The Banana Peel

Freeciv 2.2.2 + Snow Leopard = Half Joy

2010-08-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

Got some feedback on the Freeciv forum regarding Freeciv 2.2.2 on Snow Leopard. While the SDL version works but without sound, the GTK (X11) version does not. I asked the kind poster for more info, let's see what comes of it.

There is a workaround to enable sounds in the SDL version. Read about it here.

Freeciv 2.2.2 Trifecta

2010-08-03T00:55:00.000-07:00

Freeciv 2.2.2 came out not long ago. I put together the following Mac OS X packages for it:

GTK version for Intel, 10.5.8+

SDL version for Intel, 10.5.8+

GTK version for PowerPC, 10.4.11

These also install into /opt/com.bitaxis instead of the canonical /opt/local directory used by MacPorts. Hence, they are now compatible with MacPorts.

You can check them out here.

Enjoy!

Freeciv 2.2.1 -- I am back!

2010-07-15T23:14:00.001-07:00

I was looking through the MacPorts man pages, and noticed the pkg and mpkg directives. Which got me thinking...

So, I decided to take another crack at Freeciv packaging for Mac OS X. As I mentioned in another post, my old way of packaging Freeciv was untenable for me as someone with limited knowledge in GTK+ and X11.

After some experimentation, and with the help of MacPorts, I put together two brand new Freeciv packages that are much easier to put together, albeit with an ironic twist of the results being incompatible with MacPorts. Go figure!

Anyhow, you can read about them here as well as try them out for yourselves.

Enjoy!

Rails 3 Beta 4 -- Success!

2010-06-17T01:29:00.000-07:00

After watching this series of Rails 3 screencasts, I decided to give Rails 3 a try.

Reading the beta release notes, I updated to the late rvm gem, then proceeded to install Ruby 1.8.7-p174. While the installation was successful, and I was able to create a Rails 3 app, I couldn't run rake. Any attempt to invoke it, even just to list rake tasks, gave me a cryptic error about Rail's delegate method.

Next, I tried to install REE's flavor of Ruby 1.8.7, and that failed to install.

So lastly, I tried 1.9.2-preview3, and that worked. Woohoo!

assert_false

2009-11-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

Ruby has a pretty good unit-test framework. However, it is annoying that assert_false does not come built-in. So, here is my own that I use in my Rails applications' test code:

Enjoy!

Peaceful Co-Existence Between Subversion and Git

2009-10-30T13:55:00.000-07:00

So I have been using Subversion as my source control tool for my Rails apps for a couple of years now, and I am very happy with it.

Recently, I have begun to use Git as my source control for plugin development, and using github.com as a means to share my work with the community.

So, the dual-tool strategy begs the questions:

Do they play nice together?

How does a developer make them play nicely with one another?

The short answers to these questions is Yes. If you want the details, read on.

Given the Tidy code I am versioning using Git is not a full-blown application, I need it to reside within the context of a Rails application to test it. So this is what I did:

Have my application, let's call it X, version controlled using Subversion

In application X's vendor/plugins directory, I create a Git repository called tidy; this is where I maintain and test Tidy's code

This Git repository is tied to github.com, so that I can push any changes out for the community to see

The tidy directory is also version controlled by Subversion, so that my application has a working copy of Tidy that I can deploy

However, Subversion complains about the tidy/.git directory, and Git in turn complains about the various tidy/*/.svn directories

To remedy this, I added a tidy/.gitignore file to ignore the various tidy/*/.svn directories, and I added set the svn:ignore property on tidy/ to ignore the tidy/.git directory

With this setup, I can now more easily maintain the code for both my Rails application and the Tidy plugin.

Github.com Has Uptime Issues?

2009-10-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

Since I've started to use it frequently within the last month or so, I have noticed several times where github.com either responds very slowly or is outright unavailable. Even as I am typing this, my repeated attempts to load github.com in another Safari tab just failed with another server error.

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

Update: Looks like they are having issues with their backend...

Tidy Plugin Updated for Rails 2.3.4

2009-10-29T10:10:00.001-07:00

Turns out my Tidy plugin doesn't work with Rails 2.3.4. I discovered this when I upgraded one of my apps from Rails 2.2.2 to the latest version. A quick debug session revealed and fixed the problem.

However, the change means it will no longer work with Rails 2.2.2.

Check it out here.

Announcement: Tidy Plugin for Rails

2009-10-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

I finally put some effort and re-factored my tidy_javascripts and tidy_stylsheets helper methods into a Rails plugin to help me accomplish the following goals:

Ease of re-use across multiple projects

Learn about git and github.com

Learn about authoring a Rails plugin

Check out my Tidy plugin and let me know what you think.

Unit Test: Take Two, with factory_girl + Mocha

2009-10-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

In my day job, I occasionally interface with a group of Java developers, who pride themselves in doing a darn good job of testing their own code. We are talking about unit tests, functional tests, continuous integration tests, the whole shebang.

I learnt about mocking from them (and was the target of many such jokes, e.g. "So, here to be mocked some more?"), and decided to try out some mocking frameworks for .NET, but am having time comprehending the role of mock objects in testing. However, recently I was reading Recipe #55 in Advanced Rails Recipes, and was inspired.

So when I took my reading to the web, largely driven/led by Google, I realized that mocha is another mocking framework that some prefer over flexmock. I looked into it a bit, and decided that it is for me.

Now, like many, I have come to dislike fixtures for complex test cases where multiple instances of multiple models are involved. But I do believe that fixtures have a role. The way I look at it, if you find that you set up the same data over and over again in your tests, maybe it's time to push them into fixtures.

Anyhow, instead of using fixtures, I have been using ThoughtBot's factory_girl to create my test objects, and am loving it.

Furthermore, someone challenged me to rip out all my test code and re-write them since they are woefully out-of-date and no longer pass. But part of my failure to keep my test code fresh was due to frustration with fixtures.

So now, armed with factory_girl and Mocha, I wiped my test slate clean (removed almost all my test code and fixtures), and am starting over.

To start things off, I decided to do something akin to that recipe in the ARR book, like so:

# test/unit/project_test.rb

require 'test_helper'
require 'mocha'

class ProjectTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase

  test "create" do
    p = Factory.build(:project)
    assert p.valid?
  end

  test "use mocha to simulate failure" do
    p = Factory.build(:project)
    p.expects(:valid?).returns(false)
    assert p.invalid?
  end

end

Now let's run it:

% rake test:units
----- <snipped> -----
Started
........................
Finished in 0.179492 seconds.

24 tests, 41 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

Nice! Of course I am not yet certain how mocking applies to unit tests, but I will forge ahead and see how things go.

Learning Ruby and Rails

2009-08-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

I get occasional messages via meebo (which I love) from folks who have stumbled across this blog, most of them are Ruby and/or Rails related.

Recently a message came in about learning Ruby, and by extension, I am assuming Ruby on Rails.

Here's the route I took:

The Pick-axe book

Agile Web Development with Rails

After that, it comes down to lots and lots of practice, all 10,000 hours worth (if you are a fan of Outliers).

For completeness sake, though, I've also read at least portions of the following books that are Rails related:

Advanced Rails Recipes

Flexible Rails: Flex 3 on Rails 2

The Rails Way

The unfurl Script

2009-06-17T11:49:00.001-07:00

I am ashamed to say that I recently fell victim to a rickrolling prank, because the not-so-innocent URL was given to me by someone I know.

Then I came across the furl utility (easily installed on my systems using MacPorts), which gave me an idea.

From now on, when I see another such URL, I will just run a simple unfurl script to unroll it. The script simply does the following:

    furl http://tinyurl.com/n2o29e \
      | grep -e "^Location"

There! Short and sweet.

Now if someone can come up with a system utility, iChat or browser plug-in that can unroll the URL for me, or perhaps if such a thing already exists, please let me know.

Freeciv Packaging Troubles

2009-06-05T09:41:00.001-07:00

I have been having increasing issues in maintaining my Freeciv package.

Recently, when I upgraded my MacPorts installation along with all my ports (which I have neglected to do so for 12+ months), things have changed sufficiently to have broken my current process, beyond my ability to rectify.

This means until I figure out a way, there will not be any forthcoming Freeciv packages from me.

In the meantime, for those of you who have wrote me indicating interest in compiling Freeciv for yourselves, the easiest way to get going would be to install it using MacPorts .

Good luck!

Faster New Terminal Tab/Window Scripts

2008-12-15T07:46:00.000-08:00

Reader Eric Allen commented on a shell script he's written to create new terminal tabs in Leopard faster. Very cool.

Thanks, Eric!

Passenger Rocks!

2008-12-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

I am referring to, of course, to Phusion Passenger, a.k.a. mod_rails.

Prior to using Passenger, I had been serving up a Rails web application I've been working on using mongrel. However, I am anticipating more people hitting it (compared to just me and one other person), so I thought it's time to move up to something more robust.

The server platform I am using is the latest version of Tiger (client edition). I already have MacPorts installed in order to get Ruby and Rails. So, after installing Apache 2 using the port command, I simply followed the instructions on Passenger's web site and installed the passenger gem and the Apache module, and was serving up my application via a sub-URI in very little time. This is significant because I am not very versed in Apache configuration!

One suggestion. If you are using Tiger, don't bother following the link from the Passenger documentation to some guy's blog about setting up Passenger for Leopard. Just stick to the official docs.

As for performance relative to mongrel, it remains to be seen when the app is under some load. But when I first practiced this on an ancient 400MHz G4 running Tiger, I noticed a 2x jump in performance. That is, Apache2+Passenger with one user hitting the server is able to serve up pages twice as fast as a single instance of mongrel (using the -d -e production flags) with only one user. The same can't be said of the actual deployment machine, both serving methods yielded similar times for the one-user test.

Furthermore, after I figured out the deployment steps, I wrote a simple Python script to automate it. Yes, I know I can use capistrano. But my deployment scenario is to simple right now that I simply don't need it.

One note on deployment. After you execute sudo apachectl start (or restart), it takes a long time to load the first page. That's probably when Apache is loading stuff into memory. After, it's all good. So I added a curl command as the last step to my deployment script to kick-start things.

Freeciv 2.1.6

2008-09-07T23:07:00.000-07:00

I built my package of Freeciv 2.1.6 for Mac OS X for those who are interested.

Enjoy!

Tidy Javascripts

2008-08-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

So I have been reading the Advanced Rails Recipes book by Mike Clark. Pretty good book.

Recipe 19, Decouple JavaScript with Low Pro, uses Dan Webb's Low Pro Javascript library to pluck the behavior-oriented Javascripts out of the mark-up code and tuck them away into its own section or file. We are basically talking about onxxx events. Neat!

However, the example in the recipe puts the behavior Javascript code in public/javascripts/application.js. This is fine for globally applicable stuff. What about code that is applicable only to views of a specific controller or just a single view?

Taking a cue for my Tidy Stylesheets post, I came up with the following:

application_helper.rb

  def tidy_javascripts
    @javascripts ||= []
    ["application", "#{controller.controller_path}/_controller", "#{controller.controller_path}/#{controller.action_name}"].each do |javascript|
      @javascripts << javascript if File.exists? "#{Dir.pwd}/public/javascripts/#{javascript}.js"
    end
    @javascripts
  end

Then, in my layouts, I just do this:

some_layout.html.erb

<%= javascript_include_tag "prototype" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "effects" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "lowpro" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag tidy_javascripts %>

If you are interested in Low Pro, you can download it from Dan's web site. It's a bit hard to get to, but I think the latest is here.

Oh, and for jQuery fans (I am torn between it and Prototype), there is a port of Low Pro for jQuery. You can read about how to use it, too.

What do you think?

Busy, Busy, Busy...

2008-08-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

Haven't added an entry in ... wow, over two months.

What happened, you might ask. Well, among others, I have been busying myself with two things: Ruby on Rails (of course) and Oberin.

Tidy Stylesheets, Take Two

2008-06-15T10:26:00.001-07:00

Back in February I wrote about a nifty way to have fine-grained control over styles in Rails.

As I was looking at it again, I realized something: The way it was implemented (and the way I adopted it) violates the separation of concerns principle.

That implementation called for a filter in the ApplicationController base class to scan and collect an array of stylesheet file paths in an instance variable. Then the layout used will pull in stylesheets from the said collection.

With that realization, I came up with an alternate approach that moves the code to collect stylesheets into the ApplicationHelper module.

Now, the concern of styles rest squarely with views, and controllers know nothing of them. A clean separation!

Another subtle difference here is that the original version collected the stylesheets whether they are pulled in by the layout or not. The new implementation will collect stylesheets only if the layout decides to use them.

The relevant code snippets are as follows:

ApplicationHelper.rb

  def get_stylesheets
    stylesheets = [] unless stylesheets
    ["#{controller.controller_path}/_controller",
    "#{controller.controller_path}/#{controller.action_name}"].each do |ss|
      stylesheets << ss if File.exists? "#{Dir.pwd}/public/stylesheets/#{ss}.css"
    end
    stylesheets
  end

some_layout.html.erb

  <%= stylesheet_link_tag(*get_stylesheets) %>

Enjoy!

Offline Translates Into Higher Productivity

2008-06-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have been doing some work from home.

On one such day, my Internet access was down. Troubleshooting with the provider was no help. It will be 24 hours before they can send out a technician.

This means no E-mail, no web, no IM, not even telephone, since I am with Vonage. My means of connectivity with the outside world boiled down to a cell phone. Sure, I can walk/drive and go somewhere. But I am supposed to be working.

Great. What to do?

I had been meaning to write better tests for a Rails application. You know? The whole test-driven thing. But, that's like boring work. I mean, it is a lot more interesting to whip together a mash-up using any number of Web 2.0 APIs, reading reviews about them online, browsing through documentation and cool demos. These work great, assuming you are connected to the Internet. Which I wasn't. Oh well. Writing tests it is.

A couple of hours went by. I was done with a good suite of unit tests and a basic suite of functional tests. While everything seemed okay with my unit tests, the functional test uncovered a couple of bugs. And I think I uncovered a flaw/weakness in Rails 2.1's fixtures.

Wait a minute. I had been struggling to get this stuff done for a few days now. I would start, then move on to something else. Come back. Stare at the code and not being too productive, think of something else I need to do, and hop on that one.

But now, a couple of hours without Internet access, and it is done! All right, time to move on to integration tests. I reached over and picked up the AWDR book to refresh my memory about them.

In doing so, I glanced at my modem. The online light is solid. I quickly Cmd-Tab'd over to Mail and clicked Get new mail. It works. Woohoo! I am back online.

It hit me. I had been rather productive while I was offline. Sure, I moped at first, wondering what to do. Then I called customer support. Then I moped some more. But then, I got to work, and was productive. I focused well, by default, because there was nothing else to do.

Boy, gotta tell someone about this. Are my friends on IM? Let me go online and look!

Connect to Microsoft SQL Server from Rails ActiveRecord -- a Moving Target?

2008-06-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I approached my boss regarding doing some internal R&D work using Ruby on Rails. I gave a demo.

It was received well, except when he found out that the preferred deployment system for Rails applications is not Windows, and that the preferred database backend is not Microsoft's SQL Server.

He recommended that I look into at least getting Rails (ActiveRecord, specifically) to talk to Microsoft SQL Server. I said that I would, but inside I cringed. From the research I had done then, it was clear to me that Microsoft SQL Server support was not considered a first-class citizen within portions of the Rails community.

Some other stuff came along, and the whole thing got derailed (no pun intended).

Fast forward to May (last Thursday/Friday to be exact), and I find myself returning to the topic of getting ActiveRecord to talk to Microsoft SQL Server. I found that the Wiki entry titled "HowtoConnectToMicrosoftSQLServer" had been updated for Rails 2.x. Nice.

So I followed the instructions and got FreeTDS 0.82 installed on my Mac via MacPorts. I even found instructions on how to get Mac OS X's ODBC Administrator to talk to FreeTDS, as well as installed the activerecord-sqlserver-adapter gem. When I wrapped up my work week, all that was left undone was to manually install the lib/dbd/ADO.rb file from the Ruby-DBI project.

Today, I found out that Rails 2.1 had been released over the weekend, containing some cool enhancements. But, to my dismay, the activerecord-sqlserver-adapter gem has disappeared from http://gems.rubyonrails.org. Hmm...

A bit more sleuthing revealed to me the existence of activerecord-odbc-adapter gem, which offers support for SQL Server. I guess I will have to shift gears and pursue it from this angle. Instead of FreeTDS, I will need to install the rb-odbc port. Thank goodness for MacPorts!

So, as of Rails 2.1, SQL Server connectivity is still second-class, and this exercise has been frustrating.

Is it supposed to be this hard?

NetBeans 6.1 + Flex Builder 3

2008-04-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

As I am going through Peter Armstrong's book, my current development environment of choice is using NetBeans to edit Rails code and Flex Builder to edit my Flex/ActionScript code.

Even though it means I need to Alt-Tab to switch back and forth between the two depending on which kind of code I am editing, I kind of like the separation of concerns. That is, one application for Rails and the other for Flex/ActionScript. I haven't seen any need to intermingle the two yet.

I was using the RC1 version of NetBeans 6.1, but now looks like 6.1 was official released recently.

Cool stuff.

Why Does This Work?

2008-04-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

So I am going through Peter Armstrong's Flexible Rails book.

In Chapter 5, he talks about fixing ActiveRecord's to_xml() method. I am a fan of Rails, but I am not a fan of the solution he chose in his book. IMHO, it's kind of ugly and un-DRY. In other words, inelegant.

My first attempt at a better solution is to write my own to_xml() method, which is as follows:
def to_xml(options=nil, &block) super options == nil ? { :dasherize => false } : options.merge(:dasherize => false), &block endI pasted the above into each of the four models defined in the Pomodo project Peter guides his readers through in the book, and it works, albeit un-DRY.

Then I did some reading on how I might override the built-in method at a single place, and came across this article. So I then removed the code from the model classes and placed the following at the very end of the pomodo/config/environment.rb file:
class ActiveRecord::Base def to_xml(options=nil, &block) super options == nil ? { :dasherize => false } : options.merge(:dasherize => false), &block end endTo my surprise, it works, too. It has fewer lines of code than both my first stab and Peter's solution, and it is very DRY. In other words, it is elegant.

But now I am left with this question: Why does this work?

I am not as well-versed in Ruby/Rails. Can someone help enlighten me?

300

2008-04-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

I just watched the movie "300" on DVD.

I was ambiguous about watching it. However, I was intrigued to watch it due to the high IMDb rating.

I enjoyed watching it.

When I first read about the movie, I was turned off because I kinda knew what the outcome would be already. I am now glad I did watch it.

In fact, I was so intrigued by the historical events that inspired the movie I went online to read more about them here, here, and here.

I Love My iMac's Screen

2008-04-17T11:53:00.001-07:00

For non-work computing, my 24" iMac is my main machine. For work-related computing, I have a 20" HP 2035 LCD attached to my ThinkPad.

I used to think the HP display is pretty good, until recently, when I have been spending an increased amount of time in front of my iMac. The increased use of my iMac made me notice how dim and blurry the HP display is. At first I thought it is a settings thing, so I tried to tweak with the physical controls and the software settings. I also tried switching to a DVI connection to see if it helps. But nope. The iMac screen is just that much brighter and easier to read, even given Mac OS X's preference to render fonts such that they more closely resemble the actual look of the font over pixel-level sharpness (which is favored by Windows). And this is when I have the iMac's screen set at the lowest brightness level available via the OS.

This realization is now making me wanting to order a new LCD for work. Does anyone know of a comparable display I can use for work?