Julio Merino

Software artist. Writer aficionado. Open source enthusiast. Runner. Father of two.
Currently: Senior Software Engineer at Google, New York City.

  • Always define an else clause for portability #ifdefs

    If you use #ifdef conditionals in your code to check for portability features, be sure to always define a catch-all else clause that actually does something, even if this something is to error out. Consider the following code snippet, quoted from gamin's tests/testing.c file:if (arg != NULL) { #ifdef HAVE_SETENV setenv("GAM_CLIENT_ID", arg, 1); #elif HAVE_PUTENV char *client_id = malloc (strlen (arg) + sizeof "GAM_CLIENT_ID="); if (client_id) { strcpy (client_id, "GAM_CLIENT_ID=");

    April 22, 2010 · Continue reading (about 3 minutes) · Comments

  • Where does Gnome use file monitoring?

    One of the readers of my post yesterday, wonders where Gnome uses the file monitoring APIs. Well, the answer is: everywhere. Here are some examples: Nautilus monitors all open folders so that it can update their contents whenever the underlying file store changes. Say you are viewing the Documents folder and you save a new Document from within OpenOffice into that folder. You definitely want Nautilus to show it immediately, without having to manually hit Refresh from the menu.

    April 21, 2010 · Continue reading (about 2 minutes) · Comments

  • New gio-fam package

    As briefly outlined in the previous post, new versions of Glib provide GIO, a library that intends to be a low-level file system API on top of the POSIX interface. This library provides an interface to asynchronously wait for file system change notifications including the creation, deletion and modification of files. The monitoring functionality in GIO is modular: it is backed by different loadable plugins that implement OS-specific functionality. In particular, GIO uses an inotify module in Linux and a FAM module everywhere else.

    April 20, 2010 · Continue reading (about 2 minutes) · Comments

  • File system monitoring, Gnome and NetBSD

    A few days ago, I decided to start using NetBSD, as well as Gnome on NetBSD once again, mostly because the lack of their use makes my skills feel rusty in many different areas. While NetBSD has surprised me in a good way (I am running it on a Macbook Pro and things like wireless and DRI work), Gnome has not. There are tons of broken things that prevent a smooth user experience.

    April 20, 2010 · Continue reading (about 4 minutes) · Comments

  • NetBSD in Google Summer of Code 2010

    For the 6th year in a row, NetBSD is a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2010! If you are a bright student willing to develop full-time for an open source project during this coming summer, consider applying with us! You will have a chance to work with very smart people and, most likely, in the area that you are most passionate about. NetBSD, being an operating system project, has offers for project ideas at all levels: from the kernel to the packaging system, passing by drivers, networking tools, user-space utilities, the system installer, automation tools and more!

    March 19, 2010 · Continue reading (about 2 minutes) · Comments

  • New version of the monotone-server package in pkgsrc

    Wow, it has been a long time... 5 years ago, I created the monotone-server package in pkgsrc, a package that provided an interactive script to set up a monotone server from scratch with, what I though, minimal hassle. My package did the job just fine, but past year I was blown away by the simplicity of the same package in Fedora: their init.d script provides a set of extra commands to initialize the server before starting it up, and that is it.

    March 12, 2010 · Continue reading (about 2 minutes) · Comments

  • Introducing the ATF nofork branch

    Despite my time for free software being virtually zero these days, I have managed to implement a prototype of what ATF would look like if it didn't implement forking and isolation in test programs. This feature has been often requested by users to simplify their life when debugging test cases. I shouldn't repeat everything I posted on the atf-devel mailing list regarding this announcement, so please refer to that email for details.

    March 6, 2010 · Continue reading (about 1 minute) · Comments

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