2008-10-05: podlators 2.2.0
While incorporating some of the podlators fixes into the Perl that will be
released with lenny, Niko Tyni found more problems with the current
implementation. I'd written the test suite to force the output encoding
on the file handle used by Pod::Man and Pod::Text, but pod2man and
pod2text weren't doing that, and hence the output wasn't properly encoded.
I'm finding Perl's Unicode support very tricky, particularly if I want to
support the PERL_UNICODE option that adds input and output encodings on
all file handles. I can't use encode before output because PERL_UNICODE
encoding layers will then double-encode. The approach taken in this
release is to force the appropriate output encoding on the output file
handle (possibly destroying caller state). This works, but it's ugly.
Pod::Text had another problem. Its historic behavior is to copy the input
encoding to the output, but doing that with properly-tagged UTF-8 POD
input means printing out wide characters in the internal encoding,
resulting in Perl warnings. This version now, in the absence of the utf8
option, forces the output encoding to match the input encoding if
possible. This seems like the best compromise and matches its historic
behavior. pod2text now supports a --utf8 option since it's now
useful to force a different output encoding.
I wanted to get something out to stop the bleeding, but there are a few
problems with the current approach. As mentioned above, I'm forcing file
handle encoding layers, which may destroy encoding layers created by the
caller that were intentional. This implementation also depends on PerlIO
support, which is an optional Perl feature and not always enabled.
I think the right long-term approach is to probe for PerlIO support, and
if present, use it to check the encoding layer on the output file handle.
If PerlIO is not set, or if no encoding layer is present, I can safely use
encode before output, which doesn't mess with the file handle state and is
much cleaner. If PerlIO is present and an output encoding is set, just
trust that output encoding (although if the utf8 option is set and the
output encoding is something else, it may be a good idea to throw a
warning).
I'm not sure when I'll have time to implement this, though, since it will
require another reworking of the code and more testing, and I'm behind on
a number of other projects.
In any event, the current version will work for most people in most
cases. You can get it from the podlators
distribution page.
2008-10-05: Updated Debian notes
Some time back, I wrote up our current best practices in the Stanford
central UNIX support group for managing Debian servers, and some time before that, I wrote up some
notes on useful Debian package
build tools. Both of those pages had become hopelessly out of date.
Over the past week, I've been revising them, and they should now reflect
reality somewhat better.
Notable in the changes to the build tools document is a switch from
debarchiver to reprepro. I haven't finished doing that migration for my
personal repository, but I'm most of the way through and hope to be able
to pull the trigger fairly soon. I like debarchiver and have used it for
years, but reprepro supports a pool structure and package migration
between distributions, both of which are killer features. We're going to
be switching to reprepro for Stanford's internal archives as well,
although probably not until sometime in November or December.
I also moved the documentation I had for packaging individual scripts into
a separate document and updated it
to reflect the fact I use Git now instead of Subversion. Most of the
details here are fairly straightforward and obvious, but I find it useful
to read through something like this and see how someone else approaches a
problem. Maybe someone else will find bits of it useful.
2008-10-05: spin-rss 1.19
I finally found some time to write documentation so that I could release
spin-rss, the program used by spin to generate RSS feeds and dynamic
thread files. spin is the system that I use to generate all of my web
pages, including my journal, and the RSS pages for my journal and for my
web site change log are generated by spin-rss.
This program is rather idiosyncratic and I'm not sure how useful it will
be to someone other than myself, but then I thought that about spin when I
first wrote it. It takes as input an .rss file which contains a
block of metadata and then one block per entry. It can transform those
entries into either an RSS feed or into a couple of types of thread files
(for later processing by spin). It has special code to handle my journal
entries and my book reviews so that I can write them in thread and
generate nice RSS feeds as well as web pages from them.
You can get the latest version from my web
tools distribution page.
2008-10-05: postfaq 1.16
Except for individual scripts, I'm slowly abandoning CVS for either Git or
Subversion everywhere I use a revision control system. Today, I converted
my FAQs over to Subversion, which meant that the version numbers in the Id
strings are no longer particularly significant. I therefore modified
postfaq to not include the revision number in a subheader unless it
contains a period.
While I was modifying it, I noticed that it could generate invalid Expires
headers by translating the name of the month, depending on the locale.
That's now fixed as well. I also rewrapped the documentation and improved
the REQUIREMENTS section.
You can get the latest version from the postfaq distribution page.
2008-10-05: faq2html 1.28
This is the same change as in the last postfaq release, except for
faq2html (used to convert text files into HTML for my web site). When
creating a last modified subheading for FAQs, suppress the revision number
unless it contains a period. Subversion revision numbers, since they're
repository-wide, are not really useful information.
You can get the latest version from my web
tools distribution page.
2008-10-05: bundle 2.31
Today seems to be the day for lots of small updates to scripts.
When applying a template to my local system, I found that bundle was
trying to run diff without two arguments when reporting an update on a
directory mode (with the -c option). There were two problems here:
first, directory chmod and chown changes weren't reported specifically as
such, unlike with files, and second, directory updates (such as timestamp
changes) would result in running diff with bogus arguments. Both problems
are fixed in this release.
You can get the latest version from the bundle distribution page.
2008-10-06: Config management and bundle
Today, among all the other things I accomplished, I converted the rest of
the system templates for the eyrie.org systems to Git and tweaked my
personal configuration management system to make better use of Git's
features to push data around. I was feeling on a productive roll, so I
also wrote up the system I use.
This system has a long history. The first commit in the underlying
repository for my personal workstation is dated September of 1998, and the
underlying system was already in use at Stanford before I started working
here more than 15 years ago. It survived several major OS changes and
several significant reorganizations and only recently has been replaced
for day-to-day server management by Puppet. We still use bundle to do some
of the initial system configuration inside FAI before the system is put
together enough to run Puppet.
Puppet is overkill for a few personal systems, so the system I'm using is
based on our previous revision of our server template system, with some
modifications to not depend on AFS and to make remote deployment of
changes easier and simpler. It's not as fancy as some of the new ideas
for managing all of /etc in a VCS, but it's been reliable and
capable enough for me that the core of the system remains unchanged after
ten years.
2008-10-12: 2008 California Propositions
I finally had a chance to read through all the voter information for the
2008 elections today, and here, for whatever it's worth, is my take on all
the ballot measures this year. None of the California senators are
standing for election this year and I live in a completely safe
Congressional seat, so apart from the Presidential election, the
propositions are the only real questions of substance on the ballot.
For those who aren't familiar with the California proposition system and
the screwed up way in which fiscal government works in this state, some
things to be aware of:
Anyone can put a proposition on the ballot if they can get enough
signatures. It's therefore sadly common for rich individuals or
organizations to put badly written crap on the ballot that's worth
voting against even if you support the underlying idea.
The state has an insane difficulty raising taxes. It requires a
two-thirds vote in the legislature or a ballot proposition. As a
result, there's a tendency to fund everything through bonds, since
they only require majority approval, and then hand-wave through where
the money is going to come from to pay the bonds back. All the bond
advocates always claim that the bond won't raise taxes, which is
technically true but rather deceptive.
Because of the first point, I default to voting against all ballot
propositions unless they're very compelling. They're often written by
people who aren't competent to write laws. Because of the second point, I
default to voting in favor of all tax increases and against all bond
measures to try to generally stop a stupid and broken way of funding state
services. I'll make an exception for bond measures designed for things
that are truly the sort of infrastructure one should fund with a bond
measure. But anything that uses bonds to fund ongoing services is poison;
raise taxes instead.
I won't reiterate the proposition text here. Go to the
California Voter
Information Guide to see the full text and arguments.
Here are the state-wide propositions:
- Proposition 1: YES
This is one of the rare bond measures that I'll vote for. I'm still a
little torn, since I'd rather see the focus be on mass transit that
replaces daily commutes instead of long-distance travel, but I think
we need to build high-speed rail very badly and putting more money
into rail is worthwhile for a host of reasons.
- Proposition 2: YES
I'm unimpressed by fear-mongering that humane cages for chickens will
mean we'll get diseases from Mexican eggs and all die of bird flu.
This is the kind of thing that's hard to pass any way other than
through proposition since the agricultural industry doesn't want to be
bothered to rebuild their cages. Tough.
- Proposition 3: NO
This is almost a bond measure that I'd vote for, but the people in
favor give no real reasons why this funding is needed in this form.
Instead, the argument in favor is pure emotional bullshit about how we
have to help the children. If you can't be bothered to provide a
coherent fiscal argument, I can't be bothered to vote for your
proposition.
- Proposition 4: NO
We're going to have to keep re-voting on this damned thing until I
die, since the anti-abortion fanatics have enough signatures to put it
on the ballot every single damn election. The goal of parental
notification laws has nothing to do with protecting children and
everything to do with outlawing abortion by putting as many
restrictions and red tape in front of an abortion as possible. You
can't solve family communication problems with laws, or by forcing
children to notify possibly abusive parents (and the exception
essentially requires that the child charge their parents with child
abuse in order to avoid notification).
- Proposition 5: YES
Reduces drug sentences, more funding for drug treatment programs, and
diverts more drug convictions into treatment programs instead of
prisons. Anything that reduces prisons in this state is good as far
as I'm concerned. Our criminal justice system is completely out of
control, and part of that is the idiotic sentencing for non-violent
drug offenses.
- Proposition 6: NO
Our state budget is a complete disaster in large part because there
are so many stupid restrictions on the budget from propositions like
this that it's practically impossible to balance the budget and you
want to add more mandatory spending amounts for prisons? Are you out
of your minds? Fiscally, this is the worst proposition on the ballot.
- Proposition 7: NO
Remember what I said above about well-meaning nonsense put on the
ballot by people who shouldn't write laws? This is one of those. I'm
all in favor of renewable energy too, but not a renewable energy bill
that's opposed by the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists,
and the Environmental Defense Fund. The idea is great; the
implementation is complete crap.
- Proposition 8: NO
The Bigotry Amendment. I hope no one reading this would actually vote
to deny marriage rights to anyone, and if you would, I don't want to
know you.
- Proposition 9: NO
This is another one of those stupid "get tough on crime" propositions,
this one based around old-fashioned revenge. It basically lets the
victims of a crime get heavily involved in the punishment of the
offender, get more powers to prevent bail or parole, and generally
increase sentences. Given that the sentences are way too long already
and the prison system is fundamentally broken, this is a horrible idea.
- Proposition 10: NO
Pushing clean-air vehicles is a great idea that's exactly the sort of
thing that shouldn't be done with a bond measure. Make it an increase
the vehicle registration fees and I'd vote for it in a second, but
this proposition has the standard "won't raise taxes" semi-lies and
will just make the budget even worse. And unlike the rail bonds, it's
not for building infrastructure; it's for doing things that, in a
well-designed program, would be ongoing costs.
- Proposition 11: YES
I'm skeptical that this redistricting board will be better, but
gerrymandering is a serious problem and it seems at least distantly
possible this will help. It's supported by the League of Women
Voters, which is the main thing that's tipping me towards supporting
it.
- Proposition 12: NO
I'm sure this will pass easily, and it's not really problematic in the
way that most bond measures are. The basic idea is that the state
uses bonds to provide low-interest loans to veterans to buy houses,
basically reducing their interest rate by backing their mortgages with
the state's credit rating. If it works properly, all the money gets
paid back. However, given the current mortgage crisis, I'm skeptical.
I also don't really like the California state government providing
special services to veterans; the US federal government was
responsible for the war and should be coughing up the money and credit
rating to support veterans after it. But it won't bother me a lot if
it passes.
Santa Clara County measures:
- Measure A: YES
Bonds to rebuild local hospitals and medical centers for earthquake
readiness, supported by property tax levies. Exactly the sort of
thing that bonds should be used to do.
District measures:
- Measure B: YES
Sales tax increase to expand BART to San Jose. I'm almost at the
point of voting against this, since it seems like we keep voting for
things like this and BART keeps not getting extended. But I have a
very hard time voting against any sort of mass transit improvement,
particularly when it's funded by taxes instead of by bonds.
- Measure C: ABSTAIN
This is ridiculous bullshit. It's a non-binding advisory vote on the
VTA transportation plan, which is huge and which I certainly haven't
read and which I doubt the vast majority of voters would have read.
The general voting population is in no way qualified to judge this
plan. This is required by some idiotic "oversight" provision that's
toothless. I refuse to vote either way, since a vote would imply that
I have enough information to have an informed judgement.
- Measure D: YES
This would replace the requirement to have a non-binding advisory vote
like Measure C with review by an advisory board. The latter is
probably equally toothless, but at least isn't quite so completely
stupid.
The rest are the standard variety of local offices. I will mention in
passing my personal practice for voting for judges: if you think that we
need less harsh sentencing and more intelligence in figuring out how to
deal with crime, you can do worse than voting against all district
attorneys and prosecutors who run for judge and vote in favor of defense
attorneys and public defenders who do.
2008-10-14: Rock footprint
Soon, I will be returning to the coast to take hopefully much better
pictures of my favorite spots, now that I know what I'm doing.
I'm way behind in both posting photographs here, writing up comments about
them, and mailing them out to people. Of course, at the moment, I'm way
behind on just about everything one could name except work (and not behind
there mostly just because I put lots of time in today).
I think all my packages are now in shape for Debian's lenny release,
though. I'm going to request an unblock of two new Shibboleth package
uploads, and then that will hopefully do it and anything else can be dealt
with after the release.
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