Ruby vs. Python

Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Red Ruby Hood with Hash h={:foo => "foo_val", :bar => "bar_val"}. Her mother gave her "quux" variable with value "quux_val" and told to print all this shit to he gand-grandmother, who lived far beyond the forest. Long story short, girl uses String.%:

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> h={:foo => "foo_val", :bar => "bar_val"}
=> {:foo=>"foo_val", :bar=>"bar_val"}
irb(main):002:0> puts "Teh %{foo}, teh %{bar} and teh %{quux}" % h.merge({:quux => "quux_val"})
Teh foo_val, teh bar_val and teh quux_val
=> nil
irb(main):003:0> h
=> {:foo=>"foo_val", :bar=>"bar_val"}
irb(main):004:0>

But in the forest girl met Evil Gray Python...

$ python
Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Oct  1 2010, 13:15:00)
[GCC 4.4.4 20100726 (ALT Linux 4.4.4-alt3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> h={"foo": "foo_val", "bar": "bar_val"}
>>> print "Teh %(foo)s, teh %(bar)s and teh %(quux)s" % h.update({"quux": "quux_val"})
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: format requires a mapping

Hate!..

>>> tmp = h.copy().update({"quux": "quux_val"})
>>> tmp

Hate!!

>>> tmp = h.copy()
>>> tmp.update({"quux": "quux_val"})
>>> tmp
{'quux': 'quux_val', 'foo': 'foo_val', 'bar': 'bar_val'}
>>> print "Teh %(foo)s, teh %(bar)s and teh %(quux)s" % h
Teh foo_val, teh bar_val and teh quux_val

Hate!!!

So, the Python ate girl, her mother, her grand-grandmother and all lumbermen...

facepalm.jpg

While browsing dockapps.org site I've found interesting applet. It is very similar to my WMVolMan, but have more functionality, like customizable commands and LUKS partition mounting. And it uses modern UDisks instead of obsolete HAL. Since I was planning to migrate to UDisks, I took a closer look at this applet...

First look at configure.ac scared the shit out of me me:

PKG_CHECK_MODULES(dbus,dbus-glib-1)
PKG_CHECK_MODULES(libnotify,libnotify)
PKG_CHECK_MODULES(gnome_keyring,gnome-keyring-1)
...
AM_PATH_GTK_2_0(2.18.0,,[AC_MSG_ERROR(cannot find libgtk)])

I know, dbus-glib is necessary to access UDIsks service via DBus and easily integrates into glib mainloop, but for fuck's sake, tell me what the hell GTK+2 is doing here? I don't even asking about libnotify (which depends on org.freedesktop.Notifications DBus service, which in turn provided by GNOME Notification Deamon) and GNOME Keyring library (which depends on daemon of the same name).

Next, I looked into dockapp window code. I shouldn't have done it, really. The whole dockapp code was written using ONLY GDK and GTK. With signals, callbacks, widgets, blackjack and hookers.

And finally, take a look at this:

$ ls -logh wmudmount 
-rwxr-xr-x 1 267K Mar 30 23:06 wmudmount
$ ls -logh wmudmount
-rwxr-xr-x 1 102K Mar 30 23:06 wmudmount
$ ldd wmudmount | wc -l
47

I know that ldd shows both, direct and indirect dependencies, but that's the point. And I was using -Wl,--as-needed.

Comparing to my wmwolman:<

$ ls -logh =wmvolman   
-rwxr-xr-x 1 32K Jan  4  2008 /usr/bin/wmvolman
$ ldd =wmvolman | wc -l
19

One may say that WMVolMan have tree times less functionality, but hey! Why would someone use WindowMaker inside GNOME (and it WILL be "inside GNOME" just after libnotify and libgnome-keyring starts all GNOME services like gconf and gvfs) with dockapps enabled? Just stay with gvfs and Nautilus.

• . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . ,.-‘”. . . . . . . . . .“~., 
. . . . . . . .. . . . . .,.-”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .“-., 
. . . . .. . . . . . ..,/. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ”:, 
. . . . . . . .. .,?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\, 
. . . . . . . . . /. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,} 
. . . . . . . . ./. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,:`^`.} 
. . . . . . . ./. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,:”. . . ./ 
. . . . . . .?. . . __. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :`. . . ./ 
. . . . . . . /__.(. . .“~-,_. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,:`. . . .. ./ 
. . . . . . /(_. . ”~,_. . . ..“~,_. . . . . . . . . .,:`. . . . _/ 
. . . .. .{.._$;_. . .”=,_. . . .“-,_. . . ,.-~-,}, .~”; /. .. .} 
. . .. . .((. . .*~_. . . .”=-._. . .“;,,./`. . /” . . . ./. .. ../ 
. . . .. . .\`~,. . ..“~.,. . . . . . . . . ..`. . .}. . . . . . ../ 
. . . . . .(. ..`=-,,. . . .`. . . . . . . . . . . ..(. . . ;_,,-” 
. . . . . ../.`~,. . ..`-.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..\. . /\ 
. . . . . . \`~.*-,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..|,./…..\,__ 
,,_. . . . . }.>-._\. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|. . . . . . ..`=~-, 
. .. `=~-,_\_. . . `\,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\ 
. . . . . . . . . .`=~-,,.\,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\ 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . `:,, . . . . . . . . . . . . . `\. . . . . . ..__ 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .`=-,. . . . . . . . . .,%`>–

GNU is Not Usable

If you want to make something completely unusable - give it to GNU crowd. These guys seem to have ability to turn anything they touch into shiny and whistling piece of bad-smelling shit. No need to go far - take a look at GNU info. And the progress never stops, every new release of their info browser is getting worse and worse, they are making impossible things possible.

Recently I was playing with WindowMaker project, trying to clean it's autocrapped buildsystem. Inside WindowMaker there are WINGs library and WPrefs application that both contains gettext-driven translations, having three textdomains in total.

Here comes the question for one million points: how all these textdomains can be handled with one configure script? And by "handled" I mean "single autoreconf invocation should update Makefile.in.in and shit for all po subdirs". Answer is: you can't, shut up and suffer.

GNU is so GNU...

Code WTF

While playing with one opensource project we've found this masterpiece of Hindy C. I will not even comment it.

int pid, status, ret;
int filedes[2];
rc = pipe(filedes);
pid = fork();
if (pid == 0) {
  ret=0;
  close(filedes[0]);


  rc = functionThatMatters(/* some args */);



  if (!rc) {
    ret = 0;
  } else {
    ret = 1;
  }


  close(filedes[1]);      
  exit(ret);
} else {
  close(filedes[1]);
  close(filedes[0]);
  
  rc = timewait(pid, &status, /* timeout values */);
  rc = WEXITSTATUS(status);
}


if (!rc) {
  (*outStatus)[i] = 1;
  /* LOG WARNING THAT WE HAVE FAILED */
} else {
  (*outStatus)[i] = 0;
}

This reminds me forgotten stories about Miklos...