hi-tech methods).

I don't know if we're witnessing the slow decline of actual scribbling permanent changes onto page, or at the precipice of a catastrophic extinction, but I will be sad to see it go, and I suspect once it's gone, we will have invent a replacement.

Handy Tips Grab-bag - dlls and process #1

2010-07-10T20:51:00.004Z

A Handy Tips Grab-bag - dlls and process #1

What process has that dll locked?
tasklist /m thatpesky.dll

built in to XP upwards

What process has that dll locked #2?
SysInternals Process Explorer

all OSes
requires download and copy to client machine

which binary is *actually* being used to create that process?
try the 90-byte whereis program
or its follow-up

all OSes (well...)

WixToolPath in SharpDevelop

2010-02-20T11:58:00.002Z

WixToolPath in SharpDevelop

Having dallied with WixEdit for perhaps too long, was I surprised when I fired up SharpDevelop recently.

It's a closely guarded secret that I'm a big MSBuild fan, mainly because I haven't posted those blog entries yet?!.

Let me just say that I am entirely convinced that to avoid "configuration management rot"(TM) setting in, some cunning per and post-build tasks that will massage the developer's machine into the best possible compliance with the actual deployed application is a Good Thing.

So, knowing that

MsBuild will build any solitary .*proj file in a given folder
VS style Solutions group the projects in folders by default
automated builds should not need a 'phone book's worth of property sets to work

I was looking forward to adding a few simple lines to the build scripts with nothing more complex than

[your path to .Net here.bat] & MsBuild /t:Clean;Build

to get my installer packages built.

Sadly, there is a stumbling block.

C:\Blah\Whatever.wixproj(30,11): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Tools\Wix\wix.targets" was not found.

Confirm that the path in the declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

The problem lies in the .wixproj

$(SharpDevelopBinPath)\Tools\Wix

This is relying upon a runtime property set by SharpDevelop when the build is run.

When I was first looking at integrating Wix with MSBuild, I had a similar issue with getting the WixToolsPath set correctly.

I ended up on at the typical solution of a shared MSBuild project that simply sets up a property to be a best guess for a machine with a default installation of Wix.

Change the line in your .wixproj to this

$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\WiX\v3.0

And now the IDE and command line build should be in step.

If you don't like warnings on the command line build: add this line above:

false

Virtualisation for the common man

2010-02-06T17:46:00.003Z

It seems that a lot of people are having issues with installing the 2.0 server on Windows Vista and 7.

Installing 2.0.2 on my home machine, I found the install process was flawless, in contrast to earlier releases in the 2.0 line which had many issues, such as unsigned drivers, and failures to install / function.

The next problem came when it was time to actually login - many people are encountering this problem.

http://helpdeskgeek.com/virtualization/vmware-server-web-access-default-username-and-password/

Now, I use UAC religiously, and even better (IMHO) I have a special active user (*not* called Administrator) who I use to authorise all the UAC prompts.

For me: the fix was easy - when prompted log in as my "not-Administrator-honest!" user.

Just works...

When it absolutely, positively, must not be thrown away...

2009-08-23T10:22:00.005Z

For those struggling with the writing and/or spelling, the intent is "Do Not Throw Away"

The wee man was spurred into issuing this firm directive in response to the spectre of the scenario of LEGO minifigurines stored in the boxes getting thrown away accidentally.

Obviously, even small people are influenced by doom mongers...