I recently saw one of my old branded “stripes” wallpapers in a screenshot of FreeBSD by someone on X, and that triggered me to make a new wallpaper in a similar style.

There was a call for artwork for the next Debian release – Trixie, and I made a modified version of one of my old wallpapers for it. As it was not chosen to be the default in Trixie, I decided to post it here for people who might like it.

It is, like all my wallpapers, a calm non-distracting one. (it is much prettier full-4k-size than in the thumbnail below)

If you like it, you can download it from Debian’s Wiki – in 1920x1080 and 4k versions. There is also a version with the Debian logo there for inspiration if you want to create a custom distribution-branded one.

Mozilla is the maker of the famous Firefox web browser and the birthplace of the likes of Rust and Servo (read more about Embedding the Servo Web Engine in Qt).

Firefox is a huge, multi-platform, multi-language project with 21 million lines of code back in 2020, according to their own blog post. Navigating in projects like those is always a challenge, especially at the cross-language boundaries and in platform-specific code.

To improve working with the Firefox code-base, Mozilla hosts an online code browser tailored for Firefox called Searchfox. Searchfox analyzes C++, JavaScript, various IDLs (interface definition languages), and Rust source code and makes them all browsable from a single interface with full-text search, semantic search, code navigation, test coverage report, and git blame support. It’s the combination of a number of projects working together, both internal to Mozilla (like their Clang plugin for C++ analysis) and external (such as rust-analyzer maintained by Ferrous Systems).

It takes a whole repository in and separately indexes C++, Rust, JavaScript and now Java and Kotlin source code. All those analyses are then merged together across platforms, before running a cross-reference step and building the final index used by the web front-end available at searchfox.org.

Mozilla asked KDAB to help them with adding Java and Kotlin support to Searchfox in prevision of the merge of Firefox for Android into the main mozilla-central repository and enhance their C++ support with macro expansions. Let’s dive into the details of those tasks.

Java/Kotlin Support

Mozilla merged the Firefox for Android source code into the main mozilla-central repository that Searchfox indexes. To add support for that new Java and Kotlin code to Searchfox, we reused open-source tooling built by Sourcegraph around the SemanticDB and SCIP code indexing formats. (Many thanks to them!)

Sourcegraph’s semanticdb-javac and semanticdb-kotlinc compiler plugins are integrated into Firefox’s CI system to export SemanticDB artifacts. The Searchfox indexer fetches those SemanticDB files and turns them into a SCIP index, using scip-semanticdb. That SCIP index is then consumed by the existing Searchfox-internal scip-indexer tool.

In the process, a couple of upstream contributions were made to rust-analyzer (which also emits SCIP data) and scip-semanticdb.

A few examples of Searchfox at work:

• Searching for the Java class: org.mozilla.geckoview.GeckoSession$PromptDelegate$AutocompleteRequest shows the definition, a superclass, some uses in Java source code and some uses in Kotlin tests.
• Searching for the Java interface method: org.mozilla.geckoview.Autocomplete$StorageDelegate$onAddressFetch shows the definition, a couple of users, and a couple of implementers across Java and Kotlin code.
• Querying the callers of a method with up to 2 indirections: calls-to:’org::mozilla::geckoview::Autofill::Session::getDefaultDimensions’ depth:2

If you want to dive into more details, see the feature request on Bugzilla, the implementation and further discussion on GitHub and the release announcement on the mozilla dev-platform mailing list.

Java/C++ Cross-language Support

GeckoView is an Android wrapper around Gecko, the Firefox web engine. It extensively uses cross-language calls between Java and C++.

Searchfox already had support for cross-language interfaces, thanks to its IDL support. We built on top of that to support direct cross-language calls between Java and C++.

First, we identified the different ways the C++ and Java code interact and call each other. There are three ways Java methods marked with the native keyword call into C++:

• Case A1: By default, the JVM will search for a matching C function to call based on its name. For instance, calling org.mozilla.gecko.mozglue.GeckoLoader.nativeRun from Java will call Java_org_mozilla_gecko_mozglue_GeckoLoader_nativeRun on the C++ side.
• Case A2: This behavior can be overridden at runtime by calling the JNIEnv::RegisterNatives function on the C++ side to point at another function.
• Case A3: GeckoView has a code generator that looks for Java items decorated with the @WrapForJNI and native annotations and generates a C++ class template meant to be used through the Curiously Recurring Template Pattern. This template provides an Init static member function that does the right JNIEnv::RegisterNatives calls to bind the Java methods to the implementing C++ class’s member functions.

We also identified two ways the C++ code calls Java methods:

• Case B1: directly with JNIEnv::Call… functions.
• Case B2: GeckoView’s code generator also looks for Java methods marked with @WrapForJNI (without the native keyword this time) and generates a C++ wrapper class and member functions with the right JNIEnv::Call… calls.

Only the C++ side has the complete view of the bindings; so that’s where we decided to extract the information from, by extending Mozilla’s existing Clang plugin.

First, we defined custom C++ annotations bound_as and binding_to that the clang plugin transforms into the right format for the cross-reference analysis. This means we can manually set the binding information:

class __attribute__((annotate("binding_to", "jvm", "class", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#"))) CallingJavaFromCpp
{
    __attribute__((annotate("binding_to", "jvm", "method", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#javaStaticMethod().")))
    static void javaStaticMethod()
    {
        // Wrapper code
    }

    __attribute__((annotate("binding_to", "jvm", "method", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#javaMethod().")))
    void javaMethod()
    {
        // Wrapper code
    }

    __attribute__((annotate("binding_to", "jvm", "getter", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#javaField.")))
    int javaField()
    {
        // Wrapper code
        return 0;
    }

    __attribute__((annotate("binding_to", "jvm", "setter", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#javaField.")))
    void javaField(int)
    {
        // Wrapper code
    }

    __attribute__((annotate("binding_to", "jvm", "const", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#javaConst.")))
    static constexpr int javaConst = 5;
};

class __attribute__((annotate("bound_as", "jvm", "class", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#"))) CallingCppFromJava
{
    __attribute__((annotate("bound_as", "jvm", "method", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#nativeStaticMethod().")))
    static void nativeStaticMethod()
    {
        // Real code
    }

    __attribute__((annotate("bound_as", "jvm", "method", "S_jvm_sample/Jni#nativeMethod().")))
    void nativeMethod()
    {
        // Real code
    }
};

(This example is, in fact, extracted from our test suite, jni.cpp vs Jni.java.)

Then, we wrote some heuristics that try and identify cases A1 (C functions named Java_…), A3 and B2 (C++ code generated from @WrapForJNI decorators) and automatically generate these annotations. Cases A2 and B1 (manually calling JNIEnv::RegisterNatives or JNIEnv::Call… functions) are rare enough in the Firefox code base and impossible to reliably recognize; so it was decided not to cover them at the time. Developers who wish to declare such bindings could manually annotate them.

After this point, we used Searchfox’s existing analysis JSON format and mostly re-used what was already available from IDL support. When triggering the context menu for a binding wrapper or bound function, the definitions in both languages are made available, with “Go to” actions that jump over the generally irrelevant binding internals.

The search results also display both sides of the bridge, for instance:

• searching for the mozilla::widget::GeckoViewSupport::Open C++ member function links to its Java binding org.mozilla.geckoview.GeckoSession$Window.open.
• searching for the org.mozilla.geckoview.GeckoSession.getCompositorFromNative Java method links to its generated C++ binding mozilla::java::GeckoSession::GetCompositor.

If you want to dive into more details, see the feature request and detailed problem analysis on Bugzilla, the implementation and further discussion on GitHub, and the release announcement on the Mozilla dev-platform mailing list.

Displaying Interactive Macro Expansions

Aside from this Java/Kotlin-related work, we also added support for displaying and interacting with macro expansions. This was inspired by KDAB’s own codebrowser.dev, but improves it to:

• Display all expansion variants, if they differ across platforms or by definition:

Per-platform expansions

Per-definition expansions

• Make macros fully indexed and interactive:

In-macro context menu

This work mainly happened in the Mozsearch Clang plugin to extract macro expansions during the pre-processing stage and index them with the rest of the top-level code.

Again, if you want more details, the feature request is available on Bugzilla and the implementation and further technical discussion is on GitHub.

Summary

Because of the many technologies it makes use of, from compiler plugins and code analyzers written in many languages, to a web front-end written using the usual HTML/CSS/JS, by way of custom tooling and scripts in Rust, Python and Bash, Searchfox is a small but complex and really interesting project to work on. KDAB successfully added Java/Kotlin code indexing, including analyzing their C++ bindings, and are starting to improve Searchfox’s C++ support itself, first with fully-indexed macro expansions and next with improved templates support.

The post Improvements to Mozilla’s Searchfox Code Browser appeared first on KDAB.

Here are the new CMake features and fixes in Qt Creator 15:

We've recently discovered that the QML code editor in Qt Creator 14.0 and 15.0 is not working as expected out of the box. The QML Language Server integration is currently broken, and we’d like to address it openly and provide solutions for those affected.

Welcome to the @Krita-promo team's November 2024 development and community update.

Development Report

Community Bug Hunt Ended

The Community Bug Hunt has ended, with dozens of bugs fixed and over a hundred bug more reports closed. Huge thanks to everyone who participated, and if you missed it, the plan is to make this a regular occurrence.

Can't wait for the next bug hunt to be scheduled? Neither will the bug reports! Help in investigating them is appreciated anytime!

Community Report

November 2024 Monthly Art Challenge Results

For the "Fluffy" theme, 22 members submitted 26 original artworks. And the winner is… Most "Fluffy" by @steve.improvthis, featuring three different fluffy submissions. Be sure to check out the other two as well!

The December Art Challenge is Open Now

For the December Art Challenge, @steve.improvthis has chosen "Tropical" as the theme, with the optional challenge of using new or unfamiliar brushes. See the full brief for more details, and find yourself a place in the sun!

Featured Artwork

Best of Krita-Artists - October/November 2024

Seven images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread, which was open from October 15th to November 11th. When the poll closed on November 14th, these five wonderful works made their way onto the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner:

Ocean | Krita by @Gurkirat_Singh

Winter palace by @Sad_Tea

Order by @Valery_Sazonov

Curly, 10-24 by @Celes

Afternoon Magic by @zeki

Ways to Help Krita

Krita is Free and Open Source Software developed by an international team of sponsored developers and volunteer contributors.

Visit Krita's funding page to see how user donations keep development going, and explore a one-time or monthly contribution. Or check out more ways to Get Involved, from testing, coding, translating, and documentation writing, to just sharing your artwork made with Krita.

The Krita-promo team has put out a call for volunteers, come join us and help keep these monthly updates going.

Notable Changes

Notable changes in Krita's development builds from Nov. 12 - Dec. 11, 2024.

Stable branch (5.2.9-prealpha):

• General: Fix rounding errors in opacity conversion, which prevented layered 50% brushstrokes from adding up to 100%. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• General: Fix snapping to grid at the edge of the canvas. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• General: Disable snapping to image center by default, as it can cause confusion. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Calligraphy Tool: Fix following existing shape in the Calligraphy Tool. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Layers: Fix "Copy into new Layer" to copy vector data when a vector shape is active. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Selections: Fix the vector selection mode to not create 0px selections, and to select the canvas beforing subtracting if there is no existing selection. (bug report, CCbug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• General: Add Unify Layers Color Space action. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Layers: Don't allow moving a mask onto a locked layer. (Change, by Maciej Jesionowski)
• Linux: Capitalize the .AppImage file extension to match the convention expected by launchers. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Bug fixes:

• Color Management: Update display rendering when blackpoint compensation or LCMS optimizations are toggled, not just when the display color profile is changed. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Features:

• Text: Implement Convert to Shape for bitmap fonts. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
• Filters: Add Fast Color Overlay filter, which overlays a solid color using a configurable blending mode. (Change, by Maciej Jesionowski)
• Brush Engines: Add Pattern option to "Auto Invert For Eraser" mode. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Wide Gamut Color Selector Docker: Add option to hide the Minimal Shade Selector rows. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
• Wide Gamut Color Selector Docker: Show the Gamut Mask toolbar when the selector layout supports it. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
• Layers: Add a warning icon for layers with a different color space than the image. (Change 1, by Dmitry Kazakov, and Change 2, by Timothée Giet)
• Pop-Up Palette: Add an option to sort the color history ring by last-used instead of by color. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Export Layers Plugin: Add option to use incrementing prefix on exported layers. (wishbug report) (Change, by Ross Rosales)

Nightly Builds

Pre-release versions of Krita are built every day for testing new changes.

Get the latest bugfixes in Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.9-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Or test out the latest Experimental features in "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha). Feedback and bug reports are appreciated!: Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

The open source project I work on for the longest time is KDE and there more specific Kate.

This means I look at user bug reports for over 20 years now.

The statistics tell me our team got more than 9000 bugs since around 2001 (just for Kate, this excludes the libraries like KTextEditor that we maintain, too).

That is a bit more than one bug per day for over two decades.

And as the statistics show, especially in the last years we were able to keep the open bug count down, that means we fixed a lot of them.

Given we are a small team, I think that is a nice achievement.

We not just survived over 20 years, we are still alive and kicking and not just a still compiling zombie project.

Thanks a lot to all people that are contributing to this success!

Let’s keep this up in the next year and the ones following.

Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.

This week aside of releasing KDE Gear 24.12.0 and Kaidan 0.10.0, we added an overview of all your data in Itinerary and polished many other apps. Some of us also meet in Berlin and organized a small KDE sprint where aside of eating some Crêpes Bretonnes, we had discussion around Itinerary, Kirigami, Powerplant and more.

KDE Itinerary Digital travel assistant

Itinerary has a new "My Data" page containing your program membership, health certificates, saved locations, travel statistics and let you export and import all the data from Itinerary. (Carl Schwan, 25.04.0 — Link)

Calculator A feature rich calculator

Fixed the "History" action not working (Joshua Goins, 25.04 — Link)

Kaidan Modern chat app for every device

Version 0.10.0 and 0.10.1 of Kaidan were released! See the release announcement for the full list of changes.

Kongress Conference companion

Show the speaker's name for each event (Volker Krause, 25.04 — Link)

Kleopatra Certificate manager and cryptography app

Improved the dialog showing results of decrypt and verify operations (Tobias Fella, 25.04, Link)

Fixed a Qt6 regression that causes the dropdown menu for certificate selection to behave in unexpected ways (Tobias Fella, 25.04 — Link)

Improved the messages showing the result when decrypting and verifying the clipboard (Tobias Fella, 25.04 — Link)

NeoChat Chat on Matrix

Fixed web shortcuts not working (Joshua Goins, 24.12.1 — Link)

Improved how colored text sent by some other clients shows up (Joshua Goins, 24.12.1 — Link)

Stop NeoChat from crashing when sending messages (Tobias Fella, 24.12.1 — Link)

Okular View and annotate documents

Improved the look of banner messages (Carl Schwan, 25.04 — Link)

PowerPlant Keep your plants alive

Mathis redesigned various part of Powerplant and added a tasks view. (Mathis Brucher)

Other

More Kirigami applications are now remembering their size accross restart by using KConfig.WindowStateSaver. (Nate Graham, 25.04.0 — Skanpage and Elisa)

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out Nate's blog about Plasma and be sure not to miss his This Week in Plasma series, where every Saturday he covers all the work being put into KDE's Plasma desktop environment.

For a complete overview of what's going on, visit KDE's Planet, where you can find all KDE news unfiltered directly from our contributors.

Get Involved

The KDE organization has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we're going to need your support for KDE to become sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer either. There are many things you can do: you can help hunt and confirm bugs, even maybe solve them; contribute designs for wallpapers, web pages, icons and app interfaces; translate messages and menu items into your own language; promote KDE in your local community; and a ton more things.

You can also help us by donating. Any monetary contribution, however small, will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get your application mentioned here, please ping us in invent or in Matrix.

This week's headliner change is something that I think will make a lot of people happy: better fractional scaling! Vlad and Xaver have been hard at work to snap everything to the screen's pixel grid, with the effect that using a fractional scale factor now results in a lot less blurriness as well as no more gaps between windows and their shadows. You'll see it in the screenshot below (which was taken at 175% scale) but the effects are subtly better everywhere. Really great stuff!

And lots more too, of course:

Notable New Features

At very high zoom levels, KWin's Zoom effect switches to a sharp pixel-perfect representation and overlays a grid on top of the screen. This makes it easy to see how individual pixels look relative to other ones, which can be useful for artists and designers. (Vlad Zahorodnii, 6.3.0. Link)

KWin now offers you the option to prefer screen color accuracy at the expense of some system performance, should that be your preference (e.g. if you're a digital artist and not a gamer). (Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)

If the feature to be able to maximize a window horizontally or vertically by double-clicking on one of its edges doesn't agree with you, you can now disable it. (Vlad Zahorodnii, 6.3.0. Link)

Notable UI Improvements

Landed a huge overhaul of how fractional scale factors are handled in KWin. Now it makes an effort to always snap things to the screen's pixel grid, greatly reducing blurriness and visual gaps everywhere. I've been using these patches with a 175% scale factor for a week, and everything looks just fantastic! (Vlad Zahorodnii and Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)

On login, Plasma panels now appear on screen only after their contents have been fully loaded. (Niccolò Venerandi, 6.3.0. Link)

Notable Bug Fixes

Fixed a nasty bug affecting people using the X11 session that could sometimes cause the lock screen to be all black. (Philip Müller, 6.2.5. Link)

Fixed a specific instance where you could end up with a black screen when wiggling the pointer while the screen is about to lock. (David Redondo, 6.2.5 Link)

Fixed a visual bug in Discover that caused UI elements to overlap on expanded list items on the Updates page. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, 6.2.5. Link)

Fixed the application menu appearing in a wrong position when opened via the window titlebar with Qt 6.8. (David Redondo, 6.2.5. Link)

Fixed a bug that could cause windows on a screen that gets disconnected to become lost and stuck in an off-screen position in the new screen arrangement. (Vlad Zahorodnii and Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)

You can no longer slightly break the Overview effect's Desktop Grid view by dragging windows outside of the screen area. (Niccolò Venerandi, 6.3.0. Link)

Dragging an image from the clipboard to the desktop now shows the normal drop menu, rather than creating an empty Media Frame widget. (Fushan Wen, 6.3.0. Link)

Non-rectangular-region screenshots taken in Spectacle and copied to the clipboard can now be pasted into Dolphin as expected. (Fushan Wen, 6.3.0. Link)

Standalone (not in System Tray) "Power and Battery" and "Brightness and Color" widgets once again work properly, as expected. (Jakob Petsovits, 6.3.0. Link)

Fixed a bug in the Breeze Dark icon theme that caused places/folder icons to remain colorful at small sizes where symbolic icons are normally expected. (David Redondo, Frameworks 6.9. Link)

Plasma and lots of apps no longer crash when your /etc/fstab file contains any loop mounts in it. (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 6.10. Link)

Other bug information of note:

• 2 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 3 last week). Current list of bugs
• 32 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 35 last week). Current list of bugs
• 104 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over the last week. Full list of bugs

Notable in Performance & Technical

Ported the clipboard to use a standard SQLite database, rather than its own internal custom format. This improves reliability, support for saving many data types, and memory efficiency especially with images. (Fushan Wen, 6.3.0. Link)

How You Can Help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

Thankfully, thousands of you have stepped up in the past week to do just that financially, donating a record-breaking amount of money to KDE e.V., which is just incredible, awe-inspiring even.

So that's a great way to help out. But if you've got more time than money or want to make a difference more directly, then you can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine!

You don’t have to be a programmer, either. Many other opportunities exist:

• Triage and confirm bug reports, maybe even identify their root cause
• Contribute designs for wallpapers, icons, and app interfaces
• Design and maintain websites
• Translate user interface text items into your own language
• Promote KDE in your local community
• …And a ton more things!

To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

This release fixes some bugs. Have a look at the changelog for more details.

Changelog

Bugfixes:

• Fix displaying files of each message in appropriate message bubble (melvo)
• Fix sending fallback messages for clients not supporting XEP-0447: Stateless file sharing (melvo)
• Fix margins within message bubbles (melvo)
• Fix hiding hidden message part (melvo)
• Fix displaying marker for new messages (melvo)

Download

• Source code (.tar.xz) (sig signed with 04EFAD0F7A4D9724)
• Linux (Flatpak on Flathub)

Or install Kaidan for your distribution:

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-50.

Census III of Free and Open Source Software

Tags: tech, foss, supply-chain

Interesting report, some findings are kind of unexpected. It’s interesting to see how much npm and maven dominate the supply chain. Clearly there’s a need for a global scheme to identify dependencies, hopefully we’ll get there.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/census-iii

Open Source Archetypes: A Framework For Purposeful Open Source

Tags: tech, foss, business, strategy

An important white paper which probably went unnoticed. It gives a nice overview of the strategies one can build around Open Source components.

https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/MZOTS_OS_Archetypes_report_ext_scr.pdf

Fool Me Twice We Don’t Get Fooled Again

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse

Excellent post from Cory Doctorow about why he is only on Mastodon. Not being federated should indeed just be a deal breaker by now. Empty promises should be avoided.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/

Firefox is the superior browser

Tags: tech, web, browser, firefox

Obviously I agree with this. It’s time people stop jumping on chromium based browsers.

https://asindu.xyz/posts/switching-to-firefox/

TRELLIS: Structured 3D Latents for Scalable and Versatile 3D Generation

Tags: tech, 3d, ai, machine-learning, generator

Looks like a nice model to produce 3D assets. Should speed up a bit the work of artists for producing background elements, I guess there will be manual adjustments needed in the end still.

https://trellis3d.github.io/

Who and What comprise AI Skepticism? - by Benjamin Riley

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism

Excellent post showing all the nuances of AI skepticism. Can you find in which category you are? I definitely match several of them.

https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/who-and-what-comprises-ai-skepticism

Reverse engineering of the Pentium FDIV bug

Tags: tech, cpu, hardware

It’s interesting to see such a reverse engineering of this infamous bug straight from the gates layout.

https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/113606898880486330

How to Think About Time

Tags: tech, time

A good summary on the various concepts needed to reason about time.

https://errorprone.info/docs/time

Galloping Search - blag

Tags: tech, algorithm

Nice principle for a search in a sorted list when you don’t know the upper bound.

https://avi.im/blag/2024/galloping-search/

I’m daily driving Jujutsu, and maybe you should too

Tags: tech, version-control, git

Jujutsu is indeed alluring… but its long term support is questionable, that’s what keeps me away from it for now.

https://drewdevault.com/2024/12/10/2024-12-10-Daily-driving-jujutsu.html

mise-en-place

Tags: tech, tools, developer-experience

A single tool to manage your environment and dev tools across projects? Seems a bit young and needs a proper community still. I’m surely tempted to give it a spin though.

https://mise.jdx.dev/

Raw loops vs. STL algorithms

Tags: tech, c++, algorithm

An old one now, but since I keep giving this advice it seems relevant still. If you’re using raw loops at least that no again, there is likely a good alternative in the STL.

https://www.meetingcpp.com/blog/items/raw-loops-vs-stl-algorithms.html

Generic programming to fight the rigidity in the C++ projects

Tags: tech, architecture, type-systems, generics, c++

A good reminder that genericity can help fight against the rigidity one can accumulate using purely object oriented couplings… but it comes at a price in terms of complexity.

https://codergears.com/Blog/?p=945

Nobody Gets Fired for Picking JSON, but Maybe They Should? · mcyoung

Tags: tech, json, safety, type-systems

JSON is full of pitfalls. Here is a good summary. Still it is very widespread.

https://mcyoung.xyz/2024/12/10/json-sucks/

JSON5 – JSON for Humans

Tags: tech, json

Interesting JSON superset which makes it more usable for humans. I wonder if it’ll see more parsers appear.

https://json5.org/

Improving my desktop’s responsiveness with the cgroup V2 ‘cpu.idle’ setting

Tags: tech, systemd, cgroups

Nice little systemd trick, definitely an alias to add to your setup.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/CgroupV2CpuIdleForResponsiveness

“Rules” that terminal programs follow

Tags: tech, shell, tools, unix

Good list of the undocumented rules terminal programs tend to follow. It’s nice to have this kind of consistency even though a bit by accident.

https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/26/terminal-rules/

htmy

Tags: tech, web, backend, frontend, python, htmx

The idea is interesting even though it probably needs to mature. It’s interesting to see this kind of libraries popup though, there’s clearly some kind of “backend - frontend split” fatigue going on.

https://volfpeter.github.io/htmy/

The errors of TeX (1989)

Tags: tech, latex, history, estimates, craftsmanship

A very precious document. Shows great organization in the work of Knuth of course but the self-reflection has profound lessons pertaining to estimates, type of errors we make, etc.

https://yurichev.com/mirrors/knuth1989.pdf

An Undefeated Pull Request Template

Tags: tech, codereview

This is indeed a nice template for submitting changes for review. It’s very thorough and helps reviewers.

https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/pull-request-template/

On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules

Tags: tech, design, architecture, research

We’re still struggling about how to modularize our code. Sometimes we should go back to the basics, this paper by Parnas from 1972 basically gave us the code insights needs to modularize programs properly.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.¹¹⁴⁵⁄₃₆₁₅₉₈.361623

TDD as the crack cocaine of software

Tags: tech, tdd, flow

Indeed, it is often overlooked that TDD can really help finding a state of flow. Unlike other addictive activities presented in this article it requires a non negligible initial effort though, that’s why I wouldn’t describe it as an addiction though.

https://jefclaes.be/2014/12/tdd-as-crack-cocaine-of-software.html

Demo Driven Development

Tags: tech, agile, product-management

A good reminder of what agile is about from the product management perspective. If you can regularly demo your work you ensure a feeling of progress.

https://oanasagile.blogspot.com/2013/12/demo-driven-development.html

The 6 Mistakes You’re Going to Make as a New Manager

Tags: tech, leadership, management

Good points, this is indeed often where we are struggling when we move to a leadership role. This changes the nature of the work at least in part and we need to adjust to it.

https://terriblesoftware.org/2024/12/04/the-6-mistakes-youre-going-to-make-as-a-new-manager/

Bye for now!