BlogAllAlong » Programming

MAMP Pages Won’t Run On Snow Leopard

Bashar — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:39:16 +0000

MAMP, the Mac Apache MySQL & PHP bundled server, was running perfectly fine after I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Yesterday when I started it for some reason it didn’t ask for the password to run, the app seems to start but none of my web apps in the htdocs folder would work, as pages won’t open. Perhaps because of a recent Snow Leopard update.

I couldn’t find an exact similar problem on the web, but my MAMP was already an old version, 1.7.1. The solution was to upgrade to the latest 1.8.2 MAMP release. The problem ofcourse is how to migrate your web apps and database from the old MAMP installation to the new one. This forum post explains it pretty well, and in a nutshell it’s a matter of copying the old app & db folders to the new one:

1- Stop MAMP Servers and quit MAMP app.
2- Rename the MAMP folder under /Applications to MAMP_old (or abc if you like!).
3- Install the new MAMP app to your /Applications folder.
4- Copy the old /Applications/MAMP_old/htdocs and /Applications/MAMP_old/db folders to the new location under /Applications/MAMP.
5- Start the new MAMP app.
6- (Optional): From MAMP Preferences, go to Ports tab and click “Set to defaults Apache and MySQL ports” if you like it this way. I prefer it for localhost.

Rails finally working with Snow Leopard

Bashar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:10:00 +0000

So far Snow Leopard have given me nothing but a hard time, crashes, and wasted hours that I could advise anyone not to upgrade, while I keep my ego and refuse to downgrade. After the 1 hour+ Snow Leopard upgrade, I’m getting slower login time, very frequent crashes upon uploading or downloading simplest of files in Firefox, TweetDeck occasionally, and even Safari, so don’t you be blaming someone else in your ads Apple.

The worst however was the expected, and it was Rails, until today. After the upgrade, running my existing sqlite based rails app gave me the error:

uninitialized constant SQLite3::Driver::Native::Driver::API

StackOverflow had the right advise to fix the problem:

sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby

Except it gave me the error

ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

Ruby on Rails blog gave the instructions to upgrade MacPorts and then all the ports installed.

$ sudo port selfupdate $ sudo port sync $ sudo port upgrade --force installed

The process however gave a “MacPort no suitable image found.”. I followed the advise here and downloaded a fresh MacPort install. You can get one here.

After that I was able to do the port selfupdate and sync, but the port upgrade failed saying:

C compiler cannot create executables

I tried several tricks here, Googled a lot with no luck. I had to leave it for sometime to finish some other work. When I tried today to repeat the three port update steps above, it worked just fine. After that, I just needed to redo the “sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby” and all went fine I’m happy to say.

Special thanks for TWG for their support on the matter. They did point out the problem as a bug in MacPort but I thought otherwise.

Hope that helps someone else out there.

Ruby on Rails Vs Django Community

Bashar — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:29:03 +0000

One of the most important factors for adapting to open source technology is the community behind it, and while PHP seems to be falling apart as I see with multiple frameworks and scattered focus, Ruby have taken off with their Ruby on Rails application, and Python followed them with the open sourcing of Django. Both frameworks seem pretty good. I have tried Ruby on Rails for practice and am pretty much impressed with it, while the issue of internationalization and proper unicode support remains a dangling issue, and Globalize is a nice work around but implies too much over head on the database as I see.

Anyways, all I said above is a quick shallow opinion of the matter, and truth be said I don’t have enough knowledge to really judge which one is doing better. My comparison here is based on the community and interest of people in the two frameworks, RoR and Django. A look at Google Trends comparing searches for “ruby on rails”, “django”, and “python django” as django it self relates to much more than the programming framework. This is what you get:

Sorry I had to shrink the image here to be able to display it. Click it for large view. As you say, while django refers to much more than just the framework, Ruby on Rails still is getting more searches for, thus implying a more public interest so far, and truth be said, in terms of marketing at least, Ruby on Rails are doing a great job and have strong fan base behind it as I see it. Search for “python django” falls much lower, but it’s probably not a fair comparison as most python programmers would search for Django straight. Another nice thing to note is the high News reference to Django on the other hand.

A look at the language interest it self, Ruby Vs Python shows how Ruby are drawing more attention with time, and you can also see the jump for python in 2005, when they most probably revealed their own version of Rails, Django.

The last comparison I did was for the two framework sites on Alexa, and the results again favor Ruby on Rails but with a sinusoidal weird pattern that has fallen a bit hard just at the end, compared to more steadily Django lower one.

Again, these results only reflect the public interest in the framework so far. Some people, my self included, would feel a lot more comfortable with a strong community already around, but Django has its advantages that could draw some attention. I personally am trying to master Ruby on Rails, but the lack of i18n seems to be pushing me to work with Django as well, which I am sure would be a great framework as well. Maybe then I would be able to give a more detailed comparison between the two.

What do you think?

Learn Essential Eclipse Shortcut Keys

Bashar — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 17:08:29 +0000

I’ve been trying to figure out the Eclipse (open source IDE)shortcut keys, mainly the switching between open files (editors) when I came across this post. I thought Eclipse users might find it useful. Though I should note, for me to switch between open editors I had to use CTRL + Shift + Tab, then left and right arrow keys to make my choice. Reason is CTRL + TAB goes first to top menu items and not open editors. The writer seems to be using Mac so maybe this is the reason for the difference. I should note that I am using the RadRails version of Eclipse as well, even though I doubt that makes the difference.

Ruby on Rails Gets on the cPanel

Bashar — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 07:26:23 +0000

One of my concerns about it was how many hosts are available. Last night I did quick search and found out Ruby on Rails now has many many hosts, and it has been integrated into the cPanel as well. You can view a full list here of Ruby on Rails hosts. And to my surprise as well, my HostGator have already added support for it.

Full details about how to use Ruby on Rails with Hostgator through SSH is available here. Guess that rules out one of the reasons why I thought PHP Symfony would be easier to manage. The quest continues however as to which one is better. I started to like Ruby on Rails, but general comment is that Ruby by nature is slower than PHP. Then I came across the PHP Symfony framework which is also amazing, cleaner in certain aspects like the syntax, class files and database creation. However it is still new, and there is the CakePHP competitor for it. On the other hand, Ruby on Rails seems to be expanding fast, I would like to be among the people who start with it, and it’s heavily pushed by the community, already many high quality books are published about it. So I am a bit inclined to the RoR road. Any second opinion and discussion is welcome on this.

Ruby on Rails Start Mac Clone Ads

Bashar — Sun, 20 May 2007 09:16:54 +0000

I never thought Mac Ads against Vista will get so popular and have so many clones. Ruby on Rails have started something quite similar against Java and PHP. Honestly, despite being a Java fan, the commercial is quite true. I’ve learned Java is good for enterprise heavy applications, but for light or middle weight applications that require on going modification, I would never recommend it. Ruby on Rails, or possibly PHP with Symphony can do a lot better.

Twitter suffering from Ruby on Rails Performance

Bashar — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:24:51 +0000

This is a nice interview with one of the developers of Twitter, talking about the issues they face with Ruby on Rails when it reaches peak usage. Apparently the site is getting around 11,000 hits a second on peak times, and since Rails cannot talk to more than one database at a time, this is causing big time delay for end user. This does not mean we should all keep away from Ruby on Rails, as it a great potential in cutting down development cycles, and enforcing the MVC. Unless you are planning of building a site that will receive this massive hit, I guess RoR would do just fine.

Apple, Mozilla and Opera unite for HTML5

Bashar — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 21:24:45 +0000

While Microsoft are still struggling to meet the current HTML standards in their IE7, and along comes the nightmare of web developers to support IE6 & IE7 (since IE7 is only distributed this time for licensed Windows versions), Apple, Mozilla and Opera are pushing the wheels and increasing the pressure on W3c for the adoption of HTML5. The request for the adoption comes from the frustration of the slow progress of the W3C community. The delay however is good for the people behind, people who once said we set the standards!

How To Search Inside Program Files

Bashar — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:50:13 +0000

A general problem that if unaware of could lead to very bad results. Windows Search by default does not index files with unknown extensions. So if you are a programmer, and you are tracing a code that calls a function, say xyz, how would you know where this function is? I faced this problem today with WordPress. I needed to update a specific function, namely get_links_list but was unaware where this function lies. It is in one of the PHP files, and Windows Search does look inside files with unknown extensions. I don’t have Google Desktop installed yet after my last PC format and I’m not sure it does search inside program files by default as well. The long manual way of doing it would be to open all PHP files inside and look for the desired function.

Luckily however, I Googled for that matter and there are other people who have done their homework previously. The Computer Vet Weblog has a nice short straight-forward tutorial on how to enable Windows search for files with unknown extension. Without the tutorial however, I would have never guessed how to get it done. Really awkward way for an obvious needed feature.

AJAX powered online tools for you

Bashar — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:02:42 +0000

37signals is a privately-held company which was established back in 1999. The company adapted Ruby language, implemented their own framework for their projects, released the framework to public under the name Ruby On Rails and helped increase public awareness of the Ruby potentials.

37signals have launched three very promising online AJAX based collaboration applications, namely Campfire for real time group chatting and file sharing, Basecamp for online project collaboration and communication, and Backpack to organize your to-dos, notes, schedules and tasks online. All these provide FREE limited user access, and for more features and unlimited usage there is a subscription fee. Site claims over 1 million registered users in their system. The 37signals site is ranked among the first 3,000 sites on Alexa as well.
Take sometime to go through the tour or signup for FREE.

Bye Bye Google Search API

Bashar — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 13:01:14 +0000

It was never complete great, it was never carefully taken care of. It was something that’s done once and left for Beta forever. Google Search SOAP API has been (quitely) taken out of service for good. No more users are accepted in the program, and pretty soon we are likely to see existing ones not able to query anymore.

The service was introduced in Beta back in 2002, and remained so with limited 1,000 query a day, and 10 results per query, until it was canceled for good. I was working with the API, I loved it although it had some stability issues. I and many others were waiting for it to go live with unlimited queries and have more flexibility. Unfortunately, this thing never happened. Tough luck for the Google Hacks author and people who bought it like me!.

Google are inviting users to use the AJAX Search API, which is apparently even more restrictive and does not allow reordering or mixing of results. Shall I agree to change to AJAX API and obey by the terms, what makes me sure the AJAX API will not be dumped in 3 years time again?

Google Answers cancellation may have been a must, as it was a wrong concept perhaps. But the search API is a strong slap in the face of programmers. Now geeks have another reason to scrap content of Google search their own way!

Dark Day for PHP

Bashar — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 12:56:40 +0000

Open Source PHP security specialist and member of the PHP Security Response Team, Stefan Esser have had enough, and resigned! The security expert says in his blog

“The reasons for this are many, but the most important one is that I have realised that any attempt to improve the security of PHP from the inside is futile. The PHP Group will jump into your boat as soon you try to blame PHP’s security problems on the user but the moment you criticize the security of PHP itself you become persona non grata. I stopped counting the times I was called immoral traitor for disclosing security holes in PHP or for developing Suhosin.”Clearly a very strong message sent in public about the spirit going inside the PHP Community. And what makes it worse for them, is that now security holes will no longer be hidden from public, rather security holes will be exposed in advance “For the ordinary PHP user this means that I will no longer hide the slow response time to security holes in my advisories”, Stefan says.

This incident however is not the first of its kind. Back in July, PHP lead developer Jani Taskinen also left the team with what’s called cryptic message:

"Thank you all for the last 6 years or so. It has been fun
(sometimes) and many times not so much fun. Unfortunately
I have had enough and I don't want to be associated with
this project anymore.

I'm sure most people (the ones who matter) can understand
why. If someone doesn't, I could not care less. Take care.

Please do not reply to this email.

--Jani

p.s. Delete my CVS account. I have no use for it anymore."

The message does not give much details, but its enough to reveal the kind of low spirit and disputes going inside. Open Source is the strongest community if built on honest goals with a united team, but since thats all about it, and its non-profit, disputes like those can quickly break the backbone of it and bring the whole organization down to its knees. Specially with the rise of other alternatives, like Ruby.

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