Ruby include path

This has been bothering me for some time, wanting to include paths that will be searched when I want to 'require' or 'load' some class in my project. It is not very nice to have to use a -I flag, but there are other ways.

Use of the $: global variable:

• $:.push("/whatever")

Or the $LOAD_PATH variable:

• $LOAD_PATH.unshift '/whatever'

Year in review 2007!

As 2007 is almost over, I look back and see not only exciting family events, but a new job, an excellent year of cycling, and a very productive year in my open source projects.

I continued to teach freelance for IBM Netherlands Learning Services. This time for and external customer in Rijswijk, the European Patent Office. Another amazing event was that my site was Dugg, someone found my online Linux courseware and the server was severely challenged. I moved over to Blogger after that to evade. One think that came out of it all was that I took some time to update the courseware and provide distance learning solutions to all my courses.

AbTLinux project progressed well this year, I got the package manager to install its first package and much more. Another project, the Baby Game was re-released and used by three different families to run their own baby games (results: a girl and two boys). I decided to stop my work on eGroupware and the Publication Management System, just focusing on AbTLinux. I continued to post Linux and Macbook solutions on this blog (over 55), see Software category.

Wishing you all the very best for the New Year and a happy and healthy 2008!

AbTLinux - more coding progress on the package manager

It has been awhile since I last posted on this subject, so thought it might be time to provide some news on the various updates to the code base.

My new job has settled down a bit so that I have been able to make some time for coding on AbTLinux. This has led to the completion of features and reduced our unit test failure count from 18 down to 12. Here is a summary of the updates:

• refactored reinstalling a package to allow for fully automated runs
  
• implemented show-frozen
  
• implemented freeze
  
• added /etc/abt configuration directories setup
  
• refactored update package and package tree implementation
  
• implemented retrieve package tree (part of package-repo add)
  
• refactored some logging to make use of ruby Logger
  
• implemented verify-integrity
  
• fixes to the pruge-src function
  
• implemented show-files
  

I have also split out the general software posting I was doing on AbTLinux into it's own category. This is due to the fact that I might be losing my current Trac and website hosting in 2008. I am not sure, but want to have someplace to document the projects coding progress until I am able to sort out a new site location.

Merry Christmas 2007!

 Twas the night before Christmas and all thru the house,
Not a creature was stirring, just me and my mouse.

Yes my friends, I am sitting here on Christmas eve and enjoying the quiet after the kids are to bed. Time to get a bit constructive as the presents have been wrapped, the stockings are hung by the chimney with care. I am about to commit some new updates to the abt package manager!

From the yet small AbTLinux team:

We wish you a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!