Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Java application launched from PPC or bad stub

If you see this in your OSX Console log after trying to launch a Java application, the problem is obvious - you've been given an application with a Java stub launcher that cannot be run on your version of OSX.

The solution is a little less obvious.

$cp /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub 
 /Applications/<APPNAME>.app/Contents/MacOS


Some nasty log messages from trying to log an install4j based app that suffered this problem

Notice 2010-09-15 11:29:16 PM [0x0-0x80080].com.install4j.5517-2803-0637-4585.7502[2585] [JavaAppLauncher Warning] Java application launched from PPC or bad stub. Relaunching in 32-bit, and tagging sub-processes to prefer 32-bit with $JAVA_ARCH=i386. 
Notice 2010-09-15 11:29:16 PM [0x0-0x80080].com.install4j.5517-2803-0637-4585.7502[2585] [JavaAppLauncher Warning] Java application launched from PPC or bad stub. Relaunching in 32-bit, and tagging sub-processes to prefer 32-bit with $JAVA_ARCH=i386. 
Notice 2010-09-15 11:29:16 PM [0x0-0x80080].com.install4j.5517-2803-0637-4585.7502[2585] [JavaAppLauncher Error] This process is [i386] and was re-exec'd from [i386], but for some reason we are trying re-exec to []. 
Notice 2010-09-15 11:29:16 PM [0x0-0x80080].com.install4j.5517-2803-0637-4585.7502[2585] [JavaAppLauncher Error] unable to find a version of Java to launch 
Notice 2010-09-15 11:29:16 PM [0x0-0x80080].com.install4j.5517-2803-0637-4585.7502[2585] [JavaAppLauncher Error] unable to find a version of Java to launch 
Warning 2010-09-15 11:29:16 PM com.apple.launchd[1556] ([0x0-0x80080].com.install4j.5517-2803-0637-4585.7502[2585]) Exited with exit code: 1 

Sunday, June 13, 2010

How to fix the Apple Magic Mouse Jitters

I just bought a new Apple Wireless Keyboard and an Apple Magic Mouse for my 2008 model Mac Pro. I am anticipating a future MacBook Pro purchase so wanted to get used to the new keyboard size and have a mouse for the road.

For the first few hours of use I noticed the mouse movement very jittery. This is a very common problem as I found out. I tried several things first such as:

  • uninstall USB Overdrive
  • install Apple Magic Mouse drivers
  • change the wireless router channel to avoid possible interference
  • tweak mouse track speed settings using MouseZoom preferences
  • restart, restart, restart....
Finally I decided to try the solution suggested in this thread, using this pdf as a guide. Basically it is a hardware hack to make the bluetooth module antenna longer. Proud to say it worked perfect when all else failed - this despite having my mouse less than 3 feet from the box on the floor. Pfff....


Saturday, May 15, 2010

Building Nexus behind Nexus

While building Nexus I got a failure because org.sonatype.spice.inject:guice-plexus:pom:1.1.0-SNAPSHOT was missing.

Like any sane Maven user, I use a local repository manager (Nexus) and I knew I had the Sonatype Forge Repo proxied in my local Nexus install so ... strange I thought.

However searching for the artifact at http://repository.sonatype.org revealed it's direct path was under http://repository.sonatype.org/service/local/repositories/snapshots/content.

After adding a proxy to that repo, I was able to build Nexus no problem. Folks on IRC confirmed this is the way to go when building behind Nexus.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Maven: How to prevent generate-sources phase executing twice

The Problem

So, you've been using Maven to build your project. You require to generate some sources, so you've figured out how to attach a plugin goal to the generate-sources lifecycle phase. This looks like it works great for a while running mvn package ....

When you decide to finally release your project using the maven-release-plugin, you notice that your source generation plugin executes twice, slowing your build and possibly even breaking it. You are now trying to figure out why your sources are being generated twice, or more specifically why the generate-sources lifecycle phase is being executed twice.

You predictably do a google search and scan the Maven issues. You find several complaints and reports open that mention a similar problem related to the maven-sources-plugin sources:jar goal causing the generate-sources phase to execute twice. Suprisingly these issues are marked fix or mention what looks like a workaround and no matter what you do, the plugin goals you have attached to the generate-sources phase are still being executed twice.

Here I attempt to explain what is really going on and provide you a real workaround for it.

History

An old relic of the maven-release-plugin is that in Maven's Super POM there is defined a profile with id of release-profile. It can be activated by the releaseProfile property being set, in this case to true. This was/is a way for the release plugin to activate the creation of source and javadoc jars for a release by default. The profile defines a maven-source-plugin and maven-javadoc-plugin configuration that attaches the jar goals of those plugins to the package phase.

So what this means is that when using the maven-release-plugin or activating the release-profile manually by setting the releaseProfile property, source:jar goal gets called during the build, which will trigger the execution of generate-sources lifecycle phase to run, even if it already did in the same build.

Changing the Maven Super POM to instead call source:jar-no-fork would fix this issue, yet changing the Super POM is not something taken lightly, and in fact may have never been proposed for this case.

Until the problem is permanently addressed, here I outline a workaround that prevents the duplicate generate-sources phase from running.

Workaround

I've tested the following instructions with Maven 2.0.11, 2.2.1 and 3.0-beta-1. The version of maven-source-plugin used was 2.1.1.

  1. First lets reproduce the problem on a sample project. Using the maven-archetype-plugin is the simplest way.
    mvn archetype:generate
    
  2. Next since the problem is that generate-sources phase gets run twice, we need a visual cue when this occurs. A simple solution is attach a message to this phase with the maven-antrun-plugin.

    Add the following to your test project pom.xml:
    <build>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>1.3</version>
          <executions>
            <execution>
              <id>generate-sources-flag</id>
              <phase>generate-sources</phase>
              <goals>
                <goal>run</goal>
              </goals>
              <configuration>
                <tasks>
                  <echo>GENERATE SOURCES IS EXECUTING</echo>
                </tasks>
              </configuration>
            </execution>
          </executions>
        </plugin>
      </plugins>
    </build>
    
  3. Next lets verify that the generate-sources phase is getting executed twice when activating the release-profile. The release profile defined in the super pom gets activated by setting the performRelease property on the cmd line.

    $mvn clean install -DperformRelease=true
    Using Java version: 1.6
    [INFO] Scanning for projects...
    [INFO]
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO] Building nofork 1.0-SNAPSHOT
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-clean-plugin:2.4:clean (default-clean) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Deleting /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-antrun-plugin:1.3:run (generate-sources-flag) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Executing tasks
         [echo] GENERATE SOURCES IS EXECUTING
    [INFO] Executed tasks
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.4.2:resources (default-resources) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] Using platform encoding (MacRoman actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/src/main/resources
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3:compile (default-compile) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding MacRoman, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/classes
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.4.2:testResources (default-testResources) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] Using platform encoding (MacRoman actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/src/test/resources
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding MacRoman, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/test-classes
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-surefire-plugin:2.5:test (default-test) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Surefire report directory: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/surefire-reports
    
    -------------------------------------------------------
     T E S T S
    -------------------------------------------------------
    Running com.company.AppTest
    Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.029 sec
    
    Results :
    
    Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
    
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.3:jar (default-jar) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Building jar: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
    [INFO]
    [INFO] >>> maven-source-plugin:2.1.1:jar (attach-sources) @ nofork >>>
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-antrun-plugin:1.3:run (generate-sources-flag) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Executing tasks
         [echo] GENERATE SOURCES IS EXECUTING
    [INFO] Executed tasks
    [INFO]
    [INFO] <<< maven-source-plugin:2.1.1:jar (attach-sources) @ nofork <<<
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-source-plugin:2.1.1:jar (attach-sources) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Building jar: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-sources.jar
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-javadoc-plugin:2.5:jar (attach-javadocs) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] Source files encoding has not been set, using platform encoding MacRoman, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    Loading source files for package com.company...
    Constructing Javadoc information...
    Standard Doclet version 1.6.0_17
    Building tree for all the packages and classes...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//App.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-frame.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-summary.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-tree.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/constant-values.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//class-use/App.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-use.html...
    Building index for all the packages and classes...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/overview-tree.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/index-all.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/deprecated-list.html...
    Building index for all classes...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/allclasses-frame.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/allclasses-noframe.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/index.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/help-doc.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/stylesheet.css...
    [INFO] Building jar: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-install-plugin:2.3:install (default-install) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Installing /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar to /Volumes/D/m2r/com/company/nofork/1.0-SNAPSHOT/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
    [INFO] Installing /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-sources.jar to /Volumes/D/m2r/com/company/nofork/1.0-SNAPSHOT/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-sources.jar
    [INFO] Installing /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar to /Volumes/D/m2r/com/company/nofork/1.0-SNAPSHOT/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO] Total time: 11.162s
    [INFO] Finished at: Thu May 13 10:39:58 EDT 2010
    [INFO] Final Memory: 13M/264M
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    

    Notice our message gets printed twice, verifying the double execution. So lets proceed to fix the problem.
  4. Make the following additions to your pom.xml.
    1. First we override the super-pom maven-sources-plugin execution with id of attach-sources. This excution is what calls the source:jar goal. The special trick used here binds this execution to a non-existent lifecycle phase of DISABLE_FORKED_LIFECYCLE_MSOURCES-13 - a phase which will never be reached, thus essentially disabling this execution.

      <pluginManagement>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-source-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.1.1</version>
            <executions>
              <!-- here we override the super-pom attach-sources executionid which
              calls sources:jar goal. That goals forks the lifecycle, causing
              the generate-sources phase to be called twice for the install goal.
              This causes any other plugin bound to the generate-sources phase to
              be called twice which usually has nasty side effects, let alone
              creating duplicate processing and longer build times. -->
              <execution>
                <id>attach-sources</id>
                <phase>DISABLE_FORKED_LIFECYCLE_MSOURCES-13</phase>
              </execution>
            </executions>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </pluginManagement>
      
    2. Next, since we would still like releases using the release-profile profile to include a sources jar file, we define a new profile with the same id as the one in the super POM. This time however we bind the execution to the jar-no-fork goal, which does not trigger the generate-sources phase to be called twice.

      <profiles>
        <!-- MSOURCES-13 related workaround overriding super-pom -->
        <profile>
          <id>release-profile</id>
          <activation>
            <property>
              <name>performRelease</name>
              <value>true</value>
            </property>
          </activation>
          <build>
            <plugins>
              <plugin>
                <inherited>true</inherited>
                <artifactId>maven-source-plugin</artifactId>
                <executions>
                  <execution>
                    <id>attach-sources-no-fork</id>
                    <inherited>true</inherited>
                    <goals>
                      <goal>jar-no-fork</goal>
                    </goals>
                  </execution>
                </executions>
              </plugin>
            </plugins>
          </build>
        </profile>
      </profiles>
      
  5. Now we run the same command and verify that our solution worked.
    $mvn clean install -DperformRelease=true
    Using Java version: 1.6
    [INFO] Scanning for projects...
    [INFO]
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO] Building nofork 1.0-SNAPSHOT
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-clean-plugin:2.4:clean (default-clean) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Deleting /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-antrun-plugin:1.3:run (generate-sources-flag) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Executing tasks
         [echo] GENERATE SOURCES IS EXECUTING
    [INFO] Executed tasks
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.4.2:resources (default-resources) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] Using platform encoding (MacRoman actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/src/main/resources
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3:compile (default-compile) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding MacRoman, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/classes
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.4.2:testResources (default-testResources) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] Using platform encoding (MacRoman actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/src/test/resources
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding MacRoman, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    [INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/test-classes
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-surefire-plugin:2.5:test (default-test) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Surefire report directory: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/surefire-reports
    
    -------------------------------------------------------
     T E S T S
    -------------------------------------------------------
    Running com.company.AppTest
    Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 1.026 sec
    
    Results :
    
    Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
    
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.3:jar (default-jar) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Building jar: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-source-plugin:2.1.1:jar-no-fork (attach-sources-no-fork) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Building jar: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-sources.jar
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-javadoc-plugin:2.5:jar (attach-javadocs) @ nofork ---
    [WARNING] Source files encoding has not been set, using platform encoding MacRoman, i.e. build is platform dependent!
    Loading source files for package com.company...
    Constructing Javadoc information...
    Standard Doclet version 1.6.0_17
    Building tree for all the packages and classes...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//App.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-frame.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-summary.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-tree.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/constant-values.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//class-use/App.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/com/company//package-use.html...
    Building index for all the packages and classes...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/overview-tree.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/index-all.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/deprecated-list.html...
    Building index for all classes...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/allclasses-frame.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/allclasses-noframe.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/index.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/help-doc.html...
    Generating /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/apidocs/stylesheet.css...
    [INFO] Building jar: /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar
    [INFO]
    [INFO] --- maven-install-plugin:2.3:install (default-install) @ nofork ---
    [INFO] Installing /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar to /Volumes/D/m2r/com/company/nofork/1.0-SNAPSHOT/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
    [INFO] Installing /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-sources.jar to /Volumes/D/m2r/com/company/nofork/1.0-SNAPSHOT/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-sources.jar
    [INFO] Installing /Users/plynch/dev/plynch/trial/nofork/target/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar to /Volumes/D/m2r/com/company/nofork/1.0-SNAPSHOT/nofork-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [INFO] Total time: 24.278s
    [INFO] Finished at: Fri May 14 07:56:39 EDT 2010
    [INFO] Final Memory: 13M/264M
    [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    As you can see, our verification message prints only once, yet we still get the sources jar - a good thing!

I recommend the above config be considered for adding to your organization's root pom. I also suggest the permanent solution to this issue is changing the Maven super pom release-profile to rely on jar-no-fork instead of jar goal.

Update

I'm occasionally asked how to make sure you still get a sources jar for your SNAPSHOT artifacts. Simple!

Just add the following to your normal <build> section of your pom, in addition to all of the above instructions:

  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-source-plugin</artifactId>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>attach-sources-no-fork</id>
          <inherited>true</inherited>
          <phase>generate-sources</phase>
          <goals>
            <goal>jar-no-fork</goal>
          </goals>
        </execution>
      </executions>
    </plugin>  
  </plugins>

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Markdown jEdit mode

I was writing a few docs in Markdown syntax. I wanted a Markdown mode file for jEdit. The best I could find was by Ali Rantakari on his blog. It was a good start but I thought I could make a few improvements. I got a chance to write my own Markdown mode file for jEdit, using his as inspiration. Compared to his I think I made the following improvements:

  • better blockquote handling.
  • more intuitive link highlighting
  • better block html handling and general html highlighting

I found jEdit mode files a bit limiting and harder to write than I thought it would be. I spent a bunch of time trying to work around the limitations of regexs' not spanning multiple lines and span capturing not ending where it should.

My Markdown mode file is on github.com and was tested using jEdit 4.3.1 .

Hope it helps someone out.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Setting up visual diff and merge for Git on OSX

They are mentions around the web about the best visual diff and merge tools to use for Git on OSX - for example this question on StackOverflow.

However I decided to go with the suggestion inside of Pro Git. The following is a summary of what I did, extracted more or less from the book.

#!/bin/sh

# This script is a summary of the advice provided by the book Pro Git (Thanks to author).
# to create visual merge and diff scripts to be used from cmd line git
# Script by Peter Lynch (http://blog.peterlynch.ca)

# 1. Download p4merge from perforce
# http://www.perforce.com/perforce/downloads/macintoshlist.html#macosx104u ( summary )
# Download the "P4V: Visual Client", mount the the DMG, copy p4merge to /Applications

# 2. Create wrapper scripts
sudo cat > /usr/local/bin/extMerge <<extMerge
#!/bin/sh
/Application/p4merge.app/Contents/MacOS/p4merge \$* 
extMerge
sudo cat > /usr/local/bin/extDiff <<extDiff
#!/bin/sh
[ \$# -eq 7 ] && /usr/local/bin/extMerge "\$2" "\$5" 
extDiff

# 3. Set owner and perms
sudo chown root /usr/local/bin/extMerge
sudo chown root /usr/local/bin/extDiff
sudo chmod ugo+x /usr/local/bin/extMerge
sudo chmod ugo+x /usr/local/bin/extDiff

# 4. Configure Git to use our new scripts
git config --global merge.tool extMerge
git config --global mergetool.extMerge.cmd \
    'extMerge "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"'
git config --global mergetool.trustExitCode false
git config --global diff.external extDiff

# 5. confirm
git config -l
echo ----------
ls -la /usr/local/bin/ext*

Remember to execute the script using sudo or else you'll get permission denied errors.

Also, to bypass the external diff don't forget you can use
git diff --no-ext-diff
.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

iPad?

I watched Daily Planet yesterday. First report was on the iPad launch. Second report was on a fog screen display.

I was more impressed by the fog screen display.

I didn't watch the keynote. I didn't even really read about it yet.

But I already think the iPad will fail. Apple how could you...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

How to setup Google Apps SPF record

The Google Apps configuration pages recommend you set up SPF in your DNS but do not tell you what to set it to.

You would think they would just include the directions found here.

"To set your domain's SPF record, publish the following TXT record on the DNS resource: v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all"

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Blacklist creation error on boot - Google App Engine for Java | Google Groups

As documented elsewhere, if you see this:


Jan 26, 2010 5:09:32 AM com.google.appengine.tools.development.agent.impl.BlackList initBlackList
SEVERE: Unable to read a jre library while constructing the blacklist. Security restrictions may not be entirely emulated. /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home/lib/plugin.jar


...then do this


cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Resources/Deploy.bundle/Contents/Home/lib
sudo ln -s plugin.jar plugin2.jar


and all will be well.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

OSX X11 defaults

Here are some changes to the X11 defaults I made on my Mac OSX.

X11 2.4.0 - 2.4.0 release notes
Close X11 if no other X11 apps are running
defaults write org.x.X11 wm_auto_quit -bool true
defaults write org.x.X11 wm_auto_quit_timeout -int 3


X11 < 2.4.0
Focus Follows mouse when multiple X windows are open. This avoids two clicks to activate a window:
defaults write org.x.X11 wm_ffm true
defaults write org.x.X11 click_through -bool true

Friday, December 11, 2009

New Apache.org artifact repositories for Maven you should be aware of

I recently tried creating a Maven core integration test using the archetype that the team kindly created. However when I tried to use it I got Unable to find resource 'org.apache.maven.its:maven-it-sample-archetype:jar:1.0-SNAPSHOT'.

Turns out this artifact does not live in http://people.apache.org/repo/m2-snapshot-repository - instead I've learned that Apache has new Maven repositories set up now that projects there are slowly adopting.

Wondering why I never heard about it before....

Anyways I added a proxy for https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/snapshots-group/ to my local Nexus install. Then I disabled my old proxy for http://people.apache.org/repo/m2-snapshot-repository since the snapshots-group includes the PAO repo. Finally I added the new repo to my 'All Repositories' and 'Public Snapshot Repositories' group in Nexus so that my Maven build will pick it up.




Here is some information I found out about the new repos.

http://www.apache.org/dev/repository-faq.html

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-1896

The new Apache.org artifact repositories - use em' or else.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Robustly enforcing a minimum Maven version for your project

Maven user's quickly realize that it is a good idea to force a fixed (or at least minimum) version of Maven to be used to build their Maven project. Initially one may gravitate towards using the following pom snippet:

<prerequisites>
  <maven>2.0.10</maven>
</prerequisites>

Looks good, except there are a couple gotchas
1. Typos. If you make one then you will get no warning or complaints from maven. You might as well have this.

<prerequisites>
  <maven>Maven treats this string as older than any Maven version you might use</maven>
</prerequisites>

A bug is even more likely if you do this:

<prerequisites>
  <maven>${maven.min-version}</maven>
</prerequisites>

Let's say that property can't be resolved for whatever reason - typos? - again Maven will treat that 'version' as older than any valid Maven version you could be executing the POM with. This is actually not a bug but by design since Maven does not force project's ( in this case Maven itself) to a strict version number specification.

2. Another problem is that section is not even used at all by the next major version of Maven 3.x as of today. So even if you did have it right, it is not future proof.

3. Finally maven considers versions like "1.0-alpha-2" to be newer than "1.0-alpha-15" as of Maven 2.x series at least. A bug indeed in the version compare logic - the failing test cases being commented out in the source code. Although Maven 3.x ignores prerequisites in pom, at least the version comparison noted here is fixed.

4. Lastly the <maven> element does not handle version ranges. So when it sees [2.0.6,2.0.8], we are just back to problem 1.

So what to do?

Use the maven-enforcer-plugin instead. The benefits are:

1. Many different rules supported, not just Maven version.
2. Write your own rules.
3. Version ranges are supported.
4. Version comparisons are more robust.
5. Bind the version check to Maven lifecycle phases or profiles.

Below is an example configuration for the plugin to require a minimum Maven version 2.0.9 and above. The unique thing about this example is that there are three executions, one for each pre-defined Maven build lifecycle. Usually you just see the first execution only, which is bound to the validate phase of the default lifecycle. However if one were to do
mvn clean
or
mvn site
then the version validation would not be enforced since those goals do not have a validate phase. Having all three executions covers all the bases.

The other best practice is define a property to hold the Maven versions so that it can be changed in one place only or manipulated on the cmd line.

<properties>
  <maven.min-version>2.0.9</maven.min-version>
</properties>

<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>enforce-default</id>
      <goals>
        <goal>enforce</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <rules>
          <requireMavenVersion>
            <version>[${maven.min-version},)</version>
          </requireMavenVersion>
        </rules>
      </configuration>
    </execution>
    <execution>
      <id>enforce-clean</id>
      <phase>pre-clean</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>enforce</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <rules>
          <requireMavenVersion>
            <version>[${maven.min-version},)</version>
          </requireMavenVersion>
        </rules>
      </configuration>
    </execution>
    <execution>
      <id>enforce-site</id>
      <phase>pre-site</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>enforce</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <rules>
          <requireMavenVersion>
            <version>[${maven.min-version},)</version>
          </requireMavenVersion>
        </rules>
      </configuration>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Maven plugin groupId org.codehaus.mojo not searched by default??

I got interested in removing all my explicit org.codehaus.mojo declarations on my plugin dependencies since now Maven supports searching that groupId for a plugin's artifactId. This feature was added a while ago I guess.

Just came across a nasty little bug in Maven 2.2.1 which has been reported since 2.0.9.

[#MNG-4001] Unable to resolve Dashboard mojo from Central - jira.codehaus.org

The summary above is very misleading. In fact I consider myself lucky to find it since it more has to do with any org.codehaus.mojo based plugin.

When I did try to remove my plugin's groupIds I got the classic "Unable to find resource 'org.apache.maven.plugins:buildnumber-maven-plugin:pom:1.0-beta-4' in repository central".

Turns out this may be related to maven metadata in my local repo and/or the remote repos being randomly deleting version info???? See the bug followups for more info.

In fact this bug is nasty because
1. there is no mention in the error that is what could be wrong.
2. Adding a pluginGroups section to your ~/.m2/settings.xml file with that group changes nothing, even in the error output. Plus using -X shows that maven does not even try to locate org.codehaus.mojo version of that plugin or any other groupId specified in your pluginGroups settings. It may have looked at the metadata, but we would never know.
3. Deleting your local maven metadata may only fix the error temporarily or not at all.
4. Try this: Define your plugin configuration in pluginManagement without the groupId. Next, define the same plugin in a profile with the groupId. Run a mvn cmd that activates the profile and you will notice that none of your plugin settings inside plguinManagement gets picked up - and of course there is no warning or messages in the debug output that complain. Add the group id to the pluginManagement section and it all of a sudden works as expected.

So the rule of thumb is leave well enough alone and always explicitly specify the groupId for all plugins except org.apache.maven.plugins groupId which still work.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Blogger: Awesome code syntax highlighting made easy

This post represents my to-date findings on the best way to paste source code into a Blogger based blog post. The goal is to have something with enough sugar for reading the post in the browser and also having it RSS reader compatible.

Several poor man solutions are out there. Examples are here and here.
Basically these are javascript based apps which take your code and apply some html escaping and wrap it with a <pre> tag and inline styles.

I remembered liking what YUI uses on their site. It is a syntax highlighter written by Alex Gorbatchev and can be found here. A summary of how to add it to your Blogger posts is here. This is more advanced in terms of display and user options.

While 'pretty', the Gorbatchev highlighter has the caveat that all the sugar goes away in RSS readers. I mean it works, however the result is just monospaced font.

By combining the Gorbatchev highlighter with the simplified source code formatters approach, I can have the best of both. Code that looks good in the browser and also when read with an RSS reader.

1. Edit your blogger template following the instructions outlined here to activate the Gorbatchev SyntaxHighlighter.

2. (Optional) Install this Firefox add-on Clippings to make pasting the required html into the blogger editor easy.

3. Use the following html to wrap your source code you paste into the editor. Remember that any source code must be html escaped ( < brackets must be escaped!)

<pre class="brush: xml;" style="font-family:Andale Mono, Lucida Console, Monaco, fixed, monospace, monospace;font-size:12px;border:1px dashed #CCCCCC;width:99%;height:auto;overflow:auto;background:#f0f0f0;padding:0px;color:#000000;text-align:left;line-height:14px;">
<!-- your code goes here -->
</pre>

The "brush: xml" part indicates what type of source code you are formatting. I suggest making a new clipping in the Clippings add-on (step 2) for each type source code you typically are pasting into your blog. See this page for more info on brushes and this page on how to specify additional parameters to the source code formatter.

Make sure to use the pre element version of the code block and not the script element version since script tags are removed in rss feeds.

4. Test it out. Create a new blog post, click the 'Edit Html' tab of the blogger editor. Make sure the Post Options include "Show HTML Literally" checked. Right click inside the editor textbox and select a clipping from the Clippings menu to paste a preconfigured pre block. Add some source code and publish your post.
Note: To see the full effect remember to publish your post since the popup preview window in Blogger editor only shows the simplified version of the formatting.

Here is an example of what code will look like when viewed in a browser.

/**
 * SyntaxHighlighter  
 */  
function foo()  
{  
  // it works!  
}

Here is an example of what RSS readers typically display. The class attribute will have no effect.

/**
 * SyntaxHighlighter  
 */  
function foo()  
{  
  // it works!  
}


Caveats:
1. The flash based toolbar will not show up on some mobile platforms for obvious reasons. Not a big deal as that is just sugar.
2. The described solution I use depends on using the Clippings add-on in Firefox and therefore the Firefox browser. Other browsers may have some similar plugins available - I dunno. Either way it is not critical.

If anyone has found a better solution please let me know.

buildnumber-maven-plugin helpful improvements

I've used the buildnumber-maven-plugin to include revision ids and timestamps in my builds for many years. Today I upgraded to the most recent version and that helped get rid of a few workarounds I had in place.

Using a previous version of the plugin, if there was no svn on your path, or your project was not checked in yet to subversion, the plugin failed the build due to svn checks. The workaround I had was to add it to a profile that only got executed when .svn file existed and/or the useReleaseProfile property was 'true'.

Now I am relieved to see I don't need to do that anymore.

For one, there is a 'revisionOnScmFailure' property you can set in the configuration that will be used if there is any type of scm exception - a byproduct of which disables further scm communication.

Second you can specify the plugin to use the javasvn scm provider implementation in case there is no 'svn' executable on your PATH. At first pass it might seem unlikely that when dealing with a subversion based project a developer would not have svn on the path, and that is likely true. Consider though that the svn version may be wrong (in which case svn may complain about not being new enough and fail the build) or you are building in a continuous integration env like hudson and you want reproducible use of the same svn tool. In those cases it makes good sense to configure the plugin with "javasvn". See below example:

<plugin>
  <groupid>org.codehaus.mojo</groupid>
  <artifactid>buildnumber-maven-plugin</artifactid>
  <version>1.0-beta-4</version>
  <configuration>
    <revisiononscmfailure>UNKNOWN_REVISION</revisiononscmfailure>
    <providerimplementations>
      <svn>javasvn</svn>
    </providerimplementations>
  </configuration>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>buildnumber-one</id>
      <phase>validate</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>create</goal>
      </goals>
    </execution>
    <execution>
      <id>buildnumber-two</id>
      <phase>validate</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>create</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <format>r${buildNumber} {0,date,yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ}</format>
        <items>
          <item>timestamp</item>
        </items> 
      </configuration>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

The two executions is so that I can give some context to the ${buildNumber} by prefixing it with 'r' and adding a timestamp formatted along with it.

There are a bunch of other useful properties in this latest release. Thanks to open source.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Mac OS X environment variables + Netbeans + Maven

Applications that are not launched through your terminal in OS X do not read environment variables from ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile and similar. These applications that launch directly can get their environment from each user's ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist file. ( You have to create it!)

I heard of this before, but I wanted to make note of a quick way to ease the maintaining of that file and finally had a need because of Netbeans.
  1. Downloaded Brian D Foy's Perl plist lib and installed it.
  2. Used a 3 line script to generate the ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist file from my terminal's ENV variable as he suggested.
  3.  Log out and log in for the file to take effect.
Now I can be sure the PATH that Netbeans sees is the same thing that mvn and other tools are seeing when I execute them on the cmd line. Also I don't really have to worry about maintaining my env in two places as one is derived from the other.

References
Technical Q&A QA1067: Setting environment variables for user processes
Helpful Summary of other ways to set env variables in OS X
Brian D Foy's Perl plist reader lib and blog post
Netbeans documentation on working with OS X Environment variables

Update
Another method is setting environment variables inside your
/etc/launchd.conf
file as described here - there are clear benefits to this for apps launched outside your personal login.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Maven Special Character Encoding Properties for Sites and Reports

Thanks to the post on the Sonatype blog I've got two other global properties to set in my global parent pom that sets the encoding for Maven reports - most of them anyways.

Sonatype Blog: Special Character Encoding Properties

project.build.sourceEncoding
project.reporting.outputEncoding

Thanks for the summary Anders Hammar.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Slipstream Service Pack 3 into Your Windows XP Installation CD

So I finally got bored of installing Windows XP a few times during some cross platform testing, setting it up with all my options and service packs etc.

I've got a Windows XP SP1a CD, but I wanted an SP3 install out-of-box. I had slipstreamed before, but somehow lost the CD during some moves. The good folks at lifehacker set me straight.

Slipstream Service Pack 3 into Your Windows XP Installation CD - Customization - Lifehacker

What I like about this solution the most is the use of nLite to create the whole package, which worked great! No cmd line work at all. It couldn't be easier I suppose.

Lastly since I was burning it from Windows XP running in VMWare Fusion, I had to enable DMA on the IDE channel my Mac Pro's CD drive was attached with.
Else nLite was throwing a burning error. Simple workaround below courtesy of this link here as a reminder.

To enable DMA mode using the Device Manager
  1. Open Device Manager.
  2. Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.
  3. Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.
  4. In the Current Transfer Mode drop-down box, select DMA if Available if the current setting is "PIO Only."
    If the drop-down box already shows "DMA if Available" but the current transfer mode is PIO, then the user must toggle the settings. That is:

    • Change the selection from "DMA if available" to PIO only, and click OK.
    • Then repeat the steps above to change the selection to DMA if Available.


Friday, October 30, 2009

Will I be saved by The Energy Detective (TED)?

So long story short...

I was living in the dark ages with a low power bill and a 13" TV. We decide to get a new TV. Want good picture, large screen and low price. Can't have it all. So I buy a soon to be dinosaur Panasonic Plasma 40". Return it if I don't like up until 30 days. Sounds fine.

Meanwhile at day 32 I happen to get the latest power bill. MORE THAN DOUBLED!!!! Too late - can't return it.

Decide immediate course of action is use power bar on TV and peripherals suspecting phantom power ( let alone regular use of this beast). Decide to order one of the Energy Detective ( TED 5000-C ) devices and look for other ways to reduce power. So popular of course I may have to wait 3-6 weeks before it arrives.

Preparing for the worse - may end of selling the plasma to save hundreds of dollars each month.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Patching Office 2000 with SR1

I recently needed to install Microsoft Office 2000 fully patched from an old CD I had lying around. After installing the original release, I started down the patch trail, because it looked like the Excel file I was trying to read wasn't going to display properly in the Excel viewer app that M offers.

After trying the SR-1 patch from the Microsoft website, it failed with a error in the log of


Starting execution.
Command line: /c /L2
Opening the patch source file, C:\DOCUME~1\plynch\LOCALS~1\Temp\IXP001.TMP\source.ini.
Searching installed products.
Detected the following products for patching:
Microsoft Office 2000 Premium (9.0.2720), {00000409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is patchable.
{00010409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00020409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00030409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00100409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00110409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00120409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00130409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00160409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00170409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00180409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00040409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00140409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{004A0409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{00150409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}
Product is not installed.
{3C5E0FF2-BE09-11D1-998E-00A0C90A43B3}
Product is not installed.
The following patches are applicable:
Office 2000 SR-1 Core Update, {0DC0F122-1B1C-11D4-AED6-00C04F022C53}
Location: http://download.microsoft.com/download/office2000prem/Update/3821h/WIN98/EN-US/data1.msp
The version of IE installed on the computer is 8.0.6001.18702
IE has already been updated to the level of Office 2000 SR-1 or above
Error: The file, C:\DOCUME~1\plynch\LOCALS~1\Temp\sr1patch\{0DC0F122-1B1C-11D4-AED6-00C04F022C53}, has an invalid size.
Beginning download of http://download.microsoft.com/download/office2000prem/Update/3821h/WIN98/EN-US/data1.msp.
Finished downloading http://download.microsoft.com/download/office2000prem/Update/3821h/WIN98/EN-US/data1.msp.
Error: The file, C:\DOCUME~1\plynch\LOCALS~1\Temp\sr1patch\{0DC0F122-1B1C-11D4-AED6-00C04F022C53}, has an invalid size.

Well that was fun....

Apparently the fully standalone SR-1 update was no longer available from Microsoft. The office update site just offers the 166k setup installer o2ksr1a.exe which has to contact the Microsoft website to download the real guts.

So I had to resort to patching the original office setup files with the administrators patch file. Since I never did that before I thought I would make note of it here:

  1. Copy the entire administrative share or create a new administrative share of the Office installation to a directory ( Example c:/sr1 ).
  2. Download the Data1.exe file found here. ( Edit: As noted here use the direct link to Data1.exe because since I wrote this post it no longer appears listed on the download page). Then run the exe and extract the contents to c:/sr1
  3. Open a cmd prompt, cd c:/sr1 and type the following to update the original release of office to be sr1 in your administrative share. More info here. C:\sr1>msiexec /p DATA1.MSP /a data1.msi SHORTFILENAMES=TRUE /qb /L* log.log
  4. Now run the office setup again and sr1 should get installed.
  5. Continue on with the rest of the updates to office, which can be found here.