Stu's Rusty Bucket

Friday, July 15, 2005

From Rant to Scons

So after testing Rant (ruby ant), its very nice (as I love Ruby programming), but its only good if all your files reside in a single directory. As soon as you move to multiple rantfiles it just borks itself…

So, that precipitated another change in build systems.. This time I turned to SCons, which is built in python (eeeeeeew!), but anyway, Scons works beautifully, even across multiple directories and files (it passed my test setup, where Rant failed).

I can see its whant Rant is hopeing to be? One thing I dont like is I have no control over the cleanup, its automatic, as I’d like it to delete my .bak files during cleanup… Ohwell…

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Rant.. Build system in Ruby

Over the last few days I have switched to using Rant as my build system
as opposed to Make, for my C apps.

Originally I wanted to look at Ant, but was completly turned off by
the fact that I’d have to fire up the JVM, and that its inputs are
humongously verbose XML files.

I was toying with looking at SCons but since I am more into Ruby than
Python, I ran a simple ‘gem install rant’ and away I went.

So far, I really like it. For my currently small project this is
my rantfile; I feel far more comfortable building rantfiles than I
ever did with convoluted Makefiles.

Right now I’ve barely scratched the sufrace of Rant files, but what I
would love to see is much better documentation on say, Migrating Makefiles
to Rantfiles, etc.

GCC_CC = "gcc"
GCC_CFLAGS = "-Wall -Werror -O2 -march=i686"

exec_files = %w(core.o p_null.o p_bool.o p_object.o
			p_int.o p_strings.o utf16.o memory.o)

file "p.exe" => exec_files do
	sys GCC_CC + " " + exec_files.join(' ') + " -o p.exe"
end

task :clean do
	sys.rm_f Dir["*.o"] + Dir["*.bak"] + Dir["*.obj"] + Dir["*.err"] + %w(p.exe)
end

# gcc compile rule
gen Rule, '.o' => '.c' do |t|
	sys GCC_CC + " " + GCC_CFLAGS + " -c -o #{t.name} #{t.source}"
end

Friday, July 08, 2005

Total Collection of Random Things

So much has happened lately that this is just a random entry containing all manner of things.

As previous entries alluded, I am now married. That went off without a hitch. I expected something to happen but it was all very well under control. I had some jitters but no upset stomach or anything. No anti-anxiety pills were required. I’m not sure if Joy took any but I managed to come out the other side ok!!

We had some great photos and some really not so great photos, but we have enough to make a nice wedding album from. Joy is collecting all manner of bits and pieces to put into a scrapbook. I’m sure our kids will be just thrilled to inherit that some day.

Our honeymoon up at Big Meadows, Shenandoah National Park for three days was great. No TV or Phone, just us on the mountain. What a way to de-stress. We went horse riding and canoeing. The canoeing was awesome. We did a 4 or 5 hour canoe on the shenandoan from Luray to somewhere. It was hot-hot-hot but very enjoyable. Our memorable moment was seeing a black bear on the banks of the river… Only when we got close we realised it was a cow!!!  That cracked us up and I spose it was one of those ‘you had to be there’ moments.

Once back from the honeymoon we did a complete family trip to Washington DC which I was none to thrilled about, but went anyway. (Managed to throw up on the way...)… So we visited the Whitehouse (not easy to get an appointment to see that), Word War II memorial (again) and I went to the botanic gardens / arborium while the others went to the Capitol Building.

The white house was a HUGE letdown. I mean really, it was a crap self guided tour. I understand the man still lives there one day a year and it happened that he was coming in right when we were in the middle of our tour but it was still a crap tour and totally not worth doing (its a lot of hassle to get an appointment to go in).

Joy and I also took my mum and dad on a whirlwind trip to Memphis to visit Gracelend, home of the supposedly dead Elvis P. This was my mum and dads mecca trip. They loved it. We stayed in the Heartbreak Hotel on the end of Lonely Street (no I am not making this up). They had a heart shapped swimming pool (which I refused to go in....). On the way to Memphis we stopped in Natural Bridge VA, and Nashiville TN.

Had a great time in Nashville at the Country Music Hall of Fame place and my dad went to the original Grand Ole Opry.

After Memphis we went up through Kentucky and visited _THE_ Mammoth Cave and did the two mile tour. I scored two books from there and we had a blast.  As a long time ‘interactive fiction’ player, Adventure was one of the first games I ever played and its location (Bedquilt cave in Mammoth Cave) has had me itching to see it from the moment I realised it actually existed.

My mum and dad are sad to be leaving us and going back to Australia. They get on an Amtrak and go from Washington DC to Chicago then down on the, I think, Indian Chief railway and up to Los Angeles and fly out.

My friend S. is at her wits end and it upsets me greatly to know I cant help a friend, other than let her know she is in my thoughts. :( *hugs* *hugs*

Not long before the wedding we went to the airshow at Edwards or Andrews airforce base up near Washington D.C… Jeep had a PR stunt there and this is our result, which I think came out very nice and looks quite cool. They take your photo and give you a number, then when you view it on the computer they add the “magazine overlay” and this is your result.

Friday, July 01, 2005

Wedding Photos

Some wedding photos have been uploaded…

friendly link here…
gallery link

url here…
http://www.mega-tokyo.com/gallery/wedding?page=1