It’s time for some system maintenance. I’m upgrading the main box to Ubuntu 14.04. This needs to be done on a weekend because I’ll curse and fight with various Theme and UI changes. The OSX box is integrated enough thanks to Firefox sync and gmail that I can live online while cursing.

I was invited to promote Shoes 3.2 on the shoesrb.com website. Just fork that project, add my html to their html and issue a github pull request. And install jekyll and configure that and debug what was cloned and commit those changes as well as the 3.2 words. Sheesh. That’s heavy price for a simple change or two. I know, I know, it’s all setup with best practices for OSS developers expectations and all kinds of infrastructure I should care about. 10 years ago I would agree. Not so much anymore.

That’s why Shoes 3.2 is a one man project and I have my own website for Shoes 3.2. Communication is important but irc/chatrooms are for developers’ internal musings and not for potential users of an ‘educational’ app.

I’m the old fart in the slow lane.

This time I really mean it! Shoes 3.2.11 is finished. Shoes/Windows can package for OSX and Linux. Unless someone reports a bug, I’m done with packaging. It works but it’s not pretty under the covers. However, it is less ugly down there than it used to be, and a lot more flexible & future proof so I feel good. Did I mention packaging works now for and with Linux (3 architectures), Windows, OSX and is faster and comes with visual feedback instead of a black hole?

There are lots of tweaks and bugs to fix. Documentation to write. Promotion and raising awareness and all kinds of things that other folks might consider priority #1. It’s also summer and the right time to fire up the smoker and cook some brisket and pulled pork. Perhaps this year the veggie garden will produce if I take care of it and many people need a reminder that optimism and work is what makes the world better (but only it you do both).

Odds are, I’ll be back in a day or two.

That game stopping bug when using Shoes/Windows to package a Linux or OSX? It’s fixed for dealing with Linux (osx should be easier now that I know more). The real problem is that +x permissions don’t mean diddly if you unpack a tarball on Windows. So, I wrote some code using Gem::TarReader and TarWriter to replace Shy.xzf and Shy.czf. It creates a hash of filenames=>permissions and uses that when writing a tar file. It took a lot of debugging and testing. I started to question my intentions.

On the bright side, I know a lot more about Windows limitations and handling the .run with windows was harder than OSX (I think) and most of that code is written now. I could also dump minitar and rewrite shy.rb. That would be tempting.

It’s still Shoes 3.2.11. Just because packaging mostly works doesn’t mean you should use it, although it is pretty damn cool. Anyway, I’ll get Windows packaging for OSX sorted out in a day or two.