New features include …

Updated Software Packages …

Rake (onestepback.org/software/rake)

A Make-like scripting language written entirely in Ruby. I have been using Rake for all my recent projects.

Source2Html (onestepback.org/software/source2html)

Convert source files to nicely formatted HTML pages. Source2html will automatically create links between files in a project. Works with Ruby, Python, Java, Eiffel and a number of other languages.

Updated Articles …

Same Fringe, Iterating Parallel Lists in Ruby (onestepback.org/articles/same_fringe)

A short article on parallel lists and iterating schemes in Ruby. We touch on generators and continuations.

I can identify with that. I’ve downloaded most of my brain into Emacs macros so that I find it difficult to survive without a fully functional Emacs available. However, when it comes to editting Java code, it is tough to beat Eclipse (or IntelliJ/IDEA, or any number of similar IDEs). Although I still like Emacs for pure code/text entry, Eclipse really shines when you need to do browsing, refactoring or even CVS integration.

This is one gotcha, however. Whenever I save a file in Emacs, I hit

• Control-A (goto the beginning of the line), then
• Control-X Control-S (save a file).

Over the years I have learned that frequent saving is a good thing, and I perform that sequence of keystrokes without even thinking.

However, that same key combination in Eclipse performs …

• Control-A (select all)
• Control-X (cut selection)
• Control-S (save file)

Oops! Thankfully, Control-Z (undo) forgives all sins.

Using the standard shapes example, I posted some code in C showing how to do runtime polymorphism using pointers to functions. I also include C++ and Java examples. Then everybody got in the act and we ended up with this (onestepback.org/articles/poly).

Some of the source files are missing, and I’ll replace them when I can. In the meantime, enjoy.

Feel free to provide feedback at jweirich@one.net.

Most content on this site is covered by a Creative Content License. Materials not covered by this license will be explicitly noted (for example, most of the code is offered under one of the Open Source/Free Software licenses).

This Creative Commons license essentially says that you have permission to use the material covered by the license for non-commericial purposes as long as you attribute it to the author (that would be me). Click on the Creative Commons graphic for all of the details.

Of course, this only applies to the material written by me (Jim Weirich). Material written by others will be covered by their own copyrights.

Check out the Creative Commons web site. They have a number of different licences available, and they do a good job of explaining them. There may be a license there that suites your needs.

I can answer that question because I just did it for the UML system you see here.

Here’s what I loaded …

• I have download most of my brain into Emacs macros, so working without emacs for any length of time is not acceptable. Fortunately, a quick ‘apt-get install emacs21’ and a working emacs system becomes available.
• After loading emacs, I grabbed the .emacs file (and all of its supporting libraries) from my desktop system.
• My overall plan for this UML system is to use it as my web host. That means that apache is required. Grabbing apache with apt-get was simple.
• I plan to base my web site around a Ruby based blogging package called Rublog. That means Ruby will be needed. Since I tend to track the latest version of Ruby a little more closely than Debian does, I normally install Ruby by hand from source. Fortunately, installing Ruby is trivial. I just downloaded the source (from www.ruby-lang.org), and did the standard configure/make/make install commands.
• Next I needed the Rublog software. I had been playing with Rublog on my laptop, so I had the configuration pretty well decided by that point. I just copied the laptop setup to the UML system.
• Finally, Rublog needs RDoc to render any RDoc postings. A quick visit to the Ruby Application Archive to grab RDoc and I was good to go.

And that completed my first phase of setups. I had to do a little reading on setting up iptables and a bit of configuration with apache. The result is what you see here.

So, what packages do you need to work with.

… from the Edge