Summer!

Summer's here! (Or, at least, the academic year is over and the high temperature yesterday was close to 90 degrees F.)

My earlier post about a frustrating experience installing Subclipse was somewhat inaccurate. As it turns out, when you install subclipse via the update site, you can uncheck the box that installs the Mylar integration. The base subclipse feature works just dandy with Eclipse 3.2.2.

I installed Ubuntu 7.04. I normally don't upgrade on a whim, but after seeing an Ubuntu forums post about a GUI configuration for nvidia twinview I just had to. I despise editing xorg.conf, but I love working with dual monitors. Anyway, I now have both my 19" Acer and 15" Dell LCD panels connected and running quite well. The basics are

1. System->Administration->Restricted Devices Manager (enable closed-source nvidia driver)
2. sudo nvidia-settings (run the GUI config tool)
3. log out, control-alt-backspace to restart the X server (just to make sure things really work)
   

All is not perfect. New firefox windows do weird things if they are sized too large to display fully on the small monitor. However, the annoyances are pretty minor.

Now back to work. I'm doing some refactoring of FindBugs in preparation for the upcoming tutorial at PLDI. Assuming everything works out, it should become a lot easier to implement new analyses in a FindBugs plugin.

Subclipse frustrations

I use Eclipse for Java development. Great IDE, love it, etc. But, it doesn't do subversion out of the box. You need Subclipse for that, and it must be installed separately.

OK, go to subclipse website. Find update site. Go through the whole Help->Software Updates->Find and Install... business in Eclipse. It says that I can't install the latest version of Subclipse because I don't have "Mylar" installed. Let's think about this for a moment:

Isn't the whole point of f***ing update sites to automate the process of software installation?

So, now I need "Mylar". Google takes me to the Mylar website. My heart sinks: there's no convenient link labeled "Install Mylar". I can't even really tell what the hell Mylar is. I'm sure it's nice and all, but I just want Subclipse to work!

Eventually I decide to click the "Mylar 2.0M2" link in the "Releases" box. It's the only release listed, so I guess it's the one I should use, right? I see an update site, so I go back into Eclipse and let it party on both the Subclipse and Mylar update sites. Now I'm allowed to install both features. After a few minutes of downloading, installing, and restarting Eclipse, everything is ready.

Long story short, this version of Mylar doesn't work correctly, at least with my Eclipse (3.2.1) under Linux. Errors out the wazzoo. Fortunately, I'm able to disable Mylar and the Subclipse Mylar Integration (thank you, Eclipse, for providing Help->Software Updates->Manage Configuration), leaving just good old Subclipse, which now seems to work.

Hey, Subclipse developers:

1. I expect your update site to correctly install all of the software I need to run subclipse
2. I don't want to be forced to install broken experimental software in order to use basic version control
3. The Mylar integration should be optional

Hey, Eclipse developers:

Please, please, integrate subclipse into the mainline so I never have to go through this again.

New Crowded House album!

Crowded House is back and will have a new album out in July. According to the website, my musical hero Johnny Marr plays on two tracks. Crowded House is just about the only band I can think of that got consistently better over time; if the trend continues the new album should be terrific. Hopefully they'll play in Philly or Baltimore so I can see them live.