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why didn't you save yourself the headache and install activeperl?

http://www.activestate.com/store/download.aspx?prdGUID=81fbce82-6bd5-49bc-a915-08d58c2648ca

Reblogged from http://drupal.geek.nz/node/48;

Oliver Rist 'reviewed' Mac OS X Leopard and his article was slashdotted.

Disclaimer

I'm writing this on my second MacBook Pro, in our house we also have MacBook white (My fiancee's), an iPod Shuffle, an Airport Extreme base station and an Airport Express with Airtunes. Although I wouldn't agree with you, it wouldn't surprise me if you took me for a JAFAF (Just Another Fucking Apple Fanboy). However I make an effort to keep a realistic view on Apple's products and if I felt that an open source operating system could enhance my workflow as much (or nearly as much) as Mac OS X, I would switch, but currently there isn't. I work on FLOSS all day every day -- that's my job, as a web and drupal developer and consultant.

Response

Oliver is clearly having a bitch in this article, and no doubt intentionally to aggravate JAFAFs and motivate discussion responses and click-throughs on the ads. Hence I won't give him or PC mag the pleasure of a long detailed approach, but merely attempt sieve out the parts inspired by T.O.M., and add my own $0.2; a realistic count of my Leopard experience to date.

"Apple turned a stable OS into a crash-happy glitz fest"

This is clearly a premenstrual hyperbole, proven by;

"A month of using Leopard with the same software I had under Tiger and the OS has dumped six times."

Back in the day when I ran pretend operating systems like those from that scummy vendor in a place near Seattle. The crappy thing crashed at least daily. That would be 'crash-happy'. Not you're slightly-more-than-weekly.

I guesstimate that Leopard has crashed or frozen about 8 to 12 times in the last 5 weeks since I installed it on October 26. Given the weight of use and the limits I take Leopard to, I consider this edging on acceptable, definitely not enough to go back to Tiger. Most of these times I got apple's designer-screen-of-death .

However, all of the applications I used on Tiger, also work on Leopard, and almost all without a glitch. (I don't count Apple's Safari 2, as this has clearly been disabled in Leopard at the call of management at apple and I'm confident that there's no technical reason why it couldn't run on Leopard.)

I repeat; All the applications I used on Tiger work on Leopard.

Komodo IDE had a few issues initially, but Komodo's update has smoothed that out. Parallels on Leopard needs some serious love. I believe it's the cause of at least half of the crashes. I think Skype, or the combination of skype with a bluetooth headset or bluetooth stereo headphones is another combination causing crashes and freezes.

I'd like to emphasize how impressive this is. Take a look at my dock; http://drupal.geek.nz/files/my%20dock.png

I use all but two of these applications daily;

1. Finder
2. Yummy FTP
3. iTerm
4. MAMP
5. Komodo IDE
6. TextMate
7. Stickies
8. TaskCoach
9. Netscape Navigator
10. Firefox 2
11. Firefox 3 beta 1
12. Adum
13. Xmeeting
14. Skype
15. iTunes
16. Activity Monitor

They might finally buy ActiveState. They fit nicely into the Windows Server market. It would be like buying sysinternals.

komodo edit http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/

I've been using Komodo for years (PHP, Python). It is not free, but definitely worth the money.

When I originally posted about PyDev and Python, I was referring to the standard CPython implementation, not IronPython. But thanks for the link, it was informative.

This would have worked if it had not been discontinued because of the requirement for it to be closed source. Regardless, I'd expect Python to be a second-class citizen in most IDEs, other than the ones where it is most commonly used.

When I originally posted about PyDev and Python, I was referring to the standard CPython implementation, not IronPython. But thanks for the link, it was informative.

This would have worked if it had not been discontinued because of the requirement for it to be closed source. Regardless, I'd expect Python to be a second-class citizen in most IDEs, other than the ones where it is most commonly used.

You obviously have no idea about what you talk about. PHP is a language, ASP is not. As a matter of fact, I've been doing ASP applications for years using Perl from ActiveState and JavaScript. Obviously, you talk about the things you know nothing about. Obviously you are more than just a little biased, so I don't know why I'm replying either.

If you want commercial IDE, you can try out Active State's Komodo IDE. They do have linux version.

I used to use GD::Graph on my Windows-based system, but then the PPMs never got updated for the latest versions of ActivePerl.

For the longest time I have been without it since I updated ActivePerl, and there was no PPM available for GD::Graph on the ActiveState repository

http://ppm.activestate.com/BuildStatus/5.8-G.html

After looking at the site, I found the link at the bottom of this page that says you can install GD from Univ of Winnipeg, and I was able to install GD Graph from their repository.

I used to use GD::Graph on my Windows-based system, but then the PPMs never got updated for the latest versions of ActivePerl.

For the longest time I have been without it since I updated ActivePerl, and there was no PPM available for GD::Graph on the ActiveState repository

http://ppm.activestate.com/BuildStatus/5.8-G.html

After looking at the site, I found the link at the bottom of this page that says you can install GD from Univ of Winnipeg, and I was able to install GD Graph from their repository.

With simple recipes available that offer an implementation of DNS: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/R ecipe/491264 one could easily plug it into any one of a number of databases. Add a very simple HTTP front end for updating name/IP information in the database, and you are done.

For web-specific development ActiveState's Komodo rocks, IMHO.

If you don't need a full-blown IDE, check out Komodo Edit. It's free and available on OSX/Linux/Windwos ... does syntax checking and all that good stuff. And it's built on XUL (like Firefox) so there's extensions and stuff available for it.

But I haven't used TextMate, so I can't say how it compares.

And no, I'm not associated with ActiveState, just a satisfied user. :)

This: http://www.ebb.org/PickingUpPerl/pickingUpPerl.pdf guide is awesome if you want to learn Perl. Concise and articulate, it manages to explain all the major topics of Perl in 66 pages. I recommend working through the entire guide as quick as possible, don't worry about remembering everything as you can always come back to it later. I also recommend having the O'Reilly camel books (Learning Perl, Programming Perl, Perl Cookbook) handy when going through the guide. You can read the books here: http://www.jimsannex.com/Studies/CD_perl/index.htm but you better go out and buy the real thing, worth every penny!!! If your running Windows you'll need to download Perl and a good editor with syntax highlighting:

http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePerl/Window s/5.8/ActivePerl-5.8.8.820-MSWin32-x86-274739.msi
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

After you install perl open a command prompt and run ppm, this is your simple GUI gateway to CPAN packages (make a mental note). After you get a handle on basic perl checkout Perl/Tk (GUI Toolkit for Perl). The Tk packages are included and installed with ActivePerl... Here's your first Perl/TK program:

use Tk;
my $top = new MainWindow;
$top->configure(-title=>"My First Perl GUI Program");
my $lab = $top->Label(-textvariable=>\$labelText);
my $b = $top->Button(-text=>'Click Me!', -command=>sub {$labelText="Congratulations! it worked!" });
$lab->grid(-row=>0, -column=>0);
$b->grid(-row=>1, -column=>0);
MainLoop;

How about Tcl/TK, with the ActiveState IDE and development kit, or one of the several FOSS IDEs? I don't see why this would be any harder than Visual Basic, the language is nicer. The language itself is free, and you can get some pretty good tools for free, or buy the commercial ones for not all that much.

Due to a crashed browser and little patience from me, this post is far shorter than it was, but I'll sum it up with: XRC. Specifically the XML-based GUI markup that can handle widget layout in wxWidgets (wxPython, wxRuby, wxPerl, etc.).

There already exists applications that distribute updated/dynamic layouts, behavior (in Python), and state, all from a database, all using XML-RPC. I haven't messed around with XML-RPC in other languages, but if you haven't used XML-RPC in Python, you are missing something. It's a bit slower than some other TCP/IP-enabled RPC mechanisms, but in Python it's a breeze to set up. See http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/R ecipe/81549 for an example recipe that offers both client and servers, with comments including a threaded and forking server.

Is it the future? Maybe. I like using it today. Makes my time more productive.

See also EekBoek

CLI and in Dutch, but GUI and English translation are in progress.

Written in Perl, runs on PostgreSQL and on SQLite, which is part of the current ActiveState perl installment.

Regular expressions are your friend:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/5 .8/lib/Pod/perlretut.html

You say that VBScript is bad, but please note that the ASP object model is pretty nice, and that you can access it through any ActiveScript language. Windows comes by default with VBScript and JScript, but you can also use PerlScript, ActiveRuby, and Python (with the Win32 extensions). That also means you get to use the libraries of those languages, which are a lot better than what VBScript itself has to offer.

Perl can run on Windows: http://activestate.com/Products/Download/Download. plex?id=ActivePerl

Windows has nothing remotely close to expect.

Except expect for windows: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActiveTcl/ex pect4win/expect.html

Komodo is a cross-platform IDE that handles scripting languages nicely. Komodo 3.5 has support for Ruby and Rails. Not free as in beer but cheap for personal use.

If you don't like whats provided by your ssh client, how about wrapping a windows commandline ssh client like putty with Expect?
http://expect.nist.gov/ for Expect and some usage examples
http://tcl.activestate.com/ for Expect for Windows

Just define all the convenience functions you need as simple expect scripts and don't look back. If you like GUIs add some trivial Tk code.

PyXPCOM, for Python-scriptable XUL applications, should be available shortly.

Now that ActiveState has been spun out of Sophos, might it be an opportunity to merge all those IDEs into one super bundle ?

But honestly, that's ok with me. It's only $30 for the personal license, and they license per developer not per seat/cpu... so you are welcome to install it on as many machines as you use (e.g. desktop and laptop).

I do quite a bit of Python coding, and after checking out Eclipse, SPE, and a few others, I'm still a huge fan of Komodo. I've easily gotten $30 of value out of using it.

Plus, if you watch the bargain sites carefully, they occasionally run promotions where you can get Komodo for free. :)

That said, YMMV. I know a lot of people who would disagree with me and would rather use Eclipse with PyDev.

ActiveState is also sticking to current plans around tools such as Komodo and the Perl Dev Kit and Ascher said there are "significant upgrades" planned for next year.

ActiveState have put a Q&A on their website. It has lots of pretty good info, with a little bit of PR thrown in for good measure.

Try using PerlApp http://www.activestate.com/Products/Perl_Dev_Kit/ which should build you a single .exe (you can get it for unix too) which embeds all modules needed, but only the modules used, so shouldn't be too big.

Or use WSH + PerlScript. Although it does have the drawback of requiring ActivePerl to be installed on the target machine.

I have been using ActiveState's Komodo Professional on Windows since 2002, primarily for Perl development. It has good Python support, and the OS X version works great as well. See its Python features here: http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/feature s/python.plex It also supports PHP, Ruby, Tcl, and XSLT, as well as color formatting for other languages. They license developers, rather than machines, so I have legally installed a copy on my PowerBook for work at home, and it's been great. You also mention that you like working on Linux, and you'll be happy to know that they support it as an OS as well. Some interesting features are it's integrated debugger, autocomplete, and the interactive shell. There is a 21-day free trial, and the personal license is only $30.

I'm surprised that nobody seems to have much to say about how GTK+ compares with other toolkits other than Qt. How does GTK+ compare to Tk and and WxWidgets? I'm curious in part because, after a long period of doing no graphics programming other than some tweaks to old programs, I went from using raw Xlib to Tk. I've studied GTK+ a little but haven't really used it. My impression is that GTK+ may have the advantage when you need very fine control, but that otherwise Tk is much faster to write and requires less code because it takes care of many of the details for you and chooses good defaults. The only comparisons of this larger set that I've seen are rather dated.

I love Ruby and Python, but in the general discussion of dynamic languages, be sure to mention Tcl. Tcl was heavily supported by Sun, until Sun decided to throw its full weight behind Java. Between Sun, AOL, and several other companies over the years, the language had enough development money poured into it to make it easily in the same league as Python, Perl, Ruby, and even Java. I realize that the topic here is Ruby, but since the general discussion has drifted to dynamic languages in general, Tcl should also be mentioned. If anyone is interested in learning more, I think the best place to start is the Tcl'ers Wiki: http://wiki.tcl.tk

I'm currently evaluating Python IDEs at the moment myself, starting with Wing IDE Professional, and while I don't have any conclusions yet, I can list what the current state of the market looks like.

Black Adder, has a "GUI designer with all the features of Qt Designer and generates Python and Ruby code." I can't seem to find pricing information on their website at the moment; I'm guessing the "Cannot connect to database server error" text is where an add-to-cart button is supposed to be. Their license is proprietary and the product is not free for redistribution, but source code is included.

SPE - Stani's Python Editor features the wxGlade GUI designer as a plugin. Open source, GPL license.

Komodo Professional (US$295) has a GUI builder that uses Tkinter. (There's a $29.95 "Personal" edition, but that lacks the GUI builder and is restricted to non-commercial use, where "non-commercial use is defined as tasks for which you are not paid. If you are using Komodo as part of your job, you must purchase Komodo Professional.")

One can also combine using Qt Designer (licensed together with Qt; both GPL and proprietary license options available) with one of the above or with Wing IDE Professional (US$179) or PyDev (Eclipse Public License) which both look promising. Wing IDE Professional includes source code, though like Komodo, it is not free to distribute. (There's also a $30 Wing IDE Personal edition, but it's missing a number of key features from Professional that I would think just about any Python programmer would want, even for hobby use, so I don't really consider it an option. It also has a "non-commercial use" restriction, like Komodo.)

Did you look at Komodo?

i used to use komodo or ptkdb or print "something" for perl debugging but recently i have been using epic, the perl IDE for eclipse.
 
it has a graphical debugger and a heap of other useful features for developing in perl (see the sf.net page for more details...). another advantage: if you need to develop in other languages, there is likely a plugin for them as well, so that you can do everything without leaving your ide (yes: i know about emacs. no: i never did take the time to learn it...)

:wq

--

"i would rather maintain someone else's language than someone else's perl..."

"Okaaaay, so when are you moving your code to Linux? (P.S. you're locked into MS products now)"

In what way? In the way that for some bizarre reason I can't port to another platform in the future if I want to? In the way that MS had some kind of ownership over what I've built and what I can do with it? In the way that they are telling me what I can and can't do in the future? I think you may be confusing lock-in with making a choice. In that way, whatever platform and development language I choose, I will always be 'locked in' according to people who use other products. It's a stupid point to make.

"I call bullshit - since when has .NET been the best tool for the job? Have you not heard of Perl, Ruby, Python and even Java?"

I don't do what I do based on fitting the problem around the solution, I find a solution for a problem. .NET fits in with what I need to do infinitely better than any of the other languages you mention. And this isn't a choice I make based on products being made by specific companies or it being open source, or the cool geek technology buzzword of the month. Ultimately, it's not a choice I make by being a blinkered techie that has no understanding of the peripheral business aspects.

Incidentally, I'd compare .NET to J2EE, rather than Java, and maybe point you towards Pythont for .NET and Perl .NET, both of which allow you to write in both languages for the .NET CLR.

That boatload of search/replace stuff might be able to be replaced with a perl/sed/awk script. If you're in an all-Windows shop, you can always load up knoppix to do that part -- or set aside 10 MB to do a desktop install of your favorite distro (knoppix is, once again an option) and dual boot. Better yet, just find an old machine in some storage room, somewhere that you can assign to the task.

Yeah - that's much easier than just grabbing the Windows ports. Or Cygwin.

...but where's my perl, python and ruby dot net (and I don't mean editor support)?

Right under your nose, if you bother to look:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/NET Perl and (experimental)Python
http://www.saltypickle.com/rubydotnet/Ruby/.NET compatability
http://www.zope.org/Members/Brian/PythonNetPython
http://www.ironpython.com/Python, again....

• Mozilla Application Suite - Mozilla the web browser, mail client, etc*
• Mozilla Firefox - The mentioned applications, never browse the web without it*
• AOL for Mac OS X uses Gecko, why doesn't AOL for Windows is the eternal question.
• Aphrodite* Renegade project working on UI tweaks
• Beonex Communicator* - Another option to Mozilla, cross platform
• Camino for Mac OS X, Mozilla project for OSX
• CompuServe 7.0 for Windows and Mac OS X (The now AOL service)
• DocZilla for Windows and Linux, SGML/XML/HTML web browser.
• Epiphany for GNU/Linux (Default Gnome browser)
• Galeon for Linux (Old Default Gnome browser)
• IBM Web Browser for OS/2*
• Kazehakase for Linux is a more featured browser, plans more...
• ManyOne* 3D browser?
• Minimo (web browser for small devices)
• Netscape 6.0 and later versions* (of course)

And in other applications (like):
ActiveState Komodo (visual development environment for Perl, Python and more on Windows and Linux) [4] The Liferea (news aggregator for Linux), The Mozilla ActiveX Control (allows ActiveX developers to easily embed Gecko in applications) The Mozilla Calendar (calendar and personal information manager)* The Mozilla Thunderbird The (email/newsgroup client and news aggregator)* Nvu (a web authoring application)* and Gecko# for Windows (.NET Binding for Gecko)

* Also uses Gecko to render its entire user interface via XUL.

You can either choose to adopt the rendering engine for your own applications or hopefully in the future deploy it with rights management. Personally, I think that personalized installations are the next needed step. If admins can roll out Firefo

If you can get through all the ads, there is a free Windows implementation of Perl. It's easy to install and interfaces well with windows. They also have some stuff on Python, but I haven't tried it.

Also, if you need really need some Unix command that isn't included with ActivePerl or Windows, check out UnxUtils. It has a bunch of standard Unix applications compiled to run on Windows. It should be more than enough to make Windows usable, without having to use Cygwin. Not that Cygwin isn't great, but it seems like overkill if all you want to do is write a few scripts.

Microsoft naturally comes out on top when you google for Windows scripting. But that doesn't mean that MS scripting technology is the best choice. On the contrary, Microsoft scripting relies heavily on their usual kludgey, baroque libraries and runtimes. I'm no expert, but if I were looking to do this sort of thing, I'd at least look at other scripting solutions for Windows. ActiveState is the obvious first place to look. There are many others.

M$ likes to use "Linux" interchangeably in several different contexts to encourage confusion:

This is really an important (and understated) point. Microsoft's astroturfing troops are clearly blurring the definition of Linux in their posts to Slashdot and other forums. Watch for inclusion of MySQL and PHP in the Linux definition, for instance. One criticism I read discussed the flaws of Perl as a criticism of why Linux was insecure and unreliable. Imagine to their horror the realization that one can get Perl for Windows too.

But I'd have to believe the Microsoft online public relations advocates aka astroturfers aren't that stupid. As long as their ultimate target is easily fooled, this level of incompetent misinformation passes. Still, it ought to make your average PHB out there scratch his bald head when he realizes just how stupid Microsoft thinks he is for buying their products. I can just hear Ballmer yelling "put lipstick on that pig" to his marketing crew.

The legal jargon surrounding the use of scripting languages and Qt is still kind of vague. Buried very deep in their FAQ section is the question Can I develop commercial applications with PerlQt or PyQt or other Qt wrappers? which isn't that helpful.

It still doesn't discuss in-house applications that are meant to solve production needs, but will never be sold or given away because the code is: too customized, reflects a particular business model, and/or not well polished. Perl/Qt is so much better than Perl/Tk, but we tolerate Tk because it's free.

Now I don't object to the core developer of applications needing a license, since that is what corporations do with Visual Studio, but scripted languages is kind of fuzzy. I think the best way to solve this is to officially support some of the language wrappers, like Perl and Python and provide some mechanism that determines an elegant way to "lock the interface layout" unless a developer license can be had. For example, only precompiled QtDesigner User Interface files could be added run-time, or something like that.

Then distribute it with ActiveState's ActivePerl or ActivePython. That version would only allow GPLed applications to be built, maybe through a variable like $main::LICENSE="GPL" to be declared, or something like that. You would have to purchase ActivePerl Pro Studio in order to develop commercial applications with the Qt widget set, but again the same "lock it down without a license" could be had.

Official support for scripted languages is the only way to sort out the need for quick, small programs for which C++ is inappropriate.

According to the PEAR Development mailing list, PayPal is in fact willing to push some changes back to the community. According to this Zend press release, PayPal paid Zend, to make improvements to PEAR::SOAP package 0.9.0.

So for all of you PHP 4 developers, you might just owe PayPal for your ability to make SOAP-based web service calls.

If you poke around in the win32/ and wince/ directories in the Perl source you'll find a handful of C source and header files which are:

* (c) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
* Portions (c) 1999 ActiveState Tool Corp, http://www.activestate.com/
*
* You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public
* License or the Artistic License, as specified in the README file.

These came about as a result of work ActiveState did for Microsoft (remember all that unnecessary wailing and nashing of teeth about ActiveState "selling out Perl" to Microsoft?) Yes, sometimes a little Open Source work leaks out of Redmond.

Here's a Python script for generating passwords from pseudo-words that sound like real words plus random digits.

Fairly easy to remember and not vulnerable to dictionary cracks.

While each of the successful dynamic languages have chosen different specific licenses, it is far from accidental that none selected the more extreme GPL license used by the Linux kernel. All of the successful language communities have deliberately picked licenses that fit equally well with corporate requirements for non-viral licenses and the Free Software Foundation's goals (although clearly not the tactics, given the license differences). In general, the language communities view themselves as on the "liberal" side of the open source debate (inasmuch as any large group can be described as having a consistent opinion), and aren't compelled to pick sides on the morality of proprietary licenses. This approach has served them well, with significant successes both within the Linux and Windows communities.

Builded with the Default build of Python there IS a IDE but kinda ugly...

As corporate and enterprise-able products and that have support:

The Kompany makes one called Black Adder...(Never seen it.)
http://www.thekompany.com/products/blackadder/

ActiveState makes one called Komodo(pay) which can/is bundled with ActiveState Python(free). It is very nice and a free trial download!
http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/?_x=1