[	Tags	|	java, programming	]
[	What	|	confused	]
[	Who	|	Deku Palace ~ Nintendo/Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask	]

Eclipse is a maze of twisty build dependencies, all different. As best as I can tell there's the following:

• Build path: this affects compiling and possibly running your project. Split into separate widgets for dependent projects and for libraries/jars.
• Order and export: the same widget handles both the build order and "exporting" stuff to dependent projects, which may or may not actually achieve anything. Certainly the export option doesn't affect what appears in your .WAR.
• Deployment assembly: this doesn't affect your build path, but instead controls what ends up in your .WAR should you generate one. This is also present in non-web projects and mostly works, except not all items are propagated to the web projects (e.g. if A is a web project and B and C are normal Java projects with a dependency A -> B -> C, the dependency from B to C isn't picked up by A. So A needs to explicitly require projects B and C even though it doesn't directly use C). Oh, and if you have a web project then I lied and any direct dependencies here are actually included in your build path.
• Project references: the Java toolchain completely ignores this and makes no attempt to keep it synchronised with the other dependencies. Which is a shame, as the Eclipse interface uses this to work out which projects depend on other projects.

It all seems massively overcomplicated when what's really needed is a way to list libraries/projects and mark them as either "build-time", "run-time", or both. Then when compiling it uses just the items listed as build-time, and when running or creating .WARs it uses everything listed as run-time and includes transitive run-time dependencies as well.

[

What

|

amused

]

Some time ago while randomly bouncing around the internet I tripped across the Queen's Harbour Master website for the nearby port, and signed up to the navigation warning mailing list out of curosity. Most of the bulletins posted are mundane ones along the lines of "Mariners are advised that bouy wotsit has been reported as unlit", "Cancel previous nav warn, bouy wotsit is now correct". Occassionally a more interesting one turns up, such as one last year which warned about a "crash test boat controlled explosion".

Today the following landed in my inbox...

NAVIGATION WARNING

NAV WARN 99/99

Example Test Message - Not to be published .

1. This is an example notice to show many of the formatting options available.
   A single return signifies a new paragraph in the text however

2. each new line created with a double return from the previous line creates a new numbered bullet point.

3. Remember that important sections of the notice can be highlighted by placing around the text to make it bold.

4. All notices are based on a numbered list which cannot be switched off, however it may sometimes be necessary to create a second smaller list, this can be done by placing a single return between each line and starting each line with a hash.
   1. Lettered List
   2. List Item 2
   3. Etc
5. Cancel this Navigation Warning Thu 7th Apr 2011 (-387 days)

[	Tags	|	rant	]
[	What	|	annoyed	]

Attempts needed to find a list of nearby places on the National Trust site: 5

1. Enter postcode on the home page, press Enter, and the postcode disappears.
2. Enter postcode on the home page, press Enter, and the postcode disappears.
3. Enter postcode on the home page, try clicking on the search button instead of pressing Enter... and get taken to an advanced search page with no results. And with no postcode.
4. Enter postcode on the advanced search page, press Enter... and get taken to a page that initially appears blank, but after several seconds updates to list all National Trust properties, not just the nearby ones. And the postcode disappears again.
5. Enter postcode yet again, try clicking on the search button instead of pressing Enter... and after a couple of seconds of apparent inactivity the list updates to show what I actually wanted.

Attempts needed to find a list of nearby places on the English Heritage site: 4

1. Enter postcode in on the home page, press Enter... and get taken to a regional page.
2. Enter postcode in the "Near your town" section of that page, press Enter... and get taken to a combined places to visit/events page.
3. Scroll down, click "Find more properties"... and get taken to an advanced search page that (surprise, surprise) initially shows no results, but after several seconds updates to list all English Heritage places. And the postcode disappears.
4. Enter postcode, press Enter... and after a couple of seconds of apparent inactivity the list updates to show what I actually wanted.

Attempts needed to find a list of nearby geocaches on Geocaching.com: 1

1. Enter postcode on home page, press Enter... and get taken to a list of nearby geocaches.

[	Tags	|	computing, nas adventures, rant	]
[	What	|	irritated	]
[	Who	|	Cube 7 - MGS.ac3	]

So after the epic fail that was the last attempt to build GCC, I did a bit of research into the whole mess. It looks like that to have a reasonable chance of success I *do* need the exact version of GCC that was used.

[	Tags	|	computing, nas adventures	]
[	What	|	accomplished	]
[	Who	|	Utopia ~ Within Temptation	]

Where was I? Ah yes, building stuff...

[	Tags	|	computing, nas adventures	]
[	What	|	accomplished	]
[	Who	|	Orinoco Flow ~ Celtic Woman/The Very Best of Pure Moods - Disc 1	]

Since getting that NAS, I've been poking around and looking at adding some useful programs to the existing firmware. The initial one I want to run on it is smartmontools, so I can see just what start the hard disks are in and try and prod the second one into actually responding.

As with most embedded stuff, it runs Linux. So getting my own code to run is merely a case of building a cross-compiler that'll run on an actual system and produces output that works on the NAS' armv5l-linux architecture. Actually, since this is a NAS with actual disks I'm not limited to the pokey little flash chip that most embedded stuff has (this device has 16MB of flash - most routers have 8MB or even only 4MB!) and so I could run the compiler on the NAS itself. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with one, and to build a compiler you first need a compiler. Hence the need for a cross-compiler. Since the target is Linux that'd normally mean I'd also need to install a Linux development environment, which I'd rather not have to do - Linux and I don't get on well.

Now, something I tripped across recently is a page on the MinGW website, containing instructions for building a cross-compiler hosted under MinGW. The useful part of this for me is that MinGW along with MSYS is a port of a whole bunch of Linux tools to Windows. So in theory I should be able to use that to build and run my cross-compiler on Windows. This is completely against the normal way of doing things, but the wiki page is proof that it should be possible.

Unfortunately the instructions are rather out of date, so I'm having to make it up as I go along (using a vaguely recent set of instructions for a GNU/Linux ARM toolchain and an older Linux/ARM howto for more recent details). I intend to document this as I go along, partially as a set of notes to myself, partially in the hope that the next person to try this finds it useful, but mainly so you can all point and laugh when it inevitably fails in some spectacular fashion.

[	Tags	|	computing	]
[	What	|	annoyed	]
[	Who	|	Politik ~ Coldplay/A Rush of Blood to the Head	]

I apparently have a file that simultaneously exists and does not exist:

/cross/src/gcc-4.6.1/gcc/../libcpp/include/line-map.h: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [s-gtype] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
/bin/sh /cross/src/gcc-4.6.1/gcc/../move-if-change tmp-constants.h insn-constants.h
echo timestamp > s-enums
echo timestamp > s-constants
rm gfortran.pod gcc.pod
make[2]: Leaving directory `/cross/build/gcc-4.6.1/gcc'
make[1]: *** [all-gcc] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/cross/build/gcc-4.6.1'
make: *** [all] Error 2

Thomas@Khaos /cross/build/gcc-4.6.1
$ ls -l /cross/src/gcc-4.6.1/gcc/../libcpp/include/line-map.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 Thomas Administrators 7649 Jan  3  2011 /cross/src/gcc-4.6.1/gcc/../libcpp/include/line-map.h

Oh yes, before I forget...

Happy Birthday,

talismancer

[	Tags	|	the future is now	]
[	What	|	surprised	]
[	Who	|	Força ~ Nelly Furtado/Folklore	]

In today's "the future is now" moment, the clubcard signup machine in the local Tesco's spits out actual plastic cards with a working magnetic stripe and with your name printed on it. I was just expecting a barcode on a scrap of paper (like the Ikea one does) with the real card turning up in the post a couple of weeks later.

On the down side, the machine claimed my postcode did not exist. Apparently it takes more than two years for Tesco to update their postcode database.

[	Tags	|	nablopomo, name that song, quiz	]
[	What	|	accomplished	]
[	Who	|	Never-Ending Story ~ Within Temptation/Mother Earth	]

Bring on the wall answers!

So out of the 30 songs, a sum total of 8 were successfully guessed by 3 readers. Huh, I thought it would actually be easier this time. Anyway, the results are in, and the medals have been awarded:

The bronze goes to omgimsuchadork with 1 points. allegramente has managed the silver medal with 3.5 points (you only get half a point for #28, since you only guessed the artist). But the gold medal goes to ariskari with a grand total of 4 points! Congratulations!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, rounds out the month of daily updates for NaBloPoMo! Congratulations to omgimsuchadork for also managing to post every day, special congratulations to allegramente for achieving the required 30 posts in just over half the time, and a honourable mention for talismancer who's likely provided more actual content in his 23 days of posting than I've managed in the entire month.

[	Tags	|	nablopomo, poll, real life	]
[	What	|	blah	]

Readers may remember that I've posted about the long-running roadworks and the rumours of compensation. Well, there's been an update on it. A few days ago I received this letter...

Included with the letter was (drumroll please)... wait for it... a blank £20 Tesco Giftcard for the supermarket in question!

Yes. Well. He could at least have hand-written an apology on the giftcard, or if nothing else signed the letter himself instead of printing a scanned signature. Y'know, some sort of personal touch that shows this is more than just a quick mail merge.

So, the question now is what do I do with it? Well, what I'll likely do is just spend the thing (since as tempting as it is to send it back with a suitably ranty letter, that requires effort and will probably result in me having no giftcard). But talismancer did gift me a paid account about a year ago, and if a paid account is good for anything here in LJ land it's for creating random polls. Plus it gives the peanut gallery something to do :)

I should...

View Answers

use it
4 (30.8%)
fire it into the sundestroy it
0 (0.0%)
post it back
0 (0.0%)
return it in person
0 (0.0%)
complain to Tesco's
2 (15.4%)
complain to Tesco's head office
2 (15.4%)
complain to my local counciller
3 (23.1%)
complain to my MP
2 (15.4%)
something else entirely
0 (0.0%)

Edit: that was supposed to read "fire it into the sundestroy it".