Older blog entries for brg (starting at number 6)

I set up a SourceForge project for vmips, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like SourceForge has much to offer beyond what I have set up at home, with the possible exception of a bug tracking system (and it's not like those are hard to set up) and more bandwidth (which might be useful later, but not now.) So I am just mirroring my web pages there for the moment.

In terms of actual free software work, the only thing I've done lately is work on the embryonic vmips manual. I also made a new release of WebNews on March 15th, with better article sorting support, e-mail carbon copy of posted articles, and more bug fixes. I will probably mirror WebNews's site onto sourceforge eventually as well.

The more I use C++, the more I find I like it. And, speaking of C++, I still like GCC 3.0, which I am actually using on a daily basis now (especially because it has libstdc++-v3 inside(tm)). I wrote a little web page about how to play with GCC 3.0. I highly suggest you try it.

I have been working on the IRAM project, doing benchmark hacking. My free software projects have received a lot less of my time lately, but I'm learning a lot more. After learning about IRAM, going home to my Intel and AMD boxes makes me kind of sad.

I have become very interested in automatic vectorization in C compilers. Someday, it would be nice to see a free software vectorizing C compiler.

The Instructional Software CD was released, without Java.

I have been working on getting GCC, Glibc, GNU Binutils, and the Linux kernel to work together in concert to produce a free-software cross-compilation environment for vmips -- this has meant that I have to use prerelease versions of both GCC and Binutils. I abandoned my earlier idea to go with a NetBSD-based environment. Besides, compiler hacking is fun. I'm pretty happy with the new GCC, and excited about its eventual release as GCC 3.0.

Speaking of reasons not to use non-free software, the Instructional Software CD has hit major speedbumps due to Berkeley instructors' use of the Sun JDK, which we can't redistribute.

I made a conscious decision to spend a lot less time chatting online these days. I'm finding that it's actually rather nice.

I added project pages for some of the projects I am interested in: vmips, WebNews, mutt, and STk. Sometimes I wish there were an "Evangelist" or "Proponent" relation between people and projects. (An "Adapter" or "Customizer" relation might be useful too.)

In many people's experience, romantic relationships are so powerful that they have the capacity to (inter alia) utterly destroy many wonderful things.

You might enjoy reading Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard, on the power of relationships. I am currently taking an excellent class at Berkeley (from a remarkable teacher, I must say) which includes this book.

I took a break from working on the Instructional Software CD, which is primarily a distribution of free software with source (yay!), to make a release of WebNews, which now gets thousands of hits per day and has hundreds of users (yay!)

In other news, I've almost figured out how to cross-compile NetBSD's C library from a Linux machine; this will be a boon to the eventual release of a cross-compilation environment for VMIPS. Now all I have to do is iron out the various wrinkles and make it into a procedure that anyone can follow.

Lately I've been working on a newsreader with a SSL-enabled Web user interface, which I have given the incredibly creative name of "WebNews". I also wrote a Perl module documentation tool. I intend to release these as open-source, when I've finished with them.

It's amusing to me how anything which requires using a program other than a web browser these days is considered hard to use.

I also seem to have a different philosophy about releasing my projects than other people do -- I try to finish them first, then release them. I guess this comes from my shareware-writing roots. I wish I had more time to work on them, though; then I might actually make releases more often.

Automake and autoconf are my friends, but I don't think they're the best possible implementation. I'd like to have a framework written in something more high-level than M4 and shell, with a repository of useful tests online (like CPAN's module repository.)

At work, I have been customizing STk, a Tk-enabled Scheme interpreter, for UC Berkeley's lower division programming classes. Scheme is a language which depresses me, because of its beautiful theoretical design and the sorry state of most of its implementations. I wonder how much of this results from Scheme being a tempting language to reimplement, because of its simple structure and semantics, and the lack of massive user base for any one implementation (unlike, e.g., Perl). Anyhow, enough kvetching! You can look at my Scheme hacks here.