Re: CamelBones: Maintainer needed
- Original Message - From: Sherm Pendley [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: macosx@perl.org Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 9:52:43 AM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago Subject: CamelBones: Maintainer needed I haven't had a real job in years, and I'm at a point now where I don't even care about that, about CamelBones, about Perl, or really about much of anything else computer-related. I've had more than enough time to ship a Leopard-compatible CamelBones, but I just haven't been able to find the enthusiasm to get it (or anything else) done. I sit down at the computer, start up Xcode, and I think, what's the point? I've spent a lifetime writing code, and it's gotten me nowhere; what possible difference would a few more hours make? I've obviously got issues to deal with, and CamelBones users deserve, more than anything else, a maintainer whose head is on straight. Someone who cares about it and enjoys working on it. That isn't me, and it's way past time for me to admit that. Any volunteers? sherm-- Sherm, Can you give an idea on the experience one would need to maintain it? I'm assuming you wouldn't want a relative newbie to Perl to take it over. (of course if it doesn't matter, I might be interested) Tom -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) iD8DBQFHXgrFZWzkfeDiTw4RAozoAKCMRphwyM/wT9AbB+PMX68FUN8nEgCfX7Nu n7B9YcXwARSuuLdfbmznm/k= =5/ey -END PGP SIGNATURE-
CamelBones: Maintainer needed
I haven't had a real job in years, and I'm at a point now where I don't even care about that, about CamelBones, about Perl, or really about much of anything else computer-related. I've had more than enough time to ship a Leopard-compatible CamelBones, but I just haven't been able to find the enthusiasm to get it (or anything else) done. I sit down at the computer, start up Xcode, and I think, what's the point? I've spent a lifetime writing code, and it's gotten me nowhere; what possible difference would a few more hours make? I've obviously got issues to deal with, and CamelBones users deserve, more than anything else, a maintainer whose head is on straight. Someone who cares about it and enjoys working on it. That isn't me, and it's way past time for me to admit that. Any volunteers? sherm--
Re: CamelBones: Maintainer needed
On Dec 14, 2007 11:07 AM, Tom Yarrish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Sherm Pendley [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: macosx@perl.org Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 9:52:43 AM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago Subject: CamelBones: Maintainer needed I haven't had a real job in years, and I'm at a point now where I don't even care about that, about CamelBones, about Perl, or really about much of anything else computer-related. I've had more than enough time to ship a Leopard-compatible CamelBones, but I just haven't been able to find the enthusiasm to get it (or anything else) done. I sit down at the computer, start up Xcode, and I think, what's the point? I've spent a lifetime writing code, and it's gotten me nowhere; what possible difference would a few more hours make? I've obviously got issues to deal with, and CamelBones users deserve, more than anything else, a maintainer whose head is on straight. Someone who cares about it and enjoys working on it. That isn't me, and it's way past time for me to admit that. Any volunteers? sherm-- Sherm, Can you give an idea on the experience one would need to maintain it? I'm assuming you wouldn't want a relative newbie to Perl to take it over. (of course if it doesn't matter, I might be interested) Oddly, there's not a whole lot of actual Perl code in it, although what's there is kind of obscure. Autoload is used to catch method calls that aren't implemented in Perl, and send them across the bridge, tied arrays and hashes to implement the Perl side of toll free bridging, and attributes are used to declare method signatures. Of course, there's a good amount of XS programming involved. You'd need to know your way around the perlembed, perlguts, and perlapi docs. And you'd definitely need to know your way around Cocoa, and the Objective-C runtime functions. Perl classes are registered with the ObjC runtime, and participate directly in the inheritance hierarchy; the key difference with such classes is that their selectors all share the same IMP (aka implementation function), which uses Perl's internal API (i.e. perldoc perlapi) to reflect the call to Perl. The ObjC runtime is also used to get a list of registered classes at startup, after which libperl functions are used to create all the packages and @ISA arrays that are needed for the autoloading to work when Cocoa methods are called from Perl. On the Cocoa side, there are NSArray and NSDictionary subclasses whose primitive functions use libperl functions to access Perl's arrays and hashes, respectively. To deal with that, you'd need to understand how Cocoa's class clusters work, and how to add a new concrete subclass to them. sherm--
Re: CamelBones: Maintainer needed
- Sherm Pendley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 14, 2007 11:07 AM, Tom Yarrish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oddly, there's not a whole lot of actual Perl code in it, although what's there is kind of obscure. Autoload is used to catch method calls that aren't implemented in Perl, and send them across the bridge, tied arrays and hashes to implement the Perl side of toll free bridging, and attributes are used to declare method signatures. Of course, there's a good amount of XS programming involved. You'd need to know your way around the perlembed, perlguts, and perlapi docs. And you'd definitely need to know your way around Cocoa, and the Objective-C runtime functions. Perl classes are registered with the ObjC runtime, and participate directly in the inheritance hierarchy; the key difference with such classes is that their selectors all share the same IMP (aka implementation function), which uses Perl's internal API (i.e. perldoc perlapi) to reflect the call to Perl. The ObjC runtime is also used to get a list of registered classes at startup, after which libperl functions are used to create all the packages and @ISA arrays that are needed for the autoloading to work when Cocoa methods are called from Perl. On the Cocoa side, there are NSArray and NSDictionary subclasses whose primitive functions use libperl functions to access Perl's arrays and hashes, respectively. To deal with that, you'd need to understand how Cocoa's class clusters work, and how to add a new concrete subclass to them. sherm-- Why not put a post up on use.perl.org or Perlbuzz? There are plenty of Perl people out there that use/have experience with Macs. Tom -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) iD8DBQFHXgrFZWzkfeDiTw4RAozoAKCMRphwyM/wT9AbB+PMX68FUN8nEgCfX7Nu n7B9YcXwARSuuLdfbmznm/k= =5/ey -END PGP SIGNATURE-
RE: CamelBones: Maintainer needed
-Original Message- From: Tom Yarrish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: den 14 december 2007 17:07 To: Sherm Pendley Cc: macosx@perl.org Subject: Re: CamelBones: Maintainer needed Sherm, Can you give an idea on the experience one would need to maintain it? I'm assuming you wouldn't want a relative newbie to Perl to take it over. (of course if it doesn't matter, I might be interested) You're going to want to know a lot about how write applications for OS X. At the very least you will want to have some passing familiarity with Objective-C, XCode, and other Apple tools, like interface builder. CamelBones is designed to make the underlying Objective-C API accessible to perl. Obviously the more you know about the Objective-C API the easier it is, at least that is what I would imagine. Jeremiah
RE: CamelBones: Maintainer needed
Hello list, and hello Sherm, 1. That sucks. I am sorry to hear you feel that way. Not because of CamelBones but because you sound depressed. I know you have been looking for work - have you found any? A mailing list is not the best forum for this kind of discussion perhaps, but I hope you feel better, you should be proud of CamelBones. 2. I would be happy to maintain it. It would be a really interesting project. I have been working with it for a bit, long enough to point out known bugs at least. :) I am certain there are more qualified CamelBones hackers out there, but I am familiar with it and it is something I like working on. Plus I do some packaging for debian and I know a bit about the internals of Mac OS X. 3. I think some kind of team maintainership is good. If Tom wants to work on it, cool. If others want to work on it, cool. We do this in the debian perl group and while it is more obvious how to share responsibility when you are working on lots of packages, I still think there is a way to work it out with something like CamelBones as well. 4. It is really important, I feel, that this project lives on. This is one of the better ways to build graphical interfaces on the Mac. Jeremiah -Original Message- From: Sherm Pendley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: den 14 december 2007 16:53 To: macosx@perl.org Subject: CamelBones: Maintainer needed I haven't had a real job in years, and I'm at a point now where I don't even care about that, about CamelBones, about Perl, or really about much of anything else computer-related. I've had more than enough time to ship a Leopard-compatible CamelBones, but I just haven't been able to find the enthusiasm to get it (or anything else) done. I sit down at the computer, start up Xcode, and I think, what's the point? I've spent a lifetime writing code, and it's gotten me nowhere; what possible difference would a few more hours make? I've obviously got issues to deal with, and CamelBones users deserve, more than anything else, a maintainer whose head is on straight. Someone who cares about it and enjoys working on it. That isn't me, and it's way past time for me to admit that. Any volunteers? sherm--
Re: CamelBones: Maintainer needed
On Dec 14, 2007 11:52 AM, Jeremiah Foster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello list, and hello Sherm, 1. That sucks. I am sorry to hear you feel that way. Not because of CamelBones but because you sound depressed. I know you have been looking for work - have you found any? A mailing list is not the best forum for this kind of discussion perhaps, but I hope you feel better Thanks for the support. I honestly don't know if how I'm feeling qualifies as clinical depression, or just plain old blues. One reason I brought it up in public is that it's been kind of feeding on itself. There's a bit of a stigma attached to emotional issues, so I've been reluctant to say anything. But keeping quiet meant keeping CB users in the dark about my reasons for the lack of progress. Guilt about keeping y'all in the dark made me feel worse... and so on. Breaking that cycle and being open about what's going on has helped a little. , you should be proud of CamelBones. Not to boast about it, but... I am proud of it! :-) It's my best technical achievement to date. In terms of social importance and effect on people's lives though, it still takes a back seat to my work on children's web sites at WGBH. That was dead-simple CGI work, but how could I not feel good about helping kids learn to read? 2. I would be happy to maintain it. It would be a really interesting project. I have been working with it for a bit, long enough to point out known bugs at least. :) Fish in a barrel. :-) I am certain there are more qualified CamelBones hackers out there, but I am familiar with it and it is something I like working on. Plus I do some packaging for debian and I know a bit about the internals of Mac OS X. There was actually a Debian package for 0.3. But, the GNUStep makefile has fallen way out of date, and I'm not sure that the whole support bundle scheme is really relevant there anyway. Given the system-wide package and dependency management on Debian (and other Linux distros), there isn't the need to have a single .app bundle that's binary-compatible with a variety of libperl versions, like there is for a Mac OS X CamelBones. 3. I think some kind of team maintainership is good. If Tom wants to work on it, cool. If others want to work on it, cool. We do this in the debian perl group and while it is more obvious how to share responsibility when you are working on lots of packages, I still think there is a way to work it out with something like CamelBones as well. Even being able to share the job would be a load off my mind. One source of anxiety is just that there's no one else - if I have a breakdown, or get hit by a bus, or whatever, it'd be pretty darned hard for someone else to pick up the pieces. There are a lot of smart people here, and I'm sure the project would go on eventually, but it would be a lot harder than it really should be. One way that people could help out would be documentation. I've been using Drupal (yeah, I know, PHP, boo hiss...) on a community-oriented portal site I built for a friend. Its book module actually looks pretty nice for managing community-written docs. There could be more example apps too - the current selection is pretty thin. And, there could be more full-scale apps. A Perl-based office suite would be interesting, and far too big a task for one person. I've always wondered why there are no Perl-based word processors or text editors. Given Perl's facility with text, it seems like it would be a pretty obvious idea. 4. It is really important, I feel, that this project lives on. That's important to me also, which is why I'd rather step down than see it derailed by my current situation and mental state. sherm--
