It's nice when things work... ya right!

So i have not been updating my site that much, been very busy. I was at one time reading about 3 books a week, now i am lucky to get 1 finished. I have new pictures of Simon i want to get uploaded soon. I was just now looking around my site seeing what things needed some attention, and i was surprised that some things are already working. That was good news. Then i tried to update this post and realized that the update feature was not working. Grrr!!! So it was off to fix that. Once i got into the code i realized that it was using the old way of me doing things, so i wanted to update that first. So i have moved part of it to the latest Eve framework. It's allot better, but still needs attention. Also i fixed the categories, but was debating how i was going to handle sub categories. I think i have a way i will still approve of months down the road, so i am going to work on that here soon. I have already started to add new categories, and need to update my public website code.

Also getting back into the database i realized that it needed some attention as well. I am now using UUID for record id's. It makes it easier to store the record in memcache, and i personally like it.

I have still been working with the PHPEclipse project, but it's slow going. Just got a clients website finished a few weeks ago, and the first 30 days have been nice to me. It was a big project that took me longer than i wanted, but it's up. You can visit it at www.maloofcom.com. Some things will get updated over time, developers know how that goes. I really want to see the site go to Eve 2.0 framework. It will get all the memcache goodness and be faster. I need to meet with the client about that and present the benefits of updating the code.

My DLZSync project took a major setback. While i was writing unit tests to validate that the software was working the way i expected it to work i found a serious bug with Berkeley DB code. So i need to strip the code down and start working it over again. Good news is the Postgresql and MySQL versions are working very well. So i am going to spend some time on that as soon as i can.

I want to spend some time in the PHPEclipse project working on DBG and PHPUnit. I really need PHPUnit support, i have become addicted to writing unit tests. It has helped me so much. DBG needs to work with RSE and also not terminate after each PHP page is parsed.

Also noticed that my blog has more draft posts showing up then published. I think i am using it more for a scratch pad then a blog system. Oh well.

Till next time.

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Still working hard

I have been working hard on client projects, the PHPEclipse project, and learning about Bacula. Which is the best Open Source backup utility around. I have used Amanda in the past, but once i started using Tivoli at work i realized that there was allot missing. I plan on doing a full review and documentation on using Bacula. Right now i am still learning how to use it and making custom scripts to do things that i need done. My documentation will be on my setup, and how i am using it. The docs done by Kern Sibbald are awesome. The documentation is very helpful and i have been able to find almost everything i needed.

The dlzsync project that i have been working on is just about finished. I know i said it was going to be done months ago, but i got busy with other stuff. It is looking very good. I have been testing it on the domains that i host. I just have a few kinks to work out of the system.

I have also learned how to use PHPUnit, and write unit tests for my applications. I plan on working with Junit to do the same for my Java apps. Need to write some unit test for PHPEclipse as well.

Also i have not forgotten about my blog system. It has not seen any development for a while. I have allot of projects going on, and just have not had time to dedicate to working on the blog system. I guess i got it working good enough for what i need right now. However i do need to add the page so i can view old posts and possibly edit them. I have some that i need to publish.

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PHPEclipse Release 1.2.0 and Development 1.3.x

I have mentioned before that i work on the PHPEclipse project, one of my jobs is administering the build system. We use hudson as our continuous build system as it's a really easy system to learn and use.

As i noted in my other post we moved from from cvs and to svn and things have been going well on the svn front. However when i changed the build system to pull from svn, there were some problems. To me it was more PEBKAC than a problem with svn. I spent 3 days working on the issue and could not figure out why our DBG feature would not build. Incastrix one of the other developers on the project created the new 1.3.x development branch and i was able to use it to test my builds. When i created a new project and imported his code things as i remember just worked. Long story short i found there were a few plug-ins that were included in places they should not be, and others that were not needed at all. I made my changes and the system was successful in building the project.

What is more frustrating is that getting it to work that last day only took about 15min, and here i spent 4 days running around in circles.

Now that the builds are back, and people are able to use it, i think i created more bugs. But that's the way it goes. I am really looking forward to us getting 1.2.0 out the door, and also the work that is going into 1.3.x and 1.5.x. Ajt and i will be cleaning up the ticket system in an attempt to refine the items left for the 1.2.x release. Looking at the tickets for the 1.2.x release you would think we were crazy. It has more bugs than 1.3.x and we only have 2 weeks to get them all fixed. But this will change over the weekend when ajt and i clean and assign bugs to there new milestones.

Something else i will be working on is a tutorial on using RSE and PHPEclipse. It's something new to PHPEclipse and it's working pretty well for me. Also i will include instructions on using XDebug. There are a few more bugs that incastrix and i will be working on related to XDebug and RSE and i hope to get some fixed today.

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PHPEclipse project

I have been spending allot of time working on the PHPEclipse project, and fixing bugs, and maybe creating a few new ones. I also administer the build system for the project. We have recently moved away from cvs and to svn and the build system needed to be changed to pull from the new repo.

And that is where the fun begins. Allot of work has gone on in the core of PHPEclipse and in the XDebug feature, but not many developers have put that much time into the DBG feature. I have been able to get the project to build everthing except the DBG plug-in. It is driving me up a wall. I was for a while able to get it to build out of my local workspace which was a copy of svn, but after messing around i broke it, so now it won't build from there or svn. I have asked another developer incastrix to assist me in fixing the build issue. He is the master behind our XDebug plugin-in, and i am hopefull that he will show me the simple error of my way.

Also with the project, i have committed my fixes for RSE which is the Team Management plug-in for Eclipse. The work started with grEvenX submitting a patch, i applied it found that it was a good start, but there were more problems. So i committed it and then spent the rest of the weekend working on the issues that i had found. It was good to see the internals of the project, and i am looking forward to the 1.3.x version where we clean up the code.

There are just a few more items we want to address then we are going to push 1.2.0 out the nest and let it fly on it's own.

The 1.3.0 release is slated for refactoring of the code, and not many if any new features. This work will update PHPEclipse with the current API for Eclipse, and also will be working with supporing the new Ganymede Simultaneous Relase. The project is not ready yet to be listed, but i hope for our 1.4.x release we can be a listing project for that simultaneous release cycle.

I am looking forward to the next few months of Eclipse development, and as always i have more to do than i have time for, but it keeps me out of trouble.

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