April 19, 2013 | 6 Comments
ack 2.0 has been released. ack is a grep-like search tool that has been optimized for searching large heterogeneous trees of source code. ack has been around since 2005. Since then it has become very popular and is packaged by … Continue reading
September 13, 2012 | 0 comments
At least twice now I’ve run into this problem where I try to comment my SQL code, but doing so makes my Solr data importer blow up. I post it here for posterity. Part of your DIH configuration will be … Continue reading
July 11, 2012 | 0 comments
Solr is a text indexing package. All interaction with it is through GETting and POSTting to the service, and then XML responses. After you do the GET to start an import with Solr’s DataImportHandler, you have to check a status … Continue reading
June 19, 2012 | 1 Comment
Random notes and comments about YAPC::NA in Madison, WI ack 2.0 I uploaded ack 2.00alpha01 to the CPAN. All that week, Rob Hoelz did a ton of work, and Jerry Gay was invaluable in helping us work through some configuration … Continue reading
May 29, 2012 | 2 Comments
Every so often, usually in the middle of an online argument or flame war, someone will say that the climate of the group has him or her uncomfortable. He’ll say something like “I don’t want to be around all this … Continue reading
May 22, 2012 | 4 Comments
I’ve been working at getting Solr working under Tomcat, and spent most of a day working on fixing these problems. The fixes didn’t take so much time as the trying to grok the Java app ecosystem. My Solr install worked … Continue reading
May 11, 2012 | 14 Comments
I’m looking for a term to describe small positive actions that individuals do to add up to a greater whole. Examples in the world of open source software might include: Answering a question on a mailing list Testing a beta … Continue reading
April 27, 2012 | 7 Comments
I often get surprise patches in my projects from people I’ve never heard from. I’m not talking about things like fixing typos, or fixing a bug in the bug tracker. I’m talking about new features, handed over fully-formed. Unfortunately, it’s … Continue reading
January 23, 2012 | 4 Comments
In her fantastic book Bossypants, Tina Fey has a sidebar about how improvisational comedy has changed her life, and given her a new worldview. We in open source would do well to adapt these ideas to how we conduct our … Continue reading
November 2, 2011 | 2 Comments
By Mark Jason Dominus, from a talk in 2003, reprinted here with permission. Sadly, it’s still relevant today. The #perl IRC channel has a big problem. People come in asking questions, say, “How do I remove the first character from … Continue reading