When we were living at 6162 NE Middle in the nine-eight 292, we got an 80386 which ran Doom. Yeah, the original one, not the fancy new one with the double barrel shotgun, but it would probably run that one, too. It was also totally sweet and all thanks to our armadillo friends down south and partially thanks to their publishers, Apogee. I suckered my brothers into giving me their allowance from Dad one time so that we could all go in on a Sound Blaster Pro 16 sound card for the family’s 386. I played a lot of Team Fortress and Q2CTF on that rig. I even attended the Quake 3 Arena launch party that happened at Zoid‘s place. I recall that he ported the original quake to Linux. I also recall there being naughty remarks included in the README.txt.

When my older brother, Aaron turned 16, he was gifted a fancy car. When asked what type of car I would like when I turned 16, I said that I’d prefer a computer instead. So I got a high-end 80486 with math co-processor. It could compile the kernel in 15 minutes flat. With all the bits turned on on in /usr/src/linux/.config. But this was later. I hadn’t even heard of linux when I got my system. I wanted to be entertained by the thing. I made sure to get a CD-Rom and a sound card. I got on the beta for Ultima Online and spent a summer as a virtual collier. Digging stuff out of mines north of Britannia and hauling them to town to make weapons and armor out of them. And then setting out in said armor only to be PK’d because I forgot healing potions and I was no good at fighting.

While I was in the middle of all this gaming, my friend Lucas told me that I should try out this lynx thing that they run at the University of Washington. He heard that it was reported to run doom faster than it ran on MS-DOS. It turns out that it did, but that it was not, in fact, called lynx. Or pine. The Doom engine ran so fast that the video couldn’t keep up. This was probably because they didn’t use double buffering for frame display, since they didn’t want to waste the time maintaining and switching context. I think I downloaded the boot/root 3.5″ disk pair and was able to get the system to a shell with an on-phone assist from the Rev. I then promptly got lost in bash and the virtual terminals (OMG! I GET SIX CONSOLES!?) and bought a book on the subject. It shipped with slackware. Which I ran. Until Debian came along. Lucas also recommended that I try out this IRC thing, so I did. And I’m still doing it on #linpeople just like I did back then.

I learned to write Pascal on dos. Then I learned c while they were trying to teach me c++. I learned emacs and vi when I was attending North Kitsap High School. I learned sed and only a little awk when I took Running Start classes in Lynnwood at Edmonds Community College and perl & x.509 while attending Olympic Community College and simultaneously jr-administering Sinclair Communications. I studied TCP/IP, UNP, APUE, C and algorithms & data structures while preparing for an interview with a company whose CEO claimed to have invented SCSI. I learned PGP and PHP while writing web-based adware for this company. I didn’t want to write ads and instead wanted to work in security, so took a job with Security Portal. While there, I wrote what one might call a blogging platform. It worked and made it possible for authors to write prose and poetry. Editors didn’t have to manage a database in order to review and publish the posts that were “ready.” Everyone but me was able to avoid html and cgi.

Then I sold pizza. Then I helped bring the bombay company onto the interwebs using the Amazon ECS (now AWS) platform. Then I helped support MaxDB. Then I helped develop and maintain the Amazon blogging platform. And then attempted to reduce the load on the Amazon pager system by doing and enforcing code reviews. It turns out that they prefer to run their support team at full bore and a load average of 16.

I am now, still, fully employed in an effort to make hard things possible. The hard thing we’re working on now is the implementation and ongoing operations of distributed x.500 infrastructure. This includes request handling, processing and delivery of response (à la HTTP, SMTP, IMAP, SIP, RTP, RTSP, OCSP) including authentication, authorization and auditing (AAA) of all transactions. It’s a hard thing to get right, but our product development team gets it right. Consistently and reliably. We make mistakes sometimes (sorry Bago), but we correct them and make the product better.

I’m the newest member of an R and d team (note: big R, little d) called NTR, which sits behind the firewall that is Product Development, out of production space. In a manner that reminds me of Debian Testing. We try new things. Our current project is to allow users to compare their current (cloud-based or iron-based) IT system with what their system would be like with a BIG-IP in front of it. I can probably come up with a demo if anyone’s interested in checking it out. I’ll go work on that now.

I’m not just sitting on my hands while this happens. I’ve been working with Ivan, Ankit, Dino and Michael to get the next version of the package put together. I’m currently merging Ivan’s latest branch into the changes I’ve made for DFSG compliance. Dino recommended that the next release include IronRuby 1.0 and IronPython 2.6.1, which should be released by upstream around the middle of April.

Ivan and I put a couple of Hudson instances up recently that you can reach via hudson-windows.colliertech.org and hudson-linux.colliertech.org. The linux instance is dropping new builds of IronRuby to http://dlrci.colliertech.org/ironruby/. I expect we can tweak the build script a bit and have it also produce IronPython builds. This would hypothetically drop the builds to http://dlrci.colliertech.org/ironpython/.

Ivan mentioned that we may get CNAME records which would activate the windows-builds.ironruby.net and linux-builds.ironruby.net hosts as well.

Note that these builds are being produced from the linux branch of git://github.com/casualjim/ironruby.git

Thanks for your work on this, Ivan!

So. Later ;)

P.S., can you believe that nobody registered a11y.com before now? Crazy talk.

P.P.S., does anyone out there in gnome land have a ruby app they want to test for compatibility with IronRuby?

Install Mono

You can grab the Mono .dmg from go-mono.com. This will install the framework and put the required programs (mono, xbuild) in your PATH.

Fetch the IronRuby source

Since Jim Deville likes macs, I’m sure more recent versions will work, but this is the one we’ve recently packaged up for Debian and tested on Ubuntu. If you want to be certain that the IronRuby code you write on Debian works on OS X, then you should probably build from the same version of the source. You should probably also install version 2.4.3 of Mono, but that may be more effort than it’s worth ;)

http://github.com/mletterle/ironruby/tarball/20090805+git.e6b28d27

Unpack the tarball

Open up a terminal and unpack the thing you just downloaded:

$ mkdir ~/src/
$ cd ~/src/
$ tar xfz ~/Desktop/mletterle-ironruby-e6b28d2.tar.gz
$ cd mletterle-ironruby-e6b28d2/

Build IronRuby

At this point, you should be able to build the IronRuby assemblies using xbuild. I don’t recommend using rake, as it has some dependencies, and I’m not a fan of dependencies.

$ xbuild /p:TreatWarningsAsErrors=false Merlin/Main/Languages/Ruby/Ruby.sln
<snip/>
Build succeeded.
	 2817 Warning(s)
	 0 Error(s)

Time Elapsed 00:00:28.8378230

Run the IronRuby interactive interpreter

Our guest mentioned that he was using a terminal with a white background. Do note that the font color of the interactive interpreter (aka Read-Eval-Print Loop or REPL) is white, so if you’re using a white background, you might want to change it. IIRC, there is a way to change the font color using a configuration setting. Figuring it out is left as an exercise for the reader.

$ mono Merlin/Main/Bin/Debug/ir.exe
IronRuby 0.9.0.0 on 2.6.3 (tarball Wed Mar 10 18:18:12 MST 2010)
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

>>> 1+2
=> 3
>>> exit()

Extra credit: IronPython

The tarball you downloaded also included the source to IronPython. The procedure to build/run IronPython is pretty similar to IronRuby.

Build IronPython

Unlike IronRuby’s .sln, this version of IronPython’s .sln does not have a default configuration parameter, so we need to specify it with the /p:Configuration=Debug argument.

$ xbuild /p:TreatWarningsAsErrors=false /p:Configuration=Debug Merlin/Main/Languages/IronPython/IronPython.sln
<snip/>
	 69 Warning(s)
	 0 Error(s)

Time Elapsed 00:00:38.8057450

Run the IronPython interactive interpreter

IronPython has a REPL interface like IronRuby’s. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, here’s an example.

$ mono .//Merlin/Main/Bin/Debug/ipy.exe    
IronPython 2.6 Beta 2 DEBUG (2.6.0.20) on .NET 2.0.50727.1433
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 1+2
3
>>> ^D

Kudos for this release go to Jo Sheilds (package sponsorship & mentoring), Mirco Bauer (package sponsorship & mentoring), Matthias Klose (IronPython package review), Ivan Porto Carrero (IronRuby build/test support), Michael Letterle (IronRuby build/test support), Jim Deville (IronRuby build/test support), Jimmy Schementi (upstream point of contact @ Microsoft), Dino Viehland (IronPython build/test support), Michael Foord (IronPython build/test support), Marek Safar (mono c# compiler support), Ankit Jain (xbuild support), the folks on OFTC’s #debian-cli, Freenode’s #ironruby and GimpNet’s #mono, and the folks on the IronRuby and IronPython mailing lists.

This is my first package in Debian, too. I’m pretty ecstatic ;)

We will discuss things here such as Mono, GNOME and Debian. We may even use it to talk about work on the DLR project stuff.

I’m sorry I haven’t been very active with my packages recently. I all-of-a-sudden started grad school and have been swamped with studying. I also started a contract and have been busy trying to learn a new codebase while contributing something other than snark.

I promise I’ll get back to packaging IronRuby and IronPython on Mono for Debian as soon as things start settling down. Getting an A in the class is higher priority, though, sorry…

Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you ;)

Cheers,

C.J.

PS, I am implementing a Perl library to exercise my understanding of the class. You can follow along at the search.cpan.org page for Lingua::HPSG or by cloning the git repo:

$ git clone git://karma.colliertech.org/colliertech/langparser

When we got home, I worked a bit on an English Language parser implementation and then went to the University of Washington to meet with Emily Bender about getting in to the Professional Master’s program in Computational Linguistics. It all looks good, and I even got the good news that the GRE is no longer required!

After the meeting, I headed home and poked at the parser for a little while longer. I then picked Scarlet up from after-school care and brought her home. I then hopped in the car and drove toward Bellevue to meet up with Monty while he’s in town. I over-estimated the amount of time traffic would steal on my way to Bellevue, and had an extra hour to blow. So I dropped by building 41 and shot the IronPython bull with Dino. It turns out he’s got an android phone, too. I told him it was possible to put a debian chroot on it and that he should even be able to ‘apt-get install ironpython’ to his phone soon ;) We talked briefly about the CodePlex Foundation and Sam Ramji’s departure from The Evil Empire. Dino seems skeptical about the project. I don’t have enough information to have much of an opinion. However, it sounds like some folks I trust are involved, so I’m hopeful.

I left MS just in time to make it to the wrong address at the specified time. My phone had just enough juice to call Monty to get the right address and then use the navigation system to find my way there. I wasn’t able to make reservations at the place we intended to go for dinner until 8:15, so we went to the Barnes & Noble for a bit. They only had one NLP book in stock and the examples are all in Python. I should learn that language one of these days… As we were leaving the Pacific Place, Monty mentioned to me that he is on the advisory board for the CodePlex Foundation, and that they have been responsive enough to his input that they changed the Mission statement, at his recommendation, just one day before the Foundation was publicized. He feels that this is a very good direction for Microsoft to be heading.

My brother Chris was kind enough to watch the kids while we went out to dinner. Quick note: he recently graduated from UW with a BA in Electrical Engineering and is looking for work using his acquired knowledge, in case anyone needs one of those ;)

We met up with my wife, Hannah and our friends, Mike & Cynthia at our place. Monty graciously avoided mentioning the terrible state in which our apartment has recently found itself. The kids were super cute and polite and said hi/bye.

Over dinner we discussed building an android app (Monty has one, too ;) ) to automate the process of creating bounties for apps and getting folks to implement them. We also talked about MySQL and MariaDB, of course. Hannah and I recalled my time working for MySQL, Inc. on the MaxDB project and some subtle cultural differences we noticed while traveling. It was interesting getting the inside scoop about the Sun acquisition and some of the recent goings-on in the MySQL/Sun/Oracle world. I wasn’t aware, for instance, that the EU is balking on the merger because of monopoly concerns.