use Perl

We called up DirecTV to complain about a lack of Versus (which means I don't get all the Bruins games, even though I purchased Center Ice) and they refunded $50 to my account, and gave me the sports pack (including NESN) for six months for free.

I still want Versus though.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

Mac-Carbon-0.82 has been released. Download it from the CPAN or SF.net.

(Note: it may take time for the release to propagate to the various download mirrors.)
Changes:

* v0.82, 4 October 2009
 
  More Makefile.PL fixes.  Try to catch 64-bit-only perls.  Fix bug introduced
  in 0.81 for older gcc 4's.

Posted using release by brian d foy.

Mac-Carbon-0.81 has been released. Download it from the CPAN.

(Note: it may take time for the release to propagate to the various download mirrors.)

Changes:

* v0.81, 26 September 2009
 
  Fixes for building on 64-bit perls and Mac OS X 10.6.  Build should now work
  on any perl, whether self-built or system perl (unless your perl is 64-bit
  only), and tests should run under 32-bit mode.
 
  Other miscellaneous test fixes.

I should add a check for 64-bit mode to the Mac-Carbon Makefile.PL. This will save a lot of hassle if I can give a nice error message, with a link to more information, up front.

I can't test this easily, though, since I don't yet have a 10.6 64-bit box (it's only on an original MacBook Pro, which is 32 bits). I will upgrade to Snow Leopard soon. I could try to make my own perl before then, but I don't know it would work the same way. So. If you want to help, now's your chance!

First thought is Config, but we all know Config can be flaky. For example, on my 32-bit box:

$ perl -V:use64bitall
use64bitall='define';

Doesn't really help. I don't know if $Config{intsize} would be 8 on a 64-bit perl. It's 4 on this 10.6 32-bit perl. I do know you should be able to call perl with VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT=yes to give you 32-bit perl, instead of the default 64-bit perl.

So anyway ... if you can figure out a way to know, under 10.6 stock perl, if I am running under 32-bit perl or 64-bit perl, let me know.

Please do test the aforementioned Mac-Carbon-0.80, and report it on RT if there's a problem. Please note that you MUST build under 32-bit mode, which is especially important if you are using the standard perl that comes with Mac OS X 10.6.

I've also got new versions of Mac::AppleEvents::Simple, Mac::OSA::Simple, and Mac::Glue coming out soon. I want to get Mac-Carbon well-tested out there first, though.

Mac-Carbon-0.80 has been released. Download it from the CPAN.

(Note: it may take time for the release to propagate to the various download mirrors.)

Changes:

* v0.80, 16 September 2009
 
  Add notes for 64-bit perl
 
  Bump all the version numbers
 
  Fix a bunch of tests (nothing major, just make them work better)
 
  Fix sound-env-var checking code for tests (no more sound tests
  unless you ask for them with MAC_CARBON_SOUND, which was in the
  last version, but the logic was broken)
 
  Make CFStringRef typemap better
 
  Remove high-bit characters from source files
 
  Add new system version gestalt constants
 
  Fix leak in Mac::Processes and Mac::Speech

The default perl for Mac OS X 10.6 runs in 64-bit mode by default. The problem for Mac-Carbon is that significant portions of the Carbon API are unavailable to 64-bit programs on Mac OS X.

Perhaps a subset of the API could be made available to a 64-bit perl (for more information see Apple's "64-Bit Guide for Carbon Developers"), and might in the future, but it's simpler at this point to just run perl in 32-bit mode.

There's a few ways to do this. Most obviously, you could simply build a 32-bit perl. I always build my own perl, and I just compile it for 32 bits.

There's also two methods mentioned in L under Mac OS X 10.6: you can set an environment variable, or set a system preference. For the environment use:

VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT=yes

And for the system preference, execute this line in your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.versioner.perl Prefer-32-Bit -bool yes

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

I plowed through a bunch of bugs for Mac-Carbon today. And I found an unfixed endian bug in Mac::Glue.

And I did it without the help of a union!

I hope to get this work done before September 9th, after which my time will belong to The Beatles Rock Band for awhile. I might not release by then, but the bulk of the work should be there.

Thanks to everyone who filed reports, and their subsequent patience. I've gone through the process many open source developers before me have ... as we get older and have more obligations, some of our public release work slows down. A lot. Thankfully most of the bugs are pretty superficial; unfortunately, being related to tests, they will prevented some people from getting the code installed.

I've promised myself I won't waste my time feeling guilty about it, but I apologize for the inconvenience.

(And no, Mac-Carbon won't work on 64-bit perl, but I will document the reasons why, and various workarounds.)

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

Please, if you wish, go to join Pudge's Picks for 2009, hosted on ESPN.com.

After logging in (create a new login if you don't have one), create an entry (each user can have one to three entries).

Then for each entry, click Join a Group. Type in "Pudge's Picks" in the search field, then click on Pudge's Picks when it shows up in the list. You can also go directly to the group page, instead.

The password to join is "longhorn."

Invite others, if you wish.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

I got me a used iPhone. In playing with it, I installed PCalc Lite, as I am a longtime fan of PCalc (and DragThing, by the same author, James Thomson). I liked it and so I got the full PCalc, which has a lot more features, including a bunch of different themes.

Getting into hacking the iPhone, I thought I'd try to make a theme. You can't do this, I suppose, for now, unless you jailbreak the iPhone, as the themes are stored in the app and that breaks Apple's code signature stuff. But the same themes work on PCalc for the Mac, too. So I gave it a shot. Without further ado, my Slashdot theme for PCalc. You can also download the theme archive itself. Not sure why you'd want to, unless you're me, though.

I also have been playing a lot of Quordy and Muddled, two word games from Lonely Star Software. A friend of mine from college wrote Muddled. And I wrote a Perl program that solves both games. Both use a dictionary (I grabbed 'words.sql', a DBLite file, from the Quordy bundle, after uncompressing the ZIP file with the .ipa extension). You just enter the letters you have available to you (in order from left to right, top to bottom for Quordy), pick the dictionary options and the game you're playing, and run it.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.