Programming

Late shift

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I’ve tweaked a few things based on my templetfications of the PBI.*.sh scripts, I can’t finish the process totally right now because I’m not at my laptop. While I keep the working (i.e. working on) copy of the file on my Lexar the actual project files including the templets are on my laptops HDD.

To do

  1. Finish pbi installer scripts and option to allow user to hand edit them using kwrite or ee
  2. Allow user to input the license and save it to a file to make a K-Menu link
  3. Fool proof icon setup
  4. Implement GTK+ support to getLibs // Prolly not till later
  5. Add demaind + support for a readme file and weblink k-menu entry, add associated functions
  6. Sort out templets to check if pkg is all ready instaleld, if possible also check for PBI.
  7. Implement “planB” routine(s) to fork out of fkBuild and wrap around PBI Creator, creating a minimalistic PBC file just in case

I don’t want ot have to use PBI Creator for this but if I can get by with generating a PBC file and running PBI Creator from the program. Using the PBC file to provide only what my system can’t do it it’s self. It might make a stop-gap for releasing it early but if it turns out to be the only way. At least it will be ready, not a set back. Considering that PC-BSD is open source under a BSD style license. I could probably poke around and try to find out how to implement some thing my self given enough time but some how I feel that would be redefining the words. Having to “Reverse Engineer” a “Open Source” application which is really an Oxy Moron if I ever heard it. So if the developers can’t help me bypass PBI Creator…. I’ll have to live with it and scream bloody murder if changes to PBI Creator & the .pbc file format ever phL|{|<$ //3 over.

All or nothing

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I’ve gone as far as I can go without being able to generate a PBI file. I’ve e-mailed Tim for help but I don’t know what the response will be at all. I do know I want to avoid using PBI Creator for any thing as much as possible. I’ve also begun setting the ground work for setting up the PBI.SetupScript.sh & PBI.RemoveScript.sh templets to encourage more advanced users to handle interaction with the user based on whether KDE is running or not. Sigh, oh most time to head back to work for a second supprise shift.

General blah

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Starting to hit that busy season, looks like I’ll probably be working (lightly) even on Christmas day. My endovers to automate PBI generation are only lacking the ability to create a PBI file. I know I could just use it to create a .pbc file to use PBI Creator in but PBI Creators issues have been my major reason for not submitting many PBI. I want to move from creating custom install scripts during the build process and instead mod a templet to meet the needs of the project. Short of the out right refusual to help in the PBI generation sector this things going to be completed if I have to install PC-BSD via emulation on my desktop. Installed ksh93 on Vectra to day, looking for a replacement for tcsh with vi editing mode. Only to learn that tcsh has a vi editing mode, slightly different then bourne styles after reading the manuals +S Ksh93 looks live a very good shell so far, I basically wanted a version of ash with completion but without the size of bash. Well I think bash is smaller then ksh but oh well I ‘m used to zsh now 🙂 I also set up my .profile to split config into .kshrc if I login using ksh93 instead of (a)sh. I’ve got to finish my home work and vi how to, rather do the how to then the school work. Been a very stressful day, I never seem to be able to get any rest. Even when I do it’s usually crap. After most of a week, I finnally got to read my mail…. My work with this PBI thing should have been finished the day after Thanksgiving but I couldn’t get the time to do it all in a stretch. Life doesn’t always match up to desire.

AutoPBI

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Well I think it’s about 0300 hard to tell since I’ve been toying with my laptops time systems hehe. I’ve been working on a little gizmo to try and auto-create a PBI so far it’s going well. I need to sort out how to setup the scripts used for installing the PBI. At the most basic level it shouldn’t be that hard but I’m faced with a few design desisons.

Should I keep it to a srictly functionally terse or opt for an easier UI. Really I care more for solid implementations then flashy stuff. A few things I need to get done is making short work of the PBI.SetupScript.sh and PBI.RemoveScript.Sh files auto-generation. I’m not sure what to put in it really. I know I want to prepair the pkg_add and the binaries in it before offering a direct edit. A quick way to add “events” per say, i.e. an easy way of setting up dialog/kdialogs for use would be nice but that can wait awhile lol. If Kris Moore can anwser me how to tell in the script is running in text mode or normal (gui) mode. I could setup dialogs for PBI Text installs and kdialogs for normal click-n-run style.

I’ve got the code working to get basic libraries auto-populated but theres no support for auto-magic setup with GTK+ P.I.T.A. PBI Libbing yet and I need to start the code to quickly run each binary through it. I’m hoping to deside more on the UI before thats totally finished. I may be a newbie but I’m trying to keep each section very self contained and a good managible size as much as I can. I remember reading through some source code files a few K lines of C Code long and getting tired of reading after the first thousand or so lines. So I kinda learned keep it tight when ever I can. I’ve not figured out how to “create” the PBI yet. If possible I’d rather like to bypass PBI Creator all together and see if theres any way to manually setup stuff on the K-Menu e.t.c. Has to be some way since PBI do it as they are.

I remember there was a thing posted on how to make a PBI file for GNU/Linux so I’ll take a look at that when I have it ready to “build” some thing. I’m sure if I worked out how to create a PBC file ether using the Build-A-Function called pipes, filters and redirection or perl/ruby I could make it wrap around PBICreators CLI mode but .. Dunno yet.

What I want this to be, is a simple way to get started building the PBI. I’m not yet desided weather to have the port build from within the program or for a simpler design make one have to do a make package first or not. I also need to test to see how much find, copy, link would be the normal neccessity to setup after the package. Such as prepairing the manpages/configdir stuff. I’m not usre how to work out nabbing the man pages since they could be near any where depending on the app and won’t always be limited to the binaries names.

Really I don’t think I’ve had this much fun in a good while.

rumble

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Well, I’ve had a good day so far. Managed to get in to the server and camp the admin with a few m8s and have a good time. We’ve really been getting a lot of abuse reports for some reason. Oh wellz I hope it settles down soon. Didn’t get to run my Sunday training session b/c I had to walk the dogs but at least we got some Elemental work done.

Been flying ’round Google, Wikipedia, and the OSI site. I love finding good stuff to read ! Spent most of the other day working on my logging app. It’s a simple gizmo mentn to read and write entries from the “Captains-LOG” file I keep under /var/log. Yeah I watched a lot of star trek in the day so sue me 😛

I’ve haven’t worked on the thing in awhile not since I started on the C Standard Library. That was a good while back. I’ve always had problems trying to implement functions analogous to the head, tail, and cat commands but I’ve made some progress. At first I tred to wrap up a copy of FreeBSDs src/usr.bin/head/head.c to include in the file, was kinda shocked I didn’t screw up. Moved every thing into a sub-dir so I wouldn’t lose the header for doing it. I managed to get a perfectly working head going if I called my program with the -t option and the file name. Other wise it didn’t work. I’ve tried toying around with the code and only succeeded in breaking it, well thats the joy of being a noob I suppose. Ripped it all out and started from stratch, got a toFP function for trying to readln the top of the file, based on the head program but alais problems getting it to stick it all on stdin. I’ll get it strightened out some day I’m learning more and more as we go along. When I first started with trying to convert my shell script to a C program the whole File I/O was bran new to me. I can all ready see how a ruby script would be better then C for this but I want it in C, it helps me develop my mind.

I’mg etting better at reading the code in FreeBSDs userland. I usually like to poke around a few things, FreeBSD, Vim, Nano e.t.c. If ya gotta be a newbie with out a teacher or a professional education. May as well get some good reading material !! I really like it, even if I don’t understand every nuounce of it now. I still can follow the jist of how its working. Plus the more I read it and the more I toy with my compiler the more I learn. Man, I’d love some day to try and pick up a language by just using a cheat sheet reference of it and playing around trying to see how it works by exploring it. I study many languages in varing degrees. I started with C++ because it’s what I had heard the most about. I don’t particulary care for C++ but it was a good start. To be honest I wish I had tried to learn SHell scripting first but I didn’t even know the word UNIX back then. Eventually in my bored lazy way of procastination I picked up enough basics of Perl to be able to read stuff better. I had a really old book about learning Java and programming Java Applets that dated back to like, the HotJava web browser. Way back then you needed HotJava or the soon to be finished new version of Netscape to run Java Applets ! SO yeah it’s an old old book but its a fun read. Learning about Java from it thought me two things. Java is a good language and I hate writting it. I love to see software written in Java but I can’t stand writting it and some pure Java programs are har don me peepers. So I learned to read source code a lot better but have only ever written a few lines of Java and don’t plan on writting many more without need !

C always held a bit of a wonder for me, I used to think “Hmm if this is C++ what is C like?” Well one day I found a little tutorial that introduced me to the language. The unusual sense of humor when trying to show the basics of a programming language kept me coming back to it for more data. Eventually I just fell in love with C, it’s so dang logical. I make no claims as to being able to code my way out of a paper bag in any language but I love C. It’s also fun to read programs sources and learn from it. Python, a language I had always been reccomended to try is one I tried to avoid. One time I tried learning it, when on a very rare for me vacation. The white space thing wasn’t as bad as I thought but I don’t like the language. Just not my bag, very good language to work with though. For some very odd reason, I don’t know why I think I must’ve been rumaging around Wikipeda and I desided to try learing Ruby. Yeah I was bored at the time so I had the time to start. My first look at Ruby was when trying to find just the right language for me to start in (people said Python or Java). I hated the site of Ruby code so I never tried it. Yet once I started writting it that day I started to like it. I find I can do a lot more a lot faster in Ruby the nother languages but I pay the price of not being familer with it the way I am with C. When I look around section 3 of the FreeBSD manual I know what I’m dealing with, in Ruby its not always the same. I love Ruby very much now and hope to consintrate my studies on C, SH, and Ruby. One day on a whim I popped over to W3 Schools and started reading about the fundimentals of HTML. Starting to get interested in XHTML/CSS now actually.

Not sure what my future holds for any thing but I remeber the simple fact. The better one reads the easier one learns to write. TTFN chores a shore!

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I’m very tempted to try and put Python + QT to work. A good reference should be able to deal with the diffrences between the C Standard library and what Python offers. I know KPorts is available as a crazy PBI for PC-BSD to give people a gui frontend for ports/packages but. While it gets the job done it’s too darn crashy !

If I could manage to do it (would be learning my first toolkit), a frontend thats got full support for portupgrade and portaduit, strong searching and is reliable + configurable is nice. Functionality, Ease of Use, something thats easy for a newbie but powerful enough to be a professionals tool. Maybe add support for pkgsrc or emerge and stuff in the future. I dunno if I could with how much I know about programming now but there’s always the future.

If I did it I’d want to try and keep things tidy, like so:

Implement code to manage ports

Create a graphical interface using QT

Trim things to allow a great deal of seperation between functional code and user interaction so that it’d be possible to have diffrent GUI’s but not have to rewrite all of or edit most of the code that actually does the job.

Snakes and Rivers

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Starting to learn about python, I’ve always hated python for as much as I’ve seen of it. I’m the kinda guy that likes C/C++, not because of the syntax and loaths Java because I feel it’s to much typing. C/C++ has a very logical style imho. I’m used to stuff like this:

void someFunction(some, params)
{
      int somevar = 1;
      int comvar = 3;
      char anothervar = "something";
      if (somevar < comvar) {
            cout << anothervar;
      }
}

Python feels more like it’d be some thing like: 

def someFunction(some, params):
      """About this function"""
      somevar = 1;
      comvar = 3;
      anothervar = "something";
      if somevar < comvar:
            printf anothervar

So far it’s interesting, never really done much for Object Oriented Programming ether. Well inless you count reading allot of Java a long time back but never writting much.
While I can’t remember why I got into programming, I remember I chose to start off with C++ because I knew it was common and I could find allot, also I found it interesting. Java I’ve read but not written, plenty of reading both about the language and the syntax but I’ve only written like a hello world app. The way I go by how much typing is involved is the Hello world program most tutorials start with. Example / Opinions: 

/* ANSI C */

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Hello, World!n");
    return 0;
}

// My very first C++ program
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
    cout << "Hello World!";
    cin.get();
    return 0;
}

//Simple Hello World program in Java

class HelloJava {
        public static void main(String[] args) {
                System.out.println("Hello Java!");
        }
}

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;

print "Hello, world.n";

#in python
print "Hello, World!"

As you can see, Python was the least involved to print one line of text to standard output. Perl wasn’t so bad, like a shell script + I always use, use warnings with perl. Java doesn’t look bad but 2,000 lines later I think my fingers would wear out. C++ is ok but a bit of prep work, C on the other hand is slightly less. While I reckon doing things in a language is always typing intensive up to a point, how much nitty-typing you need to do some thing short is the Q. Odds are in my book Java is probably better to learn first but C is easier to have to type out things. I must say I do like to hear of app’s done in Java, I can even read it reasonably like a few other languages but I don’t like to use it. I think I’m going to like Python, basically after I started with C++ I got board and switched to Perl learned enough to be able to grasp a few basics (and read it better) then got board. Whent back to C++ studies and started reading about Java. Got tired of C++ and didn’t care for writting Java. Forgot allot of crap from no use, got back into it and tried to learn more about C. Fell inlove with it the second I saw this guide it’s good for learning basic concepts and this guys got a nice sense of humor. I found it useful if not perfect but it did renew my interest in programming. Since then I’ve been playing with C and generally enjoying it.

note to self

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Some quick links I need to study later (mind joggers)

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_formatting.asp

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_lists.asp

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

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