OK, so let me preface this by saying that I’m a total newb at Python coming into this, so that is the perspective I’m writing this from. Looking at packaging tools and managing dependencies for your project is a bit daunting in early 2022. There is a LOT of history with lots of different approaches…
Category: coding
Everything you (n?)ever wanted to know about Unicode
Mostly posting this link as a reminder to myself about how difficult Unicode can get. https://begriffs.com/posts/2019-05-23-unicode-icu.html
Installing therubyracer on Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)
This worked for me on 2014-02-20 after MUCH searching! brew tap homebrew/dupes brew install apple-gcc42 export CC=/usr/local/Cellar/apple-gcc42/4.2.1-5666.3/bin/gcc-4.2 export CXX=/usr/local/Cellar/apple-gcc42/4.2.1-5666.3/bin/g++-4.2 export CPP=/usr/local/Cellar/apple-gcc42/4.2.1-5666.3/bin/cpp-4.2 sudo mv /usr/bin/g++ /usr/bin/g++_apple sudo ln -sf /usr/local/Cellar/apple-gcc42/4.2.1-5666.3/bin/g++-4.2 /usr/bin/g++ gem uninstall libv8 gem install therubyracer -v=0.11.4 sudo mv /usr/bin/g++_apple /usr/bin/g++ See also http://stackoverflow.com/a/21453272/120818
Switching from Rails’ standard testing to RSpec
I’m writing a little mini Rails app (my first one) and I’ve been working with RSpec for other Ruby scripts I’ve been doing so far. However, in my ignorance I did not realize that rails new <app> would generate the standard Rails tests (well, duh! ;] ). So now I’d like to switch to RSpec. Here…
Language Awareness – Ruby
Something to be aware of when dealing with Ruby that the core docs don’t really document clearly enough: explicit vs. implicit conversions. Ruby provides functions like to_i and to_int that at first blush seem to do exactly the same thing. Yet, try to do something like “42”.to_i and you get back the natural-seeming 42 as…
Ruby: debugging a live process
You can attach GDB to a Ruby process and get all sorts of information. Call with gdb /path/to/ruby <PID>, then running call rb_backtrace() from within gdb will get you a stack trace and you can raise exceptions with call rb_raise(rb_eException, “Testing…”). Neat trick, see here for the original source. I should add that in Ruby…
Debugging bash functions
This one took me forever to figure out, so documenting it here in the hopes I’ll remember it now. ;] If you have a function that is sourced from a bash script, it’s hard to debug because you can’t just do the usual {bash}bash -x script.sh{/bash} thing – all that will do is run the…
git is da bomb!
OK, OK, I know, no news here, this is no revelation to anybody but myself, but I’m just so elated I’m finally getting it! ;] http://gitref.org/ really finally got me over the hump and the Git Pro book at http://git-scm.com/book/ is giving me much insight. This is mostly a “note to self” – move along,…
Parse Garmin TCX files
So I was looking at my Vibram FiveFingers Bikila LS shoes and noticed that they started to wear a fair bit on the soles. I then got curious as to how many miles I had put on them. I also have a Garmin Forerunner 305 that I wear on every run, so I figured this…
CakePHP and XDebug
So this is not going to come as much of a shock to people experienced with CakePHP, but I’m just learning now and liking what I’m seeing. CakePHP 1.3 has a really nice set of conventions to work against and provides a seemingly pretty good scaffold for most typical webapps, so I’m thinking I’ll be…