Stepping up as SQLite3/Ruby maintainer

So, I think this may be good news for some folks.

February 24, 2009 is the date that Jamis Buck marked as the end of several of his open source projects, including SQLite3/Ruby. (you can read the post here)

Previously, he asked for help updating SQLite3/Ruby to make it work on Windows.

That sad news left a lot of us with a bad taste, and very unhappy, not because we no longer will have someone to complain at, but because he no longer enjoyed working on those projects.

Over the past months I’ve been improving rake-compiler to be able to catch most of the building issues of several projects, including my own (I love to scratch my own itch).

As you have noticed on my “getting started with Rails and SQLite3″: http://blog.mmediasys.com/2009/07/06/getting-started-with-rails-and-sqlite3/ post, I successfully built, installed and used a SQLite3/Ruby gem on Windows.

The next question was, what to do? The work to get all those lovely gems was there, initial 1.9 was there, but was not official

While SQLite3/Ruby being the de-facto for getting started with Rails, we couldn’t let it die.

Enough words, sent some emails to Jamis and now I can publish those gems to RubyForge.

What all that babbling means?

This means:

• My fork at GitHub is the new mainstream for the releases
• I’m going to go over the open bugs and tickets and asses validity and relevancy based on work that was already done in my fork.
• The release cycle has been improved and almost automated. It can be performed from Windows, Linux or OSX, even using latter to create Windows native gems.

Now, what happens with new features:

• Pull requests with patches and bug fixes are going to be accepted.
• New features will be evaluated as long they don’t impose structural changes and carry with them tests cases.
• Patches that improve Ruby 1.9 compatibility are highly appreciated.

I don’t have strong knowledge of all the internals of this tool, so don’t expect earth breaking changes from me, except ensuring stability.

I hope this is good news to everybody. Now I’m going to stalk MySQL binding author and get permission to push those lovely gems

Cheers everybody!

(Via DEV_MEM.dump_to(:blog) – Multimedia systems blog.) Original Link: Stepping up as SQLite3/Ruby maintainer

Rails 2.3, rake y reenable method

undefined method `reenable' for <Rake::Task db:schema:dump =>
[environment]>:Rake::Task

  s.add_dependency('rake', '>= 0.8.3')
  s.add_dependency('activesupport',    '= 3.0.pre' + PKG_BUILD)
  s.add_dependency('activerecord',     '= 3.0.pre' + PKG_BUILD)
  s.add_dependency('actionpack',       '= 3.0.pre' + PKG_BUILD)
  s.add_dependency('actionmailer',     '= 3.0.pre' + PKG_BUILD)
  s.add_dependency('activeresource',   '= 3.0.pre' + PKG_BUILD)

(Via Gastón Ramos – Ruby, Rails….) Original Link: Rails 2.3, rake y reenable method

RubyInstaller: Getting Started with Rails and SQLite3

A few folks asked this over the past weeks, and since I released preview1 version of RubyInstaller, wouldn’t be awesome I write a guide for it?

So, here we go

First, Getting Ruby

Please download from here one of the preview1 installers for Ruby.

For this demonstration, I’m going to use Ruby 1.9.1-p129. Downloaded, executed and installed to it’s default location C:\Ruby19

Now, start a Command prompt with Ruby (under start menu, inside Ruby 1.9.1-p129).

Getting SQLite3

As you may know, Windows do not came out of the box with libraries like SQLite3. For this, we are going to download it from Internet.

Going to SQLite downloads, under Precompiled binaries for Windows, download sqlitedll-3_6_16.zip and sqlite-3_6_16.zip. Those two packages contains the DLL (sqlite3.dll) and the command line executable for SQLite (sqlite3.exe).

Please extract those contents inside C:\Ruby19\bin

Now, let’s get the Ruby bindings for SQLite3

Getting SQLite3/Ruby bindings

As you may know, the preferred way to distribute Ruby libraries is using Gems. Users on other platforms usually compile themselves these components, using the mechanisms provided by the operating system distribution.

We are going to avoid the compilation process using pre-compiled binaries that has been cooked for us.

So, back to the Command Prompt with Ruby, let’s install the sqlite3 bindings:

gem install sqlite3-ruby --source http://gems.rubyinstaller.org

Adding --source help us indicate a non-standard location from where gems are going to be installed. RubyInstaller team has built and packaged special versions of these gems that we hope get published soon into RubyForge, the official place for gem distribution.

Once installed, you should see something like this at the screen:

Successfully installed sqlite3-ruby-1.2.4.1-x86-mingw32
1 gem installed

These special version of the gem are fat binaries, which means these can be safely installed on Ruby 1.8.6 or 1.9.1.

Getting Rails

Now it’s time to install and build a Rails application. First, let’s install the rails gem:

gem install rails

That command is going to take a bit, since is a 2MB or so download, and will install several of the Rails dependencies (ActiveRecord, ActionPack, ActiveSupport, etc). You should expect similar output to this:

Successfully installed activesupport-2.3.2
Successfully installed activerecord-2.3.2
Successfully installed actionpack-2.3.2
Successfully installed actionmailer-2.3.2
Successfully installed activeresource-2.3.2
Successfully installed rails-2.3.2
6 gems installed

Let’s build our application now.

Creating a Rails application.

Let’s call the application railsapp

rails railsapp

An excerpt of the output you should get:

      create
      create  app/controllers
      create  app/helpers
      create  app/models
      create  app/views/layouts
      create  config/environments
      create  config/initializers
      create  config/locales
      create  db
...

Rails 2.3.2 defaults it’s database format to SQLite3, so there is no need for us to tweak anything.

Checking if everything is ok, using script\about:

cd railsapp
ruby script\about

And the output should be something like this:

About your application's environment
Ruby version              1.9.1 (i386-mingw32)
RubyGems version          1.3.4
Rack version              1.0 bundled
Rails version             2.3.2
Active Record version     2.3.2
Action Pack version       2.3.2
Active Resource version   2.3.2
Action Mailer version     2.3.2
Active Support version    2.3.2
Application root          C:/Users/Luis/railsapp
Environment               development
Database adapter          sqlite3
Database schema version   0

Now, it’s up to you create your models, controllers and everything.

Some notes and considerations.

At the time of this writing, Mongrel has not been updated to build and install properly either on 1.9 or MinGW versions of Ruby.

As part of Mongrel development team, I’m going to work on a solution for this in the upcoming days.

If you find something wrong with the Ruby Installer, please report here, but issues with your code, Rails or other are not responsability of RubyInstaller.

The binary gems provided at gems.rubyinstaller.org are based on our forks of sqlite3-ruby, which can be cloned and explored here at GitHub.

Keep in mind that some gems would not work under Ruby 1.9, or you will need a compiler (DevKit) for it. See previous post with details how to get those from our download page.

(Via DEV_MEM.dump_to(:blog) – Multimedia systems blog.) Original Link: RubyInstaller: Getting Started with Rails and SQLite3

RubyInstaller: Getting Started with Rails and MySQL

This is a follow up instruction set from previous post, but this time, using MySQL

Getting Ruby

These steps are the same for Ruby 1.9 or Ruby 1.8, please feel free to download the installer from here

For this guide I’m going to use Ruby 1.9.1-p129, since it the coolest new version that all the guys are playing with

Now, start a Command prompt with Ruby (under start menu, inside Ruby 1.9.1-p129).

Getting the right MySQL version

While building the MySQL/Ruby bindings, we found that mixing versions of the bindings with different versions of MySQL installations ended on undesired results (abnormal program termination, weird errors, etc.)

For this guide, and because we are going to use binary gems, we are going to stick to MySQL version 5.0.83.

Now is time to download MySQL. For this guide, I’m going to install the essentials version, which contains only MySQL and command line tools, no Query Builder or any other administrative tool.

Please go to this page and download Windows Essentials (x86). Once downloaded you will end with mysql-essential-5.0.83-win32.msi file. Execute it and install with defaults.

Configure MySQL

If you’re an advanced and savvy MySQL user, you can skip the following steps. For the sake of this guide, I’m going to list the simple options you must follow when installing it.

Once you installed MySQL, the installer should have started the Configuration Wizard page.

Inside of it, please apply the following options:

Once done with all this, on the summary screen, please click Execute to complete the configuration of MySQL Server.

Under some system, starting of MySQL server will fail during this wizard, but don’t be afraid, most of the times, this can be safely ignored.

To check everything was properly installed, please go to the Start Menu, and inside MySQL Server 5.0, click on MySQL Command Line Client

If you changed the root password, or, like me, leaved it unchecked, you can simply press enter when asked for the password and see that the server is running!

If you decided to add MySQL to the PATH, you will require to restart your computer so the PATH change is available to the system.

If you decided not to add MySQL to the PATH, please go, with Explorer to the location where you installed MySQL Server and copy libmySQL.dll into C:\Ruby19\bin

In my case, I found this file in C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin

Now, it is time to install the bindings.

Getting MySQL/Ruby

For this version of Ruby, there is no official binary gems for both Ruby 1.8 and 1.9. So we are going to install the specially built version from RubyInstaller gems repository.

At the Command Prompt with Ruby, please enter the following command:

gem install mysql --source http://gems.rubyinstaller.org
  

This is going to install the special version of MySQL bindings. This version works with Ruby 1.8 and 1.9, since bundles fat binaries. You should expect a similar output like this:

Successfully installed mysql-2.8.1.1-x86-mingw32
1 gem installed

Getting Rails

Now is time to install Rails and build our application. At the same command prompt, please enter the following command:

gem install rails

This is going to take a bit, since Rails and it’s dependencies takes around 2MB or so, and need to be downloaded and installed.

Once done, expect see at the screen something like this:

Successfully installed activesupport-2.3.2
Successfully installed activerecord-2.3.2
Successfully installed actionpack-2.3.2
Successfully installed actionmailer-2.3.2
Successfully installed activeresource-2.3.2
Successfully installed rails-2.3.2
6 gems installed

Creating a Rails application

Let’s name our application mysqlapp

rails mysqlapp --database=mysql

The --database option indicates to Rails that we want to use MySQL instead of the default database adapter (SQLite3).

Rails will output a lot of lines when creating your application structure, just an excerpt of what to see:

...
      create  config/database.yml
      create  config/routes.rb
      create  config/locales/en.yml
      create  config/initializers/backtrace_silencers.rb
      create  config/initializers/inflections.rb
      create  config/initializers/mime_types.rb
      create  config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb
      create  config/initializers/session_store.rb
      create  config/environment.rb
...

Configuring our Database

Now Rails have configured for us the name of the database we want to use, and you can verify it in config\database.yml

Rails will try to connect to mysqlapp_development, but that database do not exist in our fresh new MySQL server.

So, let’s create it:

cd mysqlapp
rake db:create

Just that, simple db:create is going to connect to our MySQL server, and create the database for us.

Keep in mind that if you changed root password or want to use other MySQL user to connect to the database, you need to edit database.yml to reflect those changes.

Let’s verify that everything is in place, using the following command:

About your application's environment
Ruby version              1.9.1 (i386-mingw32)
RubyGems version          1.3.4
Rack version              1.0 bundled
Rails version             2.3.2
Active Record version     2.3.2
Action Pack version       2.3.2
Active Resource version   2.3.2
Action Mailer version     2.3.2
Active Support version    2.3.2
Application root          C:/Users/Luis/mysqlapp
Environment               development
Database adapter          mysql
Database schema version   0

Now is up to you to create your models, controllers and views!

Some notes and considerations

On other post I’m going to guide you with steps on building the bindings against MySQL 5.1.36, since you will need to install the Ruby Development Kit and the development headers for MySQL.

If you find something wrong with the Ruby Installer, please report it here, but issues with your code, Rails or other are not responsability of RubyInstaller.

The binary gems provided at gems.rubyinstaller.org are based on our forks of mysql bindings, which can be cloned and explored here at GitHub.

Keep in mind that some gems would not work under Ruby 1.9, or you will need a compiler (DevKit) for it. See previous post with details how to get those from our download page.

(Via DEV_MEM.dump_to(:blog) – Multimedia systems blog.) Original Link: RubyInstaller: Getting Started with Rails and MySQL

I’m back with some Code …

Well, hello again, long time since the last post. I went on vacations, work a lot and did some programming. Let’s talk abount the programming part, since it is the most interesting one.

I created a small library called “Esearchy” capable of searching the internet for email addresses. Currently, we the supported search methods are engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, PGP servers, GoogleGroups, etc , but I intend to add many more.
Also, the library searches inside .pdf and .txt files for emails addresses and adds them to the list of found accounts.

For now, there are two main ways of performing a search, “the ruby way”

and the more classic way in which users can create an Esearchy objetc and work on it

For now , that’s it for now , but keep on tuned for more shitty code ajjajaa

(Via 自由編碼人.) Original Link: I’m back with some Code …

Patch en Regexp para poder usarlas como clave en un Hash

Siguiendo mi proyecto de hacer mi wiki en Ruby, encontré un comportamiento muy raro.
Generé un hash (que se llama @rules) que no tiene un elemento que tiene. O sea, @rules[@rules.keys[2]] da nil, pero @rules.values[2] devuelve el objeto asociado a la clave @rules.keys[2]. Como este hash tiene como claves un montón de expresiones regulares, me imaginé que había un problema con el hash y el eql? de Regexp, así que los implementé de nuevo y monkeypatchié.
Este es el código:

class Regexp
 alias_method   ld_rapidito_inspect, :inspect

 def inspect
   @inspect = old_rapidito_inspect if @inspect.nil?
   @inspect
 end

 def eql?( other )
   false if other.class != Regexp
   self.inspect == other.inspect
 end

 alias_method :"==", :eql?

 def hash
   self.inspect.hash
 end
end

Esta corrección me anduvo con la siguiente versión de ruby:

$ ruby --version
ruby 1.8.7 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 72) [i486-linux]

Espero que les sirva.
Happy hacking,
Aureliano.

(Via aurelianito.) Original Link: Patch en Regexp para poder usarlas como clave en un Hash

Más rapidito

Como les estuve contando, sigo escribiendo mi wiki. Ya parsea un subconjunto interesante del lenguaje definido por trac.
Siguiendo la tradición, les cuento como está avanzando el tokenizer. Al tokenizer lo simplifiqué para que devuelva la expresión regular que matcheo junto con el match (en vez del “tipo”). Esto hizo que la interfase para definir las reglas para tokenizar sea más simple. Si no hay ninguna regla que matchee sigue devolviendo ["string", :text].
Sin más, acá el código:

module Rapidito
  class Tokenizer

    def initialize( *delimiters )
      @delimiter_list = delimiters +  [/\z/]
      @match_cache = nil
    end

    def source
      valid_cache? ? @match_cache[0].to_s + @source : @source
    end

    def source=(s)
      @match_cache = nil
      @source = s
    end

    def has_next?
      !@source.empty? || valid_cache?
    end

    def valid_cache?
      (!@match_cache.nil?) && (@match_cache[0].to_s.length > 0)
    end

    def next_match
      @delimiter_list.map {|regex| [regex.match(@source),regex]}.reject {|p| p[0].nil?}.inject do
        |better,new|
        better_pos = better[0].pre_match.length
        new_pos = new[0].pre_match.length

        if better_pos < new_pos
          better
        elsif new_pos < better_pos
          new
        elsif better[0].to_s.length > new[0].to_s.length
          better
        else
          new
        end
      end
    end

    def next_token
      if @match_cache #cached delimiter
        rv = @match_cache
        @match_cache = nil
        return rv
      end

      match = next_match
      p = match[0].pre_match.length
      @source = @source[p + match[0].to_s.length, @source.length]

      if p == 0 #delimiter
        match
      else #text
        @match_cache = match
        [match[0].pre_match, :text]
      end
    end

    def all_tokens
      tokens = []
      while has_next?
        tokens << next_token
      end
      tokens
    end
  end
end

Y si miran los tests de unidad, van a ver que también quedaron más lindos:

require 'test/unit'
require 'rapidito/tokenizer'

include Rapidito

class TokenizerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase

  def test_no_token
    tok = Tokenizer.new
    tok.source = "aaaa"
    assert_equal true, tok.has_next?
    assert_equal ["aaaa", :text], tok.next_token
    assert_equal false, tok.has_next?
  end

  def assert_all_tokens( expected, tokenizer )
    assert_equal expected,
      tokenizer.all_tokens.map { |token, kind| [token.to_s, kind] }
  end

  def test_two_delimiters
    tok = Tokenizer.new(
      /\|/, /;;/
    )

    tok.source = "aa|bbb;;;;cccc"
    assert_all_tokens \
      [ ["aa", :text], ["|", /\|/], ["bbb", :text],
        [";;", /;;/], [";;", /;;/], ["cccc", :text] ],
      tok

    tok.source = "aa;;bbb||cccc"
    assert_all_tokens \
      [ ["aa", :text], [";;", /;;/], ["bbb", :text],
        ["|", /\|/], ["|", /\|/], ["cccc", :text] ],
      tok
  end

  def test_choose_longest_match
    tok = Tokenizer.new(
      /aa/, /aaa/
    )
    tok.source = "aaaa"
    assert_all_tokens [ ["aaa", /aaa/], ["a", :text ] ], tok
  end

  def test_reset_precache
    tok = Tokenizer.new(
      /\|/, /,/
    )
    tok.source = "original start|original end"
    tok.next_token
    tok.source = "new start,new end"
    assert_equal ["new start", :text], tok.next_token
  end

  def test_almost_finished
    tok = Tokenizer.new( /!/ )
    tok.source = "bang!"
    tok.next_token
    assert_equal true, tok.has_next?
    tok.next_token
    assert_equal false, tok.has_next?
  end

  def test_carriage_return_ending
    tok = Tokenizer.new( /!/ )
    tok.source = "bang!\n"
    tok.next_token
    assert_equal true, tok.has_next?
    tok.next_token
    assert_equal true, tok.has_next?
    assert_equal "\n", tok.next_token[0].to_s
    assert_equal false, tok.has_next?
  end

  def test_transparent_caching
    tok = Tokenizer.new( /!/ )
    tok.source = "bang!pum"
    tok.next_token

    assert_equal "!pum", tok.source
  end

  def test_match_klass
    tok = Tokenizer.new( /!/ )
    tok.source = "!bang!pum"

    assert_equal \
      [MatchData, String, MatchData, String],
      tok.all_tokens.map { |tok, kind| tok.class }
  end
end

Happy hacking,
Aureliano.

(Via aurelianito.) Original Link: Más rapidito

Community Highlights: Ruby Heroes

This week I’m happy to tell you about a new set of articles which will be appearing here on the Rails blog called “Community Highlights”. This new series will feature people/projects/sites from the Rails community that may deserve a little extra recognition.

This week, we’re going to start with a few people who received awards on stage at Railsconf 2009, this years Ruby Heroes.

Brian Helmkamp

Aman Gupta

Luis Lavena

Pat Allan

Dan Kubb

John Nunemaker

Those are your six Ruby Hero’s for 2009. If you’re interested you can also watch a video of the award ceremony which talks more about the methodology about how they were chosen and see 5 of these guys receive their awards on stage at Railsconf 2009.

(Via Riding Rails.) Original Link: Community Highlights: Ruby Heroes

Pequeñas delicias de las expresiones regulares

Como les conté acá y acá, estoy escribiendo un tokenizador para un wiki que estoy programando. Y hoy me encontré con una cosa muy extraña de las expresiones regulares.
En ruby la función match sirve para buscar el primer match de una regex dentro de un string. Por ejemplo (usando el irb):

irb(main):001:0> m = /a/.match "babab"
=> #<MatchData "a">
irb(main):002:0> m.pre_match
=> "b"
irb(main):003:0> m[0]
=> "a"

En particular, el pre_match es lo que está antes del match en el string. También según había entendido (mal) /\Z/ matchea con el final del string. Por ejemplo:

irb(main):004:0> m = /\Z/.match "hola"
=> #<MatchData "">
irb(main):005:0> m.pre_match
=> "hola"

Pero, /\Z/ tiene un comportamiento muy extraño, aunque documentado, cuando el último caracter antes del final es un \n. Lo que pasa es que el pre_match queda ¡sin el\n del final!. Lo muestro en el irb:

irb(main):006:0> m = /\Z/.match "\n"
=> #<MatchData "">
irb(main):007:0> m.pre_match
=> ""
Para que no se manduque el \n, hay que usar /\z/ (¡en minúscula!):

irb(main):008:0> m = /\z/.match "\n"
=> #<MatchData "">
irb(main):009:0> m.pre_match
=> "\n"
Por lo tanto tuve que tocar el tokenizer, ahora la función de initialize quedó así (miren el cambio de la "Z" a "z"):

    def initialize( delimiters )
      @delimiter_list = [[/\z/, :finish]] +
        delimiters.to_a.map { |k,arr| arr.map { |re| [re, k] } }.inject([]) { |ac,ps| ac + ps }
      @match_cache = nil
    end
Y el test que captura el problema que genera usar \Z en vez de \z quedó así:

  def test_carriage_return_ending
    tok = Tokenizer.new( :a_kind => [/!/] )
    tok.source = "bang!\n"
    tok.next_token
    assert_equal true, tok.has_next?
    tok.next_token
    assert_equal true, tok.has_next?
    assert_equal "\n", tok.next_token[0].to_s
    assert_equal false, tok.has_next?
  end
Happy hacking,

Aureliano.

(Via aurelianito.) Original Link: Pequeñas delicias de las expresiones regulares

RubyInstaller: designs and deadline details

So, guess what? There are already 3 designers running for the pledgie prize collected for One-Click Installer new home!

Check those over there:

http://wiki.github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/website-contest

This is excellent news. Thank you guys for participating!

Deadline

I’m aiming to close submissions June 19, 2009. So if you have a design or idea, mock it up and add to the wiki page, point to a blog post or something and let the public know you’re participating!

Logo

As Pavel mentioned over the wiki page:

I like it, but I was not sure about the shape of ruby gem.

This is something weird since Ruby users are used to see Ruby logo with the shape of a diamond, which is incorrect.

Let me explain it better: the mineral ruby can be cut in diamond shape, but is really uncommon.

More common shapes are facetted balls or emerald cuts. Take a look here for more examples.

Almost every package, tool or library associated with Ruby tends to use a diamond cut ruby as logo.

When analyzed this detail with Rodolfo Budeguer from Estudio Domo, we found that sticking to that shape would not only fall into the repetition (and be a copycat), but also move away from the goal of it.

If you pay close attention, will noticed that the emerald cut of RubyInstaller shows the 4 colors that are also present in… the Windows logo.

Why is that? Well, because is Ruby Installer for Windows

Voting and Deliverables

Once again, would like to mention public voting would define the selected design. No new design will be accepted after the deadline above mentioned. So make room to do the mockups soon!

Also, once we have the final votes for the designs. Selected designer should provide generated versions of mockups in CSS and HTML content, preferable in a public Git repository.

I’m so excited about this that I’m blogging at 4am!

Thanks again to Silviu, Francesco and Pavel to contribute and participate. Also other people that privately sent some feedback about RubyInstaller itself, not just the website

(Via DEV_MEM.dump_to(:blog) – Multimedia systems blog.) Original Link: RubyInstaller: designs and deadline details