Where’s the damn GSOC Code, dude?

I was talking to my mentor the other day about having committing code because, let’s face it, FreeBSD has some of the world’s greatest coders writing for it. And I’m terrified and nervous. Because I write crappy code, I know I write crappy code, I’m comfortable writing crappy code, because I never distribute my crappy code.

This last part changed with GSOC. I have to have people able to read my code, I have to distribute the code, all that stuff. And the official SCM is Perforce, but I’m not a huge fan so far. I much prefer git.

So this is the git URL for the code:

git://github.com/jamesh/shinybsd.git

It’s called shinybsd; feel free to track it. If you want to actually commit to the repo, let me know and I’ll help you get set up. Be aware that you’ll need an account on github.com

I’ll be syncing this back up semi-regularly with perforce, so no worries if that’s what you want to watch.

ca-ca-catching up

I did something today that I’ve never done before. I decided that I was going to see how far that FreeBSD and gnome integrate with each other. Whenever I install FreeBSD, I usually run it as a CLI os. I install a window manager, but it’s not there as anything really other than support for multiple terminals. I use ubuntu for a nice pretty OS with integration between all the disparate elements, and FreeBSD for real work.

So I started following the instructions from the FreeBSD Gnome folks for auto-mounting this and pleasant integration that. In the process, amazing things happened. Screensavers started working brilliantly, icons that were missing showed up out of nowhere, and I started to see the truth of a friend of mine’s observation to me two years ago that FreeBSD and Gnome are exceptionally well integrated with each other.

I almost feel like writing a port that’s just a shell script to execute the relevant bits and pieces to make FreeBSD shine with Gnome; it’s amazing that all this time I could have had this on the desktop and instead was using linux.

—

I privately noted an interesting thing today. I started using the _excellent_ portmaster tool to solve ports issues instead of portupgrade recently, and out of nowhere the amount of circular dependencies registered in pkgb skyrocketed. It’s probably merely a coincidence, but still.

–

trap just became my new best friend: http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90046/ch23s07.html

I’ve been following the code for NanoBSD of late; it’s extremely clearly written and provides excellent examples of shell code. Well worth a look.

I’ve also been following my interests down the path to the source code of common utilities. What’s neat is the little things I hadn’t thought of. For example, from boot0cfg, in the case statement that reads argv, Robert Nordier sets a variable to equal 1:

case ‘f’:
fpath = optarg;
break;

Then,

/* save the existing MBR if we are asked to do so */
if (fpath)
write_mbr(fpath, O_CREAT | O_TRUNC, mbr, mbr_size);

Robert directly tests for truth on the fpath variable. I’ve always called my variables something like fpath_test to remind myself that they’re essentially booleans; however, looking at this I’m suddenly hit by the “Oh, there’s no real need to do what I do, and it might sacrifice a little clarity”.

This suddenly makes me wonder: would there be any performance impact of using boolean types here? I can’t imagine there would be, as I assume the boole types are little more than static constants.

I noticed this little gem in the code for boot0cfg, too:

opttbl[] = {
{”packet”, 0},
{”update”, 1},
{”setdrv”, 0}
};

Is it just me, or is that sucker a dictionary/hash?

I need to include the following to satisfy the license:

/*
* Copyright (c) 1999 Robert Nordier
* All rights reserved.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS“AS IS” AND
* ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
* IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
* PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS
* BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY,
* OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT
* OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR
* BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
* WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE
* OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE,
* EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
*/