Posted
6 days
ago
by
troyt
We've just released ActivePython 3.1.
There are lots of cool and useful things in this release, but since I'm
not one of the Python gurus around here, I sent some questions about it
to Sridhar Ratnakumar, who is.
Here's the resulting
... [More]
Q & A:
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What do you do at ActiveState?
I am currently the main developer behind ActivePython. I'm working on
extending the distribution and creating a binary package management
system similar to ActivePerl's ppm.
Core Python 3.1 was released on June 27th. ActivePython 3.1 was
released two days later. That's a fast turn-around. How did you manage
that?
We had an interim public release of 3.1b1 which required some build
issue fixes, but the 3.1 final release did not introduce further build
errors. We've put a lot of work into automating the ActivePython build
system, so once Python 3.1 was released, I was able to prepare the RCs
the next day. We then put the builds through QA before public
release.
There are now Windows x64 builds with this release. Have a lot
of people been asking for this?
Lack of Win64 builds was a common complaint both from the
community and our enterprise users, so we focused on resolving the
Windows x64 build issues to make it available in the 2.6.2.2 and
2.5.4.4 releases (April 27).
Have we contributed any changes or fixes to core Python
recently?
Yes, I think a couple of them related to build issues were
committed to trunk after the 3.1 release. We already have a set of
private patches that fix build issues on old Unix platforms. These
will also be submitted back to the Python community.
What's the process for doing this?
There is no fixed process, it is simply a matter of reporting
the bug (optionally with the patch) at bugs.python.org and then
letting the discussion evolve.
There are obviously a number of changes to the language between
2.5 and 3.0. Are there any differences between 3.0 and 3.1 that people
should be aware of?
As with any major.minor version upgrade, yes. It is recommended
that people read the "What's
New In Python 3.1" document. Those moving from Python 2.x should
definitely have a look at "What's
New In Python 3.0".
There are a lot of bug fixes and improvements in 3.1 too.
Any of these worth mentioning?
The I/O library has been rewritten in C in the 3.1
release, and thus is significantly faster than 3.0's pure Python
version. Tcl/Tk was upgraded to 8.5.7 and Tix to 8.4.3 [for tkinter].
We upgraded openssl in the previous release (2.6.2.2 and 3.1.0b1.1).
There are also two new classes in the collections module - ordered
dictionaries (OrderedDict) and Counter.
The tkinter.ttk
module adds theming support for the tkinter GUI toolkit, and the
importlib
module, contributed by Brett
Cannon, provides a pure-python (portable) implementation of import. [Less]
Posted
22 days
ago
by
troyt
If you've visited any of the ActiveState sites lately, you've probably seen
that we're giving away a Dell netbook to a lucky Workspace
project owner in about a month.
I'd been looking at getting a netbook for a while, so I looked
... [More]
over
the various ones currently available.
Since I use Ubuntu on my main workstation, the thought of having it
preinstalled on a laptop really appealed to me. In fact, I'd been
looking for something like this for a while. A few years ago I went so
far as to install
NetBSD on my old NEC MobilePro 780. I stopped short of trying to
build Komodo on it, but I did waste a fair bit of time trying to get the
thing to actually be useful. I did end up using it as a portable ssh
terminal (after spending hours getting a wifi card to work). I could
edit files in Vim if I wanted to, and use a few other command-line
tools, but running X was a never very stable. There wasn't a lot of
software available from the NetBSD package repositories for the MIPS
platform, and it really wasn't much fun to use.
So I trawled through the review sites and eventually decided on a Dell
Inspiron Mini 10v - like the one we're giving away. I ordered the
Ubuntu version.
It arrived the other day, and I've been putting it through it's
paces. So far, so good. Here's a summary of what works well:
Boots quickly.
Suspends and restores properly - something I was never able to get working
properly on laptops I've installed Linux or BSD on myself.
The base-level 120GB drive is quiet and big enough for my purposes.
Video playback is fine (with Ubuntu - some reviewers have reported
artifacts and glitches running Windows XP)
Wifi "just works" with all the networks I've tried.
Battery life is decent (around two and a half hours with the
base-model 3-cell battery), and the battery monitoring widget in the
taskbar gives you a pretty good estimate of how much time you have left.
Keyboard is usable, and actually quite nice once you get used to
the (slightly) smaller layout.
These are things which most people expect to work well on
any laptop, but there were some pleasant surprises too...
The small screen size is not much of a problem, especially when
using the 'Ctrl+Alt+F' fullscreen switch for application windows. You
quickly get used to switching to this mode, and for web browsing
it's nice to get that extra screen real-estate.
Skype works. This shouldn't be a surprise, but having
fought to get it working on another Ubuntu system, it was nice to be
able to get it up and running so quickly with no additional
configuration required for the built in webcam.
A little LED "night light" on the AC power connector. It gives you
just enough light to help you attach the cable in the dark.
A nice selection of pre-installed software: OpenOffice, Adobe
Reader, Firefox, Evolution, Pidgin, GIMP (though it's not listed in
the menus for some reason), and a couple of usable media players.
There are a few nits of course, but surprisingly few:
The trackpad buttons are part of the trackpad. This takes some
getting used to, and you may find yourself accidentally triggering
them with your thumb.
Trackpad scrolling: Not sure if this is a nit or a pleasant
surprise. Before I figured out what was happening, I thought my
application windows were suffering from some kind of periodic
spastic scrolling disorder. It turns out my thumbs were hitting parts
of the trackpad reserved for horizontal and vertical scrolling (bottom
and right sides respectively). This is incredibly handy once you
know they're there, but disconcerting for a laptop neophite
like myself. This is, of course, configurable in the system
preferences, so if my thumbs can't learn to behave I can turn it
off.
I'm happy to report that Komodo and all the other
ActiveState tools run well on the Inspiron Mini. I use SVN on Workspace to keep documents
in sync between the netbook and my main workstation - this does an
end-run around the synchronization problems I've always had when using a
laptop previously.
I suppose the thing I like best about this netbook is that it's
running Linux and I didn't have to install and configure it
myself. A lot of people still claim Linux is unsuitable for "the
desktop", citing the supposedly difficult install experience and
problems getting all the hardware configured. Well, Dell deserves some
credit for giving Ubuntu a fair shake here. The experience I get when I
first turn on this machine is not unlike that of someone turning on a
new Windows or Mac laptop:
the OS is there and all the hardware works with it.
Stop the presses!
Do my internets deceive me? Is it true that the Mini 10v Ubuntu, like
universal healthcare and curling on TV is not available in the
United States? I could have sworn I saw it on the US Dell site just
weeks ago. Hilariously, the website still has a "Select my Operating
System" page in the configuration wizard, with "Genuine Windows® XP
Home Edition SP3" as the only option. Perhaps it's time for them to
remove the "Help
Me Choose" link too.
Well, at least you can still get it in an assortment of pretty
colors. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
troyt
We've been getting a lot of people asking when we're going to support
Git in Workspace. It's a fair question,
but the best answer I can give at the moment is "As soon as we possibly
can." Workspace is based on Trac, and
getting Git to
... [More]
integrate well with Trac and all of the plug-ins available on
Workspace is quite a challenge.
In the meantime, you can use Git locally with a centralized
SVN repository by way of git-svn.
This tool, which comes with most distributions of Git, allows you to make a
local clone of an SVN repository, work with the local repository just like you
would any other Git clone, then sync your changes back to the SVN repository -
with your local Git commit history preserved as individual SVN commits. It's
obvious the Git developers wanted to make it easy for people to migrate from SVN
to Git, and they've succeeded.
I've written up some instructions
for using git-svn with Workspace, but this only covers the most basic of
operations. Git is pretty new to me, so rather than regurgitate the tutorials of
others, here they are:
Effectively
Using Git With Subversion (This is the one that got me started)
An introduction to
git-svn for Subversion/SVK users and deserters
Getting
up and running on git-svn
Howto use Git
and svn together
... and of course, there's always the git-svn man
page which includes a few useful examples.
If you're one of the folks waiting for Mercurial support in
Workspace, some third party
tools are available that allow you to do the same kind of thing.
I've been trying this out a bit with Komodo IDE's source code control
integration, and all the Git operations work as expected. Adding a few saved
"run commands" to handle the git-svn side would make things pretty much
seamless. More on that when I've gotten into this a bit more, right now I'm
still at the "Wow! This is so cool!" stage. [Less]
Posted
2 months
ago
by
jeffg
I just downloaded and installed Ubuntu Server 9.04 in a VM Image strictly for the purposes of setting up a simple local dev environment on my MacBook. This is the base image, which I want to configure with some useful but general capabilities. The
... [More]
features are:
LAMP stack, SSH server, svn, git, python, ruby, capistrano, etc
my user account and keys set up for easy ssh access and sudo provileges
netatalk and avahi-daemon
The first two points are pretty standard; the Ubuntu Server install allows you to add LAMP during the installation process, as well as Open SSH Server. Easy, right?
So what's up with the 3rd point? As I am using OS X and VMWare Fusion, I can take advantage of the Mac platform to allow some ease-of use. If you're not familiar with Bonjour and AFP, it's quite slick. First off, the VM shows up in Finder's left-side bar:
Using avahi and afp this way allows me to edit files in Komodo as if they are local, which has important advantages over remote file editing via sftp or similar. The main advantage is of course that I still get SVN status on my files via Komodo.
The other interesting advantage doesn't have to do with Netatalk / AFP, but just with how DNS works over Bonjour:
The procedure I used to get this running has been documented here with an alternative version here. the upshot is that for Netatalk to work with Leopard, you need to compile it yourself with SSL support:
sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev
sudo apt-get install devscripts
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
apt-get source netatalk
sudo apt-get build-dep netatalk
sudo apt-get install cracklib2-dev
cd netatalk-2.0.3
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=ssl debuild
sudo dpkg -i ../netatalk_2.0.3-3ubuntu1_i386.deb
You'll also wnat to set the custom Netatalk package to 'hold':
echo "netatalk hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
The nice thing abou this image now is that I can tuck away a copy of it for any future project and know that, with a few configuration changes, I can get a project running on the VM and be happily coding away toute suite.
Next steps? I'm going to finally start doing a few things I've wanted to get around to for a while, in particular managing my shell environment customizations / aliases / scripts in svn, and easily deploying applications to the vm using Capistrano scripts. [Less]
Posted
2 months
ago
by
jeffg
We've just posted the speakers / sessions list on the Open Web Vancouver site, and I have to say I'm quite proud of the amazing set of talks and speakers we've attracted this
... [More]
year:
http://www.openwebvancouver.ca/speakers_sessions
Now, I think *all* the talks are going to be great, but my personal top five *personally most excited about* sessions have to be ( in no particular order ):
A8Ning - Open Web Testing ( Luke Closs )
Drupal: Under the Hood ( Angela Byron )
Performance Tuning MySQL ( Morgan Tocker )
Sometimes you need to rewrite the code...
How and Why to Extend Firefox in Javascript ( Graham King )
Ok, and one more, now that I look at the list again:
Sinatra ( Blake Mizerany )
Clearly, I'm a web hacker at heart. One of the more fascinating things about this year's schedule is the heavy emphasis on implementing Open Web technologies to further an open society and open data.
I'm also very pleased that Mozilla has a significant presence this year. MoMo CEO ( and my old boss ) David Ascher submitted an intriguing talk called 'Open Messaging on the Open Internet'. As well, not only are we getting Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer to come and talk about Bespin and the future of web apps, but Mozilla has kindly agreed to cover their travel expenses, which greatly helps in our little conference's ability to cover the massive Wifi bill we're incurring with Bell just get everyone web access. =)
Did I mention early bird pricing ends May 10? Register now!! [Less]
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