The Pædantic Programmer

http://github.com/cjac/mcs

I’m also hosting it on my own not-as-l33t git repo:

http://git.colliertech.org/?p=mcs.git;a=summary

Does this mean that I get a “cooler than Miguel” tee shirt?

While working on my project for the Spring ’10 “NLP on Mobile Devices” course, I put together a PocketSphinx ndk build. You can pull it down from my git repo:

$ git clone git://colliertech.org/colliertech/PocketSphinx.git

I haven’t written any of the JNI marshaling functions yet, though.

Earlier this month, I applied to the Mono Project (and the University of Washington, and Ubuntu, and Debian, and The Perl Foundation) requesting a mentor to get Perl6 hosted on the DLR.

Last Tuesday, Miguel contacted me and asked that I chat with Michael Hutchinson about possibly taking up a different project. It seems that the group did not have any mentors who felt comfortable mentoring the Perl6 project. After a bit of consideration, I agreed to modify my application and take up a project to revive the regular expression compiler from 2.2.

Today, the project was officially accepted, and I met with my mentor for the first time (hi Rodrigo!).

I will also be working with Matthew Wilson (aka @diakopter), since he has purportedly implemented a number of regex-to-IL compilers ;) He also offered to mentor me if The Perl Foundation had accepted my application, and since he has already implemented a perl6 compiler in javascript, I have been looking forward to poking some code with him.

Although the GSoC doesn’t officially get started until 5/24, I’m making a git-svn checkout now. I’ve always committed the code directly to svn, but I’ve enjoyed working with git, and it seems about time to start contributing via git-svn. It will be easier to have local branches this way, too.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to it ;)

Maybe this will make it more google-able…

Looks like you can export your darcs repo with darcs-fast-export and then import it with git-fast-import

18:15 < wakko666> I have kind of an odd question that google doesn't seem to
                  know. I'm converting a darcs repo to a git repo. i've already
                  got the tool to export the darcs side.   however, i'd like to
                  import the commits into a branch of an existing repository.
                  is this possible?
18:16 < cj> make a remote tracking branch referencing the exported darcs repo?
18:17 < wakko666> cj: thanks for the clue. i'll try it.
18:28 < cj> git remote add darcsthing git://moo/darcsthing.git ; git checkout
            -b darcsthing darcsthing/master
18:28 < cj> oh, there should probably be a git fetch darcsthing in there
            somewhere
18:31 < wakko666> cj: yup, that works. thanks for the help. :)
18:31 < cj> yay.  glad I could help.

We haven’t done much work on keeping the continuous integration (CI) machines online, and there haven’t been any new builds since November of ’09. I should set Nagios to remind us when things get off track or something. The recent acceptance of the DLR into Debian and our intention to get the next release produced has inspired me (and maybe others) to get things back up.

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!

Hey all!

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

*whew* I did a bunch of things yesterday. We took our kindergärtner to her first Friday at her new school (and were about 10 minutes tardy. oops). We then took our toddler to a nearby playground with swings and slides and let her expend some energy. After she had been sufficiently exercised, we walked back home, stopping at a coffee shop on the way. The baristo (you call male baristas “baristos,” right? :) ) recognized my MC Frontalot shirt and asked whether I had caught him the previous weekend at PAX. Unfortunately, I have not attended PAX since 2006, but I *did* purchase the tee directly from The Front himself ;)

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.

It looks like the upload of the Iron* languages to Debian is imminent. We’ve gotten the debian/watch file downloading a tarball of the git tag we’ve chosen for this release. This was the last bit meebey needed in order to present it to the maintainer of ironpython in lenny. He has agreed to let the Debian CLI Libraries Team adopt ironpython under the conditions that our packaging doesn’t suck and that he remains in the uploaders list.

Now that we have a package suitable for review, we have now presented it for said review.

Let me take a moment to mention how excited I am to be involved in packaging for Debian one of the first pieces of DFSG-compliant software sponsored by Microsoft. This is a true community effort with great work done by a lot of hard-working contributors. I believe that Microsoft has put its money where its mouth is with this project.

I have spent a fair amount of time criticising Microsoft for its “embrace and extend” sort of monopolistic actions. Having the somewhat unique experience of being a Debian GNU/Linux early-adopter and growing up in Microsoft’s back yard has given me the opportunity to bring up the concerns that the Free Software community has with the development practices of the 800-pound gorilla. To my surprise, the blue badger engineers with whom I have spoken have been responsive and even proactive in addressing the issues that have made Microsoft so combative toward the F/OSS development community. I see this as a very important step toward reconciling some poignant differences in the community.

I sent an email to the Fedora Legal list asking whether they will accept software released under the MS-PL license. My friend and former colleague, Brett Lentz mentioned that he was concerned that the Fedora folks might not accept software released under the MS-PL. So I asked. I also bcc’d a certain troll on said mail so as to get lots of flame mail. I’m practicing to become a master twitterbaiter.

14:43 < cj> wakko666: so… we are building ironruby/ironpython debian packages over on OFTC/#debian-cli
14:43 < wakko666> k
14:43 < cj> meebey just packaged up mono 2.4.2.3 in .deb
14:44 < cj> with some backported patches required to get the DLR language engines running correctly
14:44 < wakko666> k
14:44 < cj> we’re using xbuild to perform the build, thanks to ankit’s recent patches.
14:44 < cj> alarm went off. need to address food.
14:44 < wakko666> i know that mono is already in Fedora.
14:45 < cj> great. any idea what version?
14:45 < wakko666> http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=30
14:45 < cj> we’ll need 2.4.2.3 + some patches. This is pretty bleeding edge, but I expect the fedora packagers are as ‘on it’ as the debian folks
14:46 < wakko666> fedora tends to be a bit further ahead of the curve than the debian folks
14:46 < cj> we can supply them the patches required. they are also being merged into the 2.4 branch, so should be in the next official release
14:46 < wakko666> k.. shouldn’t be a problem.
14:47 < cj> here is the tarball we’re using to build the .deb
14:47 < cj> http://github.com/mletterle/ironruby/tarball/20090805+git.e6b28d27
14:49 < cj> most of the stuff you’ll need as far as build commands go are in debian/rules:
http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-cli-libs/packages/dlr-languages.git;a=tree;f=debian;h=8e4c0abc01ba2db27fe66d508317cef3b574fd3a;hb=f3c10b84cf5f12cb670d14232263ac81662ff714
14:49 < cj> I’ve got to finish making lunch for kids ;)
14:49 < cj> back shortly.
14:55 < wakko666> cj: my main concern about packaging ironruby is licensing. Fedora will accept packages under the MS-Shared-Source license [ed: this is not at all true.], but the MS-PL isn’t on their list of acceptable license. [ed: it is now.]
14:58 < cj> wakko666: alrighty. jschementi is the guy to talk with about licensing issues. He’ll be back some time soon, I’m sure
14:58 < wakko666> of course, i can always write the spec file and you guys can host your own rpms, but it would be nice to actually get it into Fedora proper.
14:59 < cj> also, MS-PL is dfsg compliant and OSL-approved. Is it a decision to deny MS-PL or that it just hasn’t been reviewed yet?
14:59 < wakko666> not sure. we’d need to ask on the fedora-legal-list mailing list
14:59 < wakko666> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#SoftwareLicenses
15:00 < cj> alright. at another time. it’s nap time for scarlet and zelda. ;)
15:01 < wakko666> sure thing. if you ping the fedora-legal list, let me know what they have to say.
19:49 < cj> wakko666: firestorm initiated.

cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ sudo dpkg -i ironruby-cil_0.9.0+dfsg_all.deb
Selecting previously deselected package ironruby-cil.
(Reading database ... 67034 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking ironruby-cil (from ironruby-cil_0.9.0+dfsg_all.deb) ...
Setting up ironruby-cil (0.9.0+dfsg) ...
cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ which ir
/usr/bin/ir
cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ ir
IronRuby 0.9.0.0 on Mono 2.4.2.3
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

>>> exit