Colin Charles Agenda

Use MySQL? On Leopard/OS X 10.5? Yes, the current available packages from dev.mysql.com don’t work very well. I track “mysql” on Twitter, and boy, are there heaps of complaints.

So its nice to see, Dan Benjamin, a member of the MySQL community, stepping up, and creating the amazing Installing MySQL on Mac OS X article. The Preference Pane will obviously still not be there, and I don’t know why he thinks Mantorg (?) will build it, but I believe this is something MySQL needs to fix for the next release.

Tracking mysql#28854 will be useful.

Mark Pilgrim decided that it would be cool to poke fun at OS X, because it “just works” on Ubuntu. While what he says is true, there have been a lot more testing of MySQL on Linux, than there has been on Leopard. Developer seeds aren’t exactly the same “final” product (sure, this particular bug has been around since developer seed days, from what I can tell).

Here’s wishing I was on Leopard (or even a Mac) a bit more regularly…

Technorati Tags: mysql, leopard, macosx, bugs

In the open source world, its quite common to see bug statuses as CLOSED, RAWHIDE (on Fedora, to tell you its in the current development version). Sometimes, you also see CLOSED, CURRENTRELEASE (which usually implies that they’ve bumped the minor version number up, and have pushed the update to you, via yum/up2date). Sometimes, CURRENTRELEASE is used to define ERRATA (though with a fast moving project like Fedora, you tend not to really have errata releases - this is more RHEL-space).

Bottom-line: I get my bug fixes, for free.

Over a year ago, I reported a bug to Apple about an iChat error I was getting, that gave me a Feedbag Error 10. I’ve definitely got numerous other radar entries, but no point linking to them, since there’s no public bug tracker. Today, Apple basically closed the bug as CURRENTRELEASE (or really, what they meant to do was close it as NEXTRELEASE). And as a consequence, they’ve decided that charging me AUD$158 would be the most appropriate course of action. They’ve told me to upgrade to Leopard!

I won’t paste the message here, because that’s apparently under NDA (how can you really NDA a bug report? I’ve seen radar numbers being posted on the Web before… and its not like my bug report, which is my own, isn’t public - maybe if there were actually responses from Apple engineers, then it’d become private). But to paraphrase, Apple Engineering thinks my bug has been fixed in the commercially available Leopard, and upon installing the new software, my bug will most likely be fixed.

Bottom-line: I have to become $158 poorer. Or renew my ADC membership, and wait patiently for the mail (really, why do they even bother sending updates on CD/DVD monthly, when pretty much every Mac developer is connected to the Internet? Waste of resources Apple, how non-green of you, worse, thinking that Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for all his work. The only good thing about renewing an ADC membership is possibly the free t-shirt, the occasional pushes of OS X on DVD, and the hardware discount, if utilised).

Technorati Tags: fedora, apple, macosx, bugs, bugzilla, apple radar, bug status, adc

What’s a good, quick way, to learn a new language with the help of Linux?

In particular, I’m interested in learning conversational Mandarin. Basic reading, is a bonus, but hey, I’m not that fussed. I’d like to not pay for my software, if possible, and since I tote a Linux laptop most of the time (this might change to an OS X based one that actually works - rant on this soon), if it runs on Linux, all the better. The Popagandhi tells me I need to go to a good class - do these exist in Melbourne/

Some useful links I’ve found, so far:

• QQ for Linux - QQ is the Chinese version of ICQ, that pretty much everyone there uses. Though MSN seems to be a lot popular these days (compared to what, 2.5-3 odd years ago)
• ChinesePod - podcasts to help? Well, maybe here’s a reason to use an iPod again…
• I saw this thread on the Ubuntu Forums, but it doesn’t really address anything of requirement

Technorati Tags: linux, learning, mandarin, foreign language, qq, chinese

Dear Interweb,

Is there a way for me to install an instance of OS X inside of Parallels or VMWare Fusion? I currently use VMs for QA work, and when I want to QA packages on OS X, I don’t want to always reinstall clean environments on a test Mac. And yes, you can find problems in clean room environments - like MyODBC.

Has PearPC improved, in terms of speed? Or is it dead?

(no, I don’t care if Apple’s licensing is still retarded. This is to make my life easier.)

Technorati Tags: macosx, virtualization, parallels, vmware, qa

Today I missed a bunch of good talks that I was hoping to attend, because I was figuring out a problem at the Guru Bar. Offending criminal: MySQL Connector/ODBC 3.51. Offending OS: Mac OS X/PowerPC.

OS X comes with an ODBC Administrator. Once you unpack the MySQL package, and the .pkg installs itself, you’ll find that all your files are installed in /usr/lib. You need to fire up ODBC Administrator, click on Drivers, and Add the driver. Give it an appropriate Description (MySQL), provide the location of the driver file (/usr/lib/libmyodbc3.dylib), and define it as available within the System (this enables you to enable at the System DSN as well as the User DSN, in the next step).

Later, etiher add as a user or system DSN, one for mysql. The keyword/value pairs are such that it should be: server/localhost, port/3306, database/test.

The caveat with all of this, is that you actually need to have /usr/lib/libltdl.3.dylib present. Because libmyodbc3.dylib references it, and if you don’t have it, it will fail rather beautifully. How do you get libltdl.3.dylib? Get XCode! If you don’t have your install discs around, get it from the Apple Developer Connection. Beware, its a 923MB download (now you see why I missed not only a talk - large downloads at the conference tend to break, duh!).

Testing the ODBC connection? Make good use of /usr/bin/iodbctest. We were of course doing some odd things with Microsoft Excel (ick!). Once /usr/lib/libltdl.3.dylib is installed, the ODBC connection magically works. With regards to Excel, the external data source will just show up and thus, you can use it. If you didn’t define the keyword/value pairs in the ODBC Administrator, you can always do it in Excel (however, running iodbctest will then fail).

Why was this not discovered earlier? Probably because developer tools are a really common thing to have installed. But users, tend to not have XCode installed, by default. And OS X doesn’t have packaging guidelines, unlike sensible RPM/DEB. When I get back, I’ll see if its possible to ship this missing bit otherwise get the Documentation team to update documentation…

Bottom-line: Make sure XCode is installed if you’re going to use Connector/ODBC.

Technorati Tags: mysql, macosx, odbc, connector/odbc, myodbc, drivers, xcode

Selenium looks cool. Sure, its slower than unit tests, but its much faster than a human. It uses the web browser itself, to get your tests going, and will test it just like how a human tests. In a continious build farm, you can have good browser compatibility testing (run it against IE on Windows, even), and it also does functional testing.

It’s not only for Ruby, it works with Perl, Python, PHP and so forth. Its good for regression testing, and uses JavaScript. This means its very cross-platform, and cross-browser compatible.

How does it work with Flash? The new version of Flash apparently has JavaScript support according to Alex Chaffee, and you can actually use Selenium if need be. A member of the audience did mention that he had tried it, and its a little icky.

When testing web apps, getting titles are important, to see what the title of the page says - do it frequently in testing, because sometimes with web apps, you don’t get a 404 error, but a 200 OK (even though the page itself says it has failed). Write your tests early. Selenium can become slow - consider refactoring, or maybe move it to unit testing. It also has a slow mode, and it might be useful for a demo of your application even (well, you can see the login, and so forth). Polling architecture, web apps will time out - a somewhat sensible timeout is about 20 seconds, even if you’re on a very slow connection - any longer, and you’re probably not generating the page and its a (timing) failure.

Selenium doesn’t work well with testing file downloads. And on Firefox, you might need to use the Chrome extension. Cookies stay on between tests, so this can leads to tests passing when run alone, but failing when run together - solution is to eval JavaScript to clear cookies between tests. In Firefox, you can specify the name of a profile and launch it in a clean browser - Selenium by default, makes a new profile by itself - this really helps as some Extensions might affect your tests. On Linux, this is firefox -ProfileManager.

Peer To Patent, a community patent review site (and it will be open source!). Its tested with Selenium, sponsored by the USPTO, and looks like something that can definitely be useful in making sure silly patents aren’t passed (when the patent officer doesn’t know there’s prior art). When asked at the SDForum Ruby on Rails gathering, how many held patents, I’d say about 15-20% of the crowd raised their hands! Impressive number, but then again, I’m sitting in the Silicon Valley, what did I expect, right?

Continious testing architecture? Mac Mini, Parallels (Ubuntu, Windows), they use coherence mode of Parallels and IE sits and looks like a “native” application. All tests run, and the Ubuntu virtual instance is what launches everything. Testing thus happens on everything - OS X, Linux and Windows.

Technorati Tags: selenium, web app testing, web qa, ruby, svrc2007

Knowing Fedora (Core 6), I won’t see Thunderbird 2.0 anytime soon, so I decided to get it via upstream. Some initial comments.

No x86_64?
Thunderbird only says Linux i686. In fact, its a 32-bit binary, as opposed to what Fedora provides in 64-bit form.
file thunderbird-bin
thunderbird-bin: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, stripped
file /usr/lib64/thunderbird-1.5.0.10/thunderbird-bin
/usr/lib64/thunderbird-1.5.0.10/thunderbird-bin: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, stripped

Running it
Just copy it to /usr/lib/thunderbird, and it currently runs via /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird. /usr/bin/thunderbird clearly needs to be edited to allow for using Thunderbird 2.0. A good way to get it going:
mv /usr/bin/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird-1.5
ln -s /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird

Extensions
Some of them that I use, don’t work. QuickQuote (to select part of a message, and hit reply, and only that gets quoted, ala Evolution), Remove Duplicate Messages, Sync On Arrival (important when using IMAP). I am confident that we’ll see them very soon.

New stuff
The new visual interface is very slick. It looks rather professional, and I am thrilled by it.

New mail notification that pops up, looks a little like AVG scanning your email on Windows, but it actually shows useful information, and will be a productivity boost. I notice that it also doesn’t only appear in the workspace Thunderbird is running in, but in the current active workspace. This may become a nuisance when in the zone for work, and you’re getting mail every 10 minutes.

Compacting folders? I can select an option to do it automatically from now on. Yet another dialog that won’t bug me on occassion.

When Thunderbird detects new messages in the folder, it normally dispalys such a folder differently. On mouse overs now work wonders, as it shows summaries of what the new messages are.

Google Support
Gmail support within the accounts field, means I’ll actually be reading my GMail accounts a lot more. Its interesting to have Google integration built right in, because getting the Google Calendar syncing to Thunderbird 2 is also not a problem.

Gmail support is such that your mail gets POP-ed down by default, but its also kept on the server. You sort of get the best of both worlds. What obviously doesn’t work, is label support - you tend to get a lot of messages in your Inbox. Then comes the problem of also archiving your messages offline. Its not streamlined, say like IMAP, which is something Google should really consider enabling.

In conclusion…
I’ll play with this a lot more, as I use Thunderbird on Linux and OS X for daily use. I prefer the regular theme now, over the CrossOver theme on the Mac. I dearly miss Sync on Arrival. And I just got annoyed by the new message notification pop-up, as it came up while I was typing this entry! (You can disable it in Preferences, if need be.)

Technorati Tags: thunderbird, thunderbird 2.0, extensions, new UI, usability, google, gmail

Seeing the Mac vs. PC Linux spoofs (thanks Novell!), I believe some people were wondering why Linux was a girl. I saw some comments at various avenues, and I guess Reverand Ted got some flak too:

The general response to us using a woman to play Linux has been positive, and most people say that we did it respectfully and tastefully. (Nevertheless, there have been many disturbingly sexist–sometimes even misogynistic–comments. Whoever writes these awful comments, please get some dignity.)

Its amusing, how people react to this. Let’s put it this way: “chick’s sell”. Look at the Mac Chick of the Month. Does anyone remember Ellen Feiss? Go to any large event that is PC related (E3, PC Fair, etc.) and you’ll notice a lot of ladies, in tight-fitting costumes, trying to flog their products. It works.

I bookmarked, in del.icio.us, the Mac Chick link, and wrote: “Mac Chick of the Month - maybe we need OSS chick of the month? Then again, the LinuxChix might jump all over me for even suggesting that…”

Yes, I actually think its a good idea for a “FLOSS Chick of the Month”. Like cigarette, and liquor companies, we need to sell a lifestyle around FLOSS. We’ve already got a desktop that pretty much anyone can use, now we just need to convert it over. Hardcore gamers are the only one’s that might feel alienated on a Linux desktop, but maybe the “girl power” will win them over :-)

P/S: I’m willing to photograph, and even loan video equipment, though my (FOSS or non-FOSS) video-editing skills leave a lot to be desired.

(I’ll appreciate constructive comments, especially from the women, but if you’re going to flame me, I’m going to laugh out loud, and then paste it online. Oh wait, the comments are already online.)

Technorati Tags: mac chick of the month, linuxchix, mac chick, linux spoofs, women, foss, advertisments, OSS chick of the month