From jarich at perltraining.com.au  Mon May  7 21:26:53 2007
From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson)
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 14:26:53 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
Message-ID: <463FFC0D.2030709@perltraining.com.au>

G'day everyone,

Just a quick reminder that our regular monthly meeting will run tomorrow
night on Wednesday 9th.  You are welcome to come and encouraged to bring
friends, family, co-workers and random people you find on the street.
:)  Attendance is free.

	Date:		Wednesday 9th May 2007
	Time:		6:30pm
	Location:	Level 8, 14 Blackwood Street, North Melbourne

The downstairs doors may lock at 6:30pm.  But there should be a note on
the door with a phone number to call to be let in.

Talks
-----
	Paul Fenwick will give a talk on Perl and System Administration, or
perhaps silly mistakes Perl programmers might make.

	I will probably give a talk on something cool.

If you have a talk topic you'd like to give - for this meeting or for
one in the future - please send it through to the list.  We're always
interested in more talks.

Next Meeting - AGM
===================

The next Perl Monger meeting will be on Wednesday 13th June.  This will
include our AGM.  More details to be announced.

OSDClub
=======

OSDClub will (probably) next run on the 14th June, hosted by Melbourne
PHP UG.  If you have something to offer as a talk that would be
fantastic.  More information will be made available at
http://www.osdc.com.au/osdclub/index.html

You are encouraged to volunteer to present a talk!

-- 
   ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._          |  Jacinta Richardson         |
    `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)  |  Perl Training Australia    |
    (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'   |      +61 3 9354 6001        |
  _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'           | contact at perltraining.com.au |
 (il),-''  (li),'  ((!.-'             |   www.perltraining.com.au   |



From pjf at perltraining.com.au  Tue May  8 20:32:59 2007
From: pjf at perltraining.com.au (Paul Fenwick)
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 13:32:59 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
In-Reply-To: <463FFC0D.2030709@perltraining.com.au>
References: <463FFC0D.2030709@perltraining.com.au>
Message-ID: <464140EB.9000604@perltraining.com.au>

G'day Everyone,

Jacinta Richardson wrote:

> Talks
> -----
> 	Paul Fenwick will give a talk on Perl and System Administration, or
> perhaps silly mistakes Perl programmers might make.

This will be a revamp of my talk "Doing Stupid Things with Perl", which is
an examination of some repeated mistakes that I've seen people make.  Some
of you may remember it from OSDC 2004, however I've added new content since
then.

> 	I will probably give a talk on something cool.

Jacinta will be giving a talk on greediness and regular expressions, and how
to make your regexps be both correct and fast.

Cheerio,

	Paul

-- 
Paul Fenwick <pjf at perltraining.com.au> | http://perltraining.com.au/
Director of Training                   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
Perl Training Australia                | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681

From leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au  Tue May  8 20:40:36 2007
From: leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au (leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au)
Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 13:40:36 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
Message-ID: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>

Just a heads up - a recruiter contacted me yesterday and wants to come
to the meeting. I said your welcome, we welcome everyone (except carny
folk) but if you want to pitch, you have to pay with
beer/pizza/whatever... 

I don't think he wants to pitch, but as his job is to recruit perl
programmers, he wants to "see where the action is". Which is remarkable
proactive, and unlike nearly every other recruiter I've met. He must be
new.

L

 

-----Original Message-----
From: pjf at perltraining.com.au [mailto:pjf at perltraining.com.au] 
Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2007 1:33 PM
To: melbourne-pm at pm.org
Subject: Re: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May

G'day Everyone,

Jacinta Richardson wrote:

> Talks
> -----
> 	Paul Fenwick will give a talk on Perl and System Administration,
or 
> perhaps silly mistakes Perl programmers might make.

This will be a revamp of my talk "Doing Stupid Things with Perl", which
is an examination of some repeated mistakes that I've seen people make.
Some of you may remember it from OSDC 2004, however I've added new
content since then.

> 	I will probably give a talk on something cool.

Jacinta will be giving a talk on greediness and regular expressions, and
how to make your regexps be both correct and fast.

Cheerio,

	Paul

--
Paul Fenwick <pjf at perltraining.com.au> | http://perltraining.com.au/
Director of Training                   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
Perl Training Australia                | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681
_______________________________________________
Melbourne-pm mailing list
Melbourne-pm at pm.org
http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/melbourne-pm
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From krobert at realestate.com.au  Tue May  8 20:49:40 2007
From: krobert at realestate.com.au (Kirrily Robert)
Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 13:49:40 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
In-Reply-To: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
References: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
Message-ID: <6FA6124E9378214883CA93A54AED601D0632C142@EMAIL.win.int.realestate.com.au>

Leif wrote:

> I don't think he wants to pitch, but as his job is to recruit perl
> programmers, he wants to "see where the action is". Which is
remarkable
> proactive, and unlike nearly every other recruiter I've met. He must
be
> new.

I dunno... there were those two at OSDC last year, looking rather out of
place in their nice suits.

K.


From leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au  Tue May  8 20:53:44 2007
From: leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au (leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au)
Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 13:53:44 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Recruiter in the water was RE: Meeting tomorrow
	night: Wednesday 9th May
Message-ID: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC285@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>

Sorry that was an important detail.

Martin Cvizek :: Operations Director 

PRA :: Professional Recruitment Australia

Level 1, 530 Lt Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

P 03 9909 7261 :: F 03 9909 7260 :: M 0416 741 627

www.pra.com.au 

I don't have the detail for the specific role he rang me about.

L

-----Original Message-----
From: krobert at realestate.com.au [mailto:krobert at realestate.com.au] 
Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2007 1:50 PM
To: Leif Eriksen; melbourne-pm at pm.org
Subject: RE: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May

Leif wrote:

> I don't think he wants to pitch, but as his job is to recruit perl 
> programmers, he wants to "see where the action is". Which is
remarkable
> proactive, and unlike nearly every other recruiter I've met. He must
be
> new.

I dunno... there were those two at OSDC last year, looking rather out of
place in their nice suits.

K.
**********************************************************************
IMPORTANT
The contents of this e-mail and its attachments are confidential and intended
solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.  If
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then delete  the e-mail.
This footnote also confirms that this e-mail message has been swept for the
presence of computer viruses by Ironport. Before opening or using any
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Our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments.
HPA collects personal information to provide and market our services. For more
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From goonmail at netspace.net.au  Wed May  9 01:15:03 2007
From: goonmail at netspace.net.au (peter renshaw)
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 18:15:03 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
In-Reply-To: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
References: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
Message-ID: <1178698503.5034.2.camel@fahbah>

On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 13:40 +1000, leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au wrote:
> Just a heads up - a recruiter contacted me yesterday and wants to come
> to the meeting.  Which is remarkable
>

Maybe it has more to do with supply/demand of perl programmers? ~
http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2007/05/the_perl_job_market_blues.html


From andrew.stuart at flatraterecruitment.com.au  Wed May  9 02:04:08 2007
From: andrew.stuart at flatraterecruitment.com.au (Andrew Stuart)
Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 19:04:08 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
References: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
	<1178698503.5034.2.camel@fahbah>
Message-ID: <001301c79219$00f2ac50$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>

It's easy to find "programmers" of  any kind - Java, Perl, PHP, C#, 
whatever.

It's hard to find programmers who know what they are doing, are experienced, 
communicate well, have coding skills, solid theoretical computer science 
knowledge, passion, a desire to learn, a desire to know how to do things 
better, a curiosity about the technologies that they work with, and get 
along well with others.

The problem with recruiting Perl programmers is that Perl programmers tend 
to have become a Perl programmer because of their passion and enthusiasm and 
interest in the technology - there's only a finite (and small) pool of those 
people.  There isn't a flow of graduates expanding the pool because the 
formal training tends not to be in Perl but in C# or Java.  There's an ever 
growing army of Java programmers (the challenge there is just as great to 
find people who are really good at what they do and who feel the passion).

Another problem is that Perl is a mature technology and no longer at the 
cutting edge of sexy, so the passionate first mover techies who move like a 
wave onto the latest technologies are prodding and poking Ruby On Rails and 
Adobe Flex.  Perl isn't a legacy technology but it doesn't have the mind 
share of other, more "exciting/new" technologies.

In a skills crisis, the availability of development resource becomes (or 
should become) a serious consideration for companies that need to get their 
development work done and get software projects built.  But most companies 
stick to their languages extremely tightly and would rather wait a very long 
time to get people than consider bringing new languages into their 
technology environment.  If you've bet your technology strategy on Perl then 
your growth is going to be constrained by the small pool of people who know 
how to drive your technology.

Training graduates in Perl programming is expensive and time consuming and 
distracting to the experienced programmers, so I'm guessing there's not too 
many companies taking a long term view by training up their own Perl people.

End result is that for the foreseeable future (good) Perl people will 
probably be somewhat hard to find.

Andrew Stuart

Managing Director
Flat Rate Recruitment
Head Office:
68 -72 York St
South Melbourne, Victoria 3205
Phone: 1300 55 91 92
Phone 03 9696 1616
Mobile: 0417 034 241
Email:  andrew.stuart at FlatRateRecruitment.com.au
Web: http://www.FlatRateRecruitment.com.au





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "peter renshaw" <goonmail at netspace.net.au>
To: <leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au>
Cc: <melbourne-pm at pm.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 6:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May


On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 13:40 +1000, leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au wrote:
> Just a heads up - a recruiter contacted me yesterday and wants to come
> to the meeting.  Which is remarkable
>

Maybe it has more to do with supply/demand of perl programmers? ~
http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2007/05/the_perl_job_market_blues.html

_______________________________________________
Melbourne-pm mailing list
Melbourne-pm at pm.org
http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/melbourne-pm

From ddick at aapt.net.au  Wed May  9 03:16:32 2007
From: ddick at aapt.net.au (David Dick)
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 20:16:32 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
In-Reply-To: <001301c79219$00f2ac50$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>
References: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>	<1178698503.5034.2.camel@fahbah>
	<001301c79219$00f2ac50$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>
Message-ID: <46419F80.6090507@aapt.net.au>

G'day Andrew,
i'll have a stab at stating the case from the opposite p.o.v.

Andrew Stuart wrote:
> It's easy to find "programmers" of  any kind - Java, Perl, PHP, C#, 
> whatever.
>   
and vice versa, it's relatively easy to find an employer.
> It's hard to find programmers who know what they are doing, are experienced, 
> communicate well, have coding skills, solid theoretical computer science 
> knowledge, passion, a desire to learn, a desire to know how to do things 
> better, a curiosity about the technologies that they work with, and get 
> along well with others.
>   
but trickier to find one that understands technology at all, let along 
has the foresight and intelligence to be able to describe a concept that 
will be worth something in 5-10 years, that is, a truely visionary and 
exciting company for the geekier members of the population. ( for the 
record, i've spent the last X years building a supply chain management 
system from scratch... *shame*, dave *shame* which is why i'm not at 
melbourne.pm 2nite *double shame* )
> The problem with recruiting Perl programmers is that Perl programmers tend 
> to have become a Perl programmer because of their passion and enthusiasm and 
> interest in the technology - there's only a finite (and small) pool of those 
> people.  There isn't a flow of graduates expanding the pool because the 
> formal training tends not to be in Perl but in C# or Java.  There's an ever 
> growing army of Java programmers (the challenge there is just as great to 
> find people who are really good at what they do and who feel the passion).
>   
The difficulty from a programmers point of view is keeping enthusiasm 
high in spite of the mundane jobs that need to get done. :)
> Another problem is that Perl is a mature technology and no longer at the 
> cutting edge of sexy, so the passionate first mover techies who move like a 
> wave onto the latest technologies are prodding and poking Ruby On Rails and 
> Adobe Flex.  Perl isn't a legacy technology but it doesn't have the mind 
> share of other, more "exciting/new" technologies.
>   
Agreed.  However, if you get a good perl programmer, they tend not to be 
the people who you'll lose in ten minutes when the next Ruby, C#, etc 
pops up.  People with a small attention span don't tend to produce 
things of value (imho of course), cos you just can't in a small period 
of time.   I believe the current estimate to build a piece of software 
that earns heaps of cash (Oracle, Win32, SAP) was about 10 years.  That 
may be shorter now with Amazon, Google, etc, but i believe you're still 
talking years from concept to bringing in the buckets of cash.
> In a skills crisis, the availability of development resource becomes (or 
> should become) a serious consideration for companies that need to get their 
> development work done and get software projects built.  But most companies 
> stick to their languages extremely tightly and would rather wait a very long 
> time to get people than consider bringing new languages into their 
> technology environment.  If you've bet your technology strategy on Perl then 
> your growth is going to be constrained by the small pool of people who know 
> how to drive your technology.
>
>   
Agreed, but i would suspect tech companies are also driven by what they 
have already developed with.  It's a tough ask to rewrite production 
code of decent size in a completely new language.
> Training graduates in Perl programming is expensive and time consuming and 
> distracting to the experienced programmers, so I'm guessing there's not too 
> many companies taking a long term view by training up their own Perl people.
>   
i hope that's wrong, but i tend to be rather optimistic. :)
> End result is that for the foreseeable future (good) Perl people will 
> probably be somewhat hard to find.
>
>   
i suspect this to be the case with many other languages.  I think with 
perl the difference is that the monkeys are becoming harder to find.  
The quality people are still there, but as in any language, they are 
always hard to find.

From shlomif at iglu.org.il  Wed May  9 05:00:59 2007
From: shlomif at iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish)
Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 15:00:59 +0300
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting tomorrow night: Wednesday 9th May
In-Reply-To: <001301c79219$00f2ac50$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>
References: <6462CBB658614845A7702E379880769801FAC27D@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
	<1178698503.5034.2.camel@fahbah>
	<001301c79219$00f2ac50$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>
Message-ID: <200705091500.59720.shlomif@iglu.org.il>

On Wednesday 09 May 2007, Andrew Stuart wrote:
> It's easy to find "programmers" of  any kind - Java, Perl, PHP, C#,
> whatever.
>
> It's hard to find programmers who know what they are doing, are
> experienced, communicate well, have coding skills, solid theoretical
> computer science knowledge, passion, a desire to learn, a desire to know
> how to do things better, a curiosity about the technologies that they work
> with, and get along well with others.

Are all of these required? ;-) Obviously, an intelligent programmer with a 
good attitude can eventually grow and learn all these. While the head of the 
project should be experienced enough ( 
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LordPalmerston.html ), its underlings 
can simply be bright programmers who are expected to learn more in time. A 
good programmer with no experience in Perl will be a good one to hire in this 
respect.

For the record, I am a very good Perl programmer, yet I was rejected from many 
jobs because of various reasons. Either I had a successful interview, and was 
rejected (once because the company was acquired and ran into a little red 
tape, and once because I smelled wrong because I didn't work for so long, or 
so I figured.) I eventually found a job as a Linux kernel developer, where I 
used some Perl, but our product was mostly in C. I really liked this job, but 
ended up being fired because the CTO was clueless about software management. 
But I was still impressed that they could recognise I was an employee who 
could get things done, and didn't lose me in confusion.

>
> The problem with recruiting Perl programmers is that Perl programmers tend
> to have become a Perl programmer because of their passion and enthusiasm
> and interest in the technology - there's only a finite (and small) pool of
> those people.  There isn't a flow of graduates expanding the pool because
> the formal training tends not to be in Perl but in C# or Java.  There's an
> ever growing army of Java programmers (the challenge there is just as great
> to find people who are really good at what they do and who feel the
> passion).

I agree that is a problem. I personally find Perl a much better introductory 
language than Java or C#:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/education/introductory-language/

However, since colleges and universities tend to teach what is hyped in the 
industry including COBOL, Fortran, PL/I, Pascal, ANSI C and C++, I tend not 
to trust their choice of introductory programming language.

A bright graduate can be taught Perl easily. And workplaces should know better 
than to say "3/5/10/20 years of experience in Perl 5" in their job ads. If 
they're looking for hackers and enthusiastic developers, they should 
structure their job ads, working environment, and expected requirements 
accordingly. If they see a bright Java or C programmer, then he can probably 
learn Perl with relative ease.

See:

http://www.advogato.org/article/930.html

>
> Another problem is that Perl is a mature technology and no longer at the
> cutting edge of sexy, so the passionate first mover techies who move like a
> wave onto the latest technologies are prodding and poking Ruby On Rails and
> Adobe Flex.  Perl isn't a legacy technology but it doesn't have the mind
> share of other, more "exciting/new" technologies.

You're right about that. But if someone knows Ruby well, it is a useful 
stepping stone for Perl. Likewise for Python. 

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif at iglu.org.il
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
    -- An Israeli Linuxer

From leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au  Wed May  9 17:36:54 2007
From: leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au (leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 10:36:54 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Recruiters are people too. Was MPM Meeting Wedn...
Message-ID: <6462CBB658614845A7702E3798807698020E14D2@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>

Being the one who started this thread, I actually regret doing so.

Recruiters for Perl positions are a part of the Perl ecosystem, and Perl
Mongers (and Melbourne Perl Mongers expecially) welcome anyone with any
interest in Per whatsoever. A recruiter coming to a meeting should raise
no more eyebrows than a lawyer backgrounding a case, a venture
capitalist wanting to know more about a potential investment or a
journalist researching a article. The number of non-developers who I've
met at MPM meetings measure in the single digits, but that shouldn't
matter at all.

Unfortunately, most recruiters I've met have done themselves no favours
in the "personal skills" department, and many developers rank them with
real estate agents and car sales men. My posting was my defensive
reaction to someone I preceive as "non-genuine" becoming involved in
something driven by evangelism and passion.

And so, to my detriment, I have treated Chris with prejudice, and given
him no opportunity to present himself on his own terms and with his own
qualities. I have done myself no favours, being judgemental and
dismissive.

Hopefully I wont do that again. So if anyone else in the recruitment
industry is reading this, please feel welcome - we are, after all , a
rich lode of exactly the kind of resource need you service.

Leif
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From lsharpe at pacificwireless.com.au  Wed May  9 18:10:32 2007
From: lsharpe at pacificwireless.com.au (Leigh Sharpe)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 11:10:32 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
Message-ID: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>

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From pjf at perltraining.com.au  Wed May  9 19:36:23 2007
From: pjf at perltraining.com.au (Paul Fenwick)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 12:36:23 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
Message-ID: <46428527.7000202@perltraining.com.au>

G'day Leigh/ MPM,

Leigh Sharpe wrote:

> Just wanted some people's thoughts on what the 'best' way to install
> perl modules on linux is: CPAN or your distro's package manager.

I have a Debian background, so your mileage may vary for other systems.
However under Debian I've always found that using the distro's package
manager has *always* been the correct solution.

Installing a Debian package means that anything that lists that package as a
dependency is happy.  It means that if the Debian security team finds a
nasty flaw, it will get updated in a timely fashion.  It means that other
any other Debian package I install should work nicely with the installed
modules, rather than me having to worry about versions and compatibility.

Furthermore, if you're working with other sysadmins, they can find a list of
installed software and modules quickly and easily.  They don't need to
understand Perl or CPAN to get things installed or changed; they only need
to understand Debian.

So, what if you want to use a module that's not packaged for Debian, or you
need a more recent version?  Simple, you build the Debian package yourself.
 The advantages are much the same, and you avoid crazy conflicts where you
may have the same module installed twice with two different versions.

Building a debian package from CPAN is usually as simple as:

	dh-make-perl --build --cpan Example::Module

You can even change --build to --install if you want to speed the process.
If you don't have dh-make-perl, you can use:

	apt-get install dh-make-perl

to install it.

In this way, you can use pre-built packages for most of your modules, and
dh-make-perl packages to fill in the gaps.

Cheerio,

	Paul

-- 
Paul Fenwick <pjf at perltraining.com.au> | http://perltraining.com.au/
Director of Training                   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
Perl Training Australia                | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681

From mathew.robertson at netratings.com.au  Wed May  9 19:53:40 2007
From: mathew.robertson at netratings.com.au (Mathew Robertson)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 12:53:40 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <46428527.7000202@perltraining.com.au>
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
	<46428527.7000202@perltraining.com.au>
Message-ID: <46428934.4080009@netratings.com.au>


>> Just wanted some people's thoughts on what the 'best' way to install
>> perl modules on linux is: CPAN or your distro's package manager.
>>     
> [snipped]
>
> Building a debian package from CPAN is usually as simple as:
>
> 	dh-make-perl --build --cpan Example::Module
>
> You can even change --build to --install if you want to speed the process.
> If you don't have dh-make-perl, you can use:
>
> 	apt-get install dh-make-perl
>
> to install it.
>
> In this way, you can use pre-built packages for most of your modules, and
> dh-make-perl packages to fill in the gaps.
>   
Likewise, this applies for Gentoo as well:

g-cpan -i <CPAN module>

will look for an existing gentoo package of the module; if not found, it
will fetch the CPAN version and create a gentoo package; then install
the package into the dependency tree.

Mathew
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From rick at measham.id.au  Wed May  9 19:54:50 2007
From: rick at measham.id.au (Rick Measham)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 12:54:50 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <46428527.7000202@perltraining.com.au>
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
	<46428527.7000202@perltraining.com.au>
Message-ID: <4642897A.4090106@measham.id.au>

Paul Fenwick wrote:
> I have a Debian background, so your mileage may vary for other systems.
> However under Debian I've always found that using the distro's package
> manager has *always* been the correct solution.

100% agree. The main reason I like to use apt over CPAN is because 
things just *work*. Modules that depend on C libraries install all their 
non-perl dependencies. CPAN just *can't* do that.

Cheers!
Rick Measham

From daniel at rimspace.net  Wed May  9 20:53:44 2007
From: daniel at rimspace.net (Daniel Pittman)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 13:53:44 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <46428527.7000202@perltraining.com.au> (Paul J. Fenwick's message
	of "Thu\, 10 May 2007 12\:36\:23 +1000")
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
	<46428527.7000202@perltraining.com.au>
Message-ID: <87irb1fi5z.fsf@rimspace.net>

Paul Fenwick <pjf at perltraining.com.au> writes:
> Leigh Sharpe wrote:
>
>> Just wanted some people's thoughts on what the 'best' way to install
>> perl modules on linux is: CPAN or your distro's package manager.
>
> I have a Debian background, so your mileage may vary for other
> systems.  However under Debian I've always found that using the
> distro's package manager has *always* been the correct solution.

I have to agree with Paul here -- you should not install *anything* on a
system that isn't registered in the standard, core package manager.
Since I agree with his explanation I will not repeat it verbatim.

Paul has given great advice on the Debian/Ubuntu front for Perl modules,
so allow me to offer some similar advice no the generic and RPM side of
the fence:

On RPM based distributions the best tool I have found is the 'cpan2rpm'
package.  This occasionally needs a bit of a helping hand -- running in
debug mode to allow the build process terminal interaction, for example,
but does a great job of spitting out an RPM from an arbitrary CPAN
module.

    http://perl.arix.com/cpan2rpm/

In the broader scheme of things the 'checkinstall' tool is extremely
valuable for turning anything you can install into a local system
package.  I strongly advise it if there are no more specific-purpose
tools available.

    http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/

Regards,
        Daniel
-- 
Digital Infrastructure Solutions -- making IT simple, stable and secure
Phone: 0401 155 707        email: contact at digital-infrastructure.com.au
                 http://digital-infrastructure.com.au/

From cas at taz.net.au  Wed May  9 21:09:03 2007
From: cas at taz.net.au (Craig Sanders)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 14:09:03 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
Message-ID: <20070510040903.GA11689@taz.net.au>

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:10:32AM +1000, Leigh Sharpe wrote:
> Just wanted some people's thoughts on what the 'best' way to install
> perl modules on linux is: CPAN or your distro's package manager.
> A large number of perl modules have been packaged and made part of the
> distro. When setting up a virgin system, am I better to use CPAN to
> install my modules, or use the package manager?

if the distro has a package for the perl module you want, then use the
distro's package - that way all dependancies will end up being satisifed
(both packages that your module depends on and packages that depend on
your module)

for modules that aren't already packaged, there are two basic choices -
depending on what tools the distro provides.

on a decent distribution (i.e. debian or debian-based), you'll have a tool
called dh-make-perl  use it like so:

  dh-make-perl --build --cpan Perl::Module::Name

it will download Perl::Module::Name from CPAN and build a debian package
for it that will meet all relevant policy standards. the newly created
package can be installed with dpkg, and can be copied to other servers
that need it (e.g. with scp), or placed in your own local package
repository.

this works without any additional effort for most perl modules. for
some, modules, though, you will need to either package it by hand or
(better) use dh-make-perl to do the bulk of the packaging work and edit
the packaging control files by hand.


alternatively, or on distros without such automated packaging tools, install
it using the CPAN tools.


there's also a third option, of course - submit a bug report or request
to your distro's bug/request-tracking system asking for the perl module
to be packaged.


> others are of the opinion that using CPAN gives better control over
> upgrades and versioning, etc. 

only on unixes and/or linux distros that have crappy package management
tools.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point."
		-- Friedrich Nietzsche

From alecclews at gmail.com  Wed May  9 22:26:03 2007
From: alecclews at gmail.com (Alec Clews)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 15:26:03 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <20070510040903.GA11689@taz.net.au>
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
	<20070510040903.GA11689@taz.net.au>
Message-ID: <3c2b63c00705092226u48da92e5s878ec264229305fd@mail.gmail.com>

G'Day,

On 10/05/07, Craig Sanders <cas at taz.net.au> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:10:32AM +1000, Leigh Sharpe wrote:
> > Just wanted some people's thoughts on what the 'best' way to install
> > perl modules on linux is: CPAN or your distro's package manager.
>
> if the distro has a package for the perl module you want, then use the
> distro's package - that way all dependancies will end up being satisifed
> (both packages that your module depends on and packages that depend on
> your module)
>

I thought this information was so useful I have very quickly slapped into
perl.net.au (see http://perl.net.au/wiki/Installing_Perl_Modules_on_Linux).
I did it very quickly so please correct, expand and make sure you get the
credit for your quotes from this thread.

Cheers

-- 
Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com>             Melbourne, Australia.
Jabber:  alecclews at jabber.org.au             PGPKey ID: 0x9BBBFC7C
blog:http://alecthegeek.wordpress.com/
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From alecclews at gmail.com  Wed May  9 22:26:03 2007
From: alecclews at gmail.com (Alec Clews)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 15:26:03 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <20070510040903.GA11689@taz.net.au>
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
	<20070510040903.GA11689@taz.net.au>
Message-ID: <3c2b63c00705092226u48da92e5s878ec264229305fd@mail.gmail.com>

G'Day,

On 10/05/07, Craig Sanders <cas at taz.net.au> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:10:32AM +1000, Leigh Sharpe wrote:
> > Just wanted some people's thoughts on what the 'best' way to install
> > perl modules on linux is: CPAN or your distro's package manager.
>
> if the distro has a package for the perl module you want, then use the
> distro's package - that way all dependancies will end up being satisifed
> (both packages that your module depends on and packages that depend on
> your module)
>

I thought this information was so useful I have very quickly slapped into
perl.net.au (see http://perl.net.au/wiki/Installing_Perl_Modules_on_Linux).
I did it very quickly so please correct, expand and make sure you get the
credit for your quotes from this thread.

Cheers

-- 
Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com>             Melbourne, Australia.
Jabber:  alecclews at jabber.org.au             PGPKey ID: 0x9BBBFC7C
blog:http://alecthegeek.wordpress.com/
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From alecclews at gmail.com  Wed May  9 22:26:03 2007
From: alecclews at gmail.com (Alec Clews)
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 15:26:03 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CPAN Vs Package managers
In-Reply-To: <20070510040903.GA11689@taz.net.au>
References: <H000006900187ce1.1178759421.mail.pacificwireless.net.au@MHS>
	<20070510040903.GA11689@taz.net.au>
Message-ID: <3c2b63c00705092226u48da92e5s878ec264229305fd@mail.gmail.com>

G'Day,

On 10/05/07, Craig Sanders <cas at taz.net.au> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:10:32AM +1000, Leigh Sharpe wrote:
> > Just wanted some people's thoughts on what the 'best' way to install
> > perl modules on linux is: CPAN or your distro's package manager.
>
> if the distro has a package for the perl module you want, then use the
> distro's package - that way all dependancies will end up being satisifed
> (both packages that your module depends on and packages that depend on
> your module)
>

I thought this information was so useful I have very quickly slapped into
perl.net.au (see http://perl.net.au/wiki/Installing_Perl_Modules_on_Linux).
I did it very quickly so please correct, expand and make sure you get the
credit for your quotes from this thread.

Cheers

-- 
Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com>             Melbourne, Australia.
Jabber:  alecclews at jabber.org.au             PGPKey ID: 0x9BBBFC7C
blog:http://alecthegeek.wordpress.com/
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From pjf at perltraining.com.au  Fri May 11 01:48:56 2007
From: pjf at perltraining.com.au (Paul Fenwick)
Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 18:48:56 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] grep vs first vs foreach
Message-ID: <46442DF8.4080107@perltraining.com.au>

G'day Everyone,

At Perl Mongers the other night there was a discussion regarding the fastest
way to determine if an element exists in a list.  Without building a hash,
three proposed were given:

	* Use List::Util's first()
	* Use Perl's in-built grep() in scalar context.
	* Use a foreach loop.

Interestingly enough, after some testing I've discovered the foreach loop
wins in terms of speed. first() suffers from a high cost of entering a
subroutine for each list element, whereas grep() will search *all* items to
return the total number of matches.  Our foreach loop, on the other hand,
can end immediately when the item is found.

Using a 'return' from inside the grep() block allows short-cutting which
improves its speed significantly, although foreach still wins if the item is
found early in our list.  A pure grep() is actually fastest in our failure
case (where the item cannot be found).

I don't know if grep() is smart enough to return immediately upon finding an
item if called in a boolean context.  If not, then this seems like an
obvious optimisation that could be implemented.

Raw data and original code below:

---cut here---

First item:

                 Rate        grep       first grep-return     foreach
grep            455/s          --        -99%        -99%       -100%
first         44823/s       9741%          --        -29%        -97%
grep-return   63232/s      13782%         41%          --        -95%
foreach     1365750/s     299745%       2947%       2060%          --


Middle item:

             Rate        grep       first     foreach grep-return
grep        419/s          --        -25%        -40%        -46%
first       559/s         34%          --        -20%        -28%
foreach     700/s         67%         25%          --         -9%
grep-return 772/s         84%         38%         10%          --


Non-existent item:

             Rate       first     foreach grep-return        grep
first       297/s          --        -18%        -27%        -35%
foreach     362/s         22%          --        -11%        -21%
grep-return 409/s         38%         13%          --        -10%
grep        455/s         53%         26%         11%          --

---cut here---

Cheerio,

	Paul

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use List::Util qw(first);
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);

my @list = (1..10_000);

compare(1,"First item");
compare(5000,"Middle item");
compare(-1,"Non-existent item");

sub compare {
        my ($element,$msg) = @_;

        print "\n\n$msg:\n\n";

        cmpthese(0,
                {
                        'grep' => sub {
                                grep {$_ eq $element } @list;
                        },
                        'grep-return' => sub {
                                grep {return 1 if $_ eq $element } @list;
                        },
                        'foreach' => sub {
                                foreach (@list) {
                                        last if $_ eq $element;
                                }
                        },
                        'first' => sub {
                                first { $_ eq $element } @list;
                        },

                }
        );
}

__END__

-- 
Paul Fenwick <pjf at perltraining.com.au> | http://perltraining.com.au/
Director of Training                   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
Perl Training Australia                | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681

From perl at infotrope.net  Fri May 11 04:46:29 2007
From: perl at infotrope.net (Kirrily Robert)
Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 04:46:29 -0700
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] ... and Perl 6 parameter passing
In-Reply-To: <46442DF8.4080107@perltraining.com.au>
References: <46442DF8.4080107@perltraining.com.au>
Message-ID: <20070511114629.GA7475@infotrope.net>

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 06:48:56PM +1000, Paul Fenwick wrote:
> At Perl Mongers the other night there was a discussion regarding the fastest
> way to determine if an element exists in a list.  Without building a hash,
> three proposed were given:

Someone also asked about how parameters are passed to subroutines in
Perl 6.  Perusing perl.com just now, I noticed there's an article on the
subject:
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2007/03/01/perl-6-parameter-passing.html

K.


-- 
Kirrily Robert
perl at infotrope.net      skud at cpan.org
http://infotrope.net    http://search.cpan.org/author/SKUD

From jarich at perltraining.com.au  Sat May 12 19:15:24 2007
From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson)
Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 12:15:24 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Open Source Developers' Conference 2007 - Brisbane -
	Call for Papers
Message-ID: <464674BC.4010900@perltraining.com.au>

(please feel free and encouraged to redistribute the text of this email anywhere 
you feel appropriate)

Call for Papers
---------------

Open Source Developers' Conference 2007 - Brisbane
"Success in Development & Business"

OSDC is a grass-roots conference providing Open Source developers with
an opportunity to meet, share, learn, and of course show-off. OSDC
focuses on Open Source developers building solutions directly for customers and
other end users, anything goes as long as the code or the development
platform is Open Source. Last year's conference attracted over 180 people, 60
talks, and 6 tutorials. Entry for delegates is kept easy by maintaining a low
registration fee (approx $300), which always includes the conference
dinner.

This year OSDC will be held in Brisbane from the 26th to the 29th of
November, with an extra dedicated stream for presentations on Open
Source business development, case studies, software process, and project
management. The theme for this year's conference is "Success in
Development & Business". If you are an Open Source maintainer, developer or user
we would encourage you to submit a talk proposal on the open-source
tools, solutions, technologies, or languages you are working with.

Previous years have included numerous talks on topics such as:

  - FOSS Software Development Tools, Software Process and Project Management
  - Languages/Platforms: C/C++, Java, C#/Mono/OSS.Net
  - Scripting: Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby
  - Databases
  - Education
  - Web Technologies
  - Emerging Technologies and Innovation

For more details and to submit your proposal(s), see
http://osdc.com.au/papers/cfp.html

If you have any questions or require assistance with your submission,
please don't hesitate to ask!

We recognise the increasing importance of Open Source in providing a
medium for collaboration between individuals, researchers, business and
government.  In recognition of this, we offer optional peer-review for
those members of our community who desire it.  We are still finalising
our review board, in addition to which those requesting peer-review will
be asked to contribute reviews for up to three papers.

OSDC 2007 Brisbane - Key Program Dates
--------------------------------------

30 Jun - Proposals deadline
31 Jul - Proposal acceptance
31 Aug - Submission deadline
15 Sep - Peer-review response (optional)
30 Sep - Final version for proceedings

26 Nov    - OSDC 2007 Tutorials
27-29 Nov - OSDC 2007 Main Conference!

For all information, contacts and updates, see the OSDC conference web
site at http://osdc.com.au/

Sponsorship
-----------

We gratefully acknowledge the following companies for their early commitment in 
sponsoring OSDC 2007:

  - Apress (http://apress.com/)
  - Common Ground (http://commongroundgroup.com/)
  - Google (http://google.com.au/)
  - OpenGear (http://opengear.com.au/)

Interested in sponsoring also? See 
http://www.osdc.com.au/sponsors/opportunities.html


From jarich at perltraining.com.au  Sun May 13 17:44:07 2007
From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson)
Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 10:44:07 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Talks for next meeting -- AGM reminder
Message-ID: <4647B0D7.8090808@perltraining.com.au>

G'day everyone,

Our next meeting: Wednesday, 13th June will be our yearly AGM.  We'll need to 
elect positions for:

	Position		Currently held by
	------------------------------------------
	President		Scott Penrose
	Vice President		Leif Eriksen
	Secretary		Paul Fenwick
	Treasurer		Ben Marsh
	Ordinary Member (x3)	Simon Taylor
				Jacinta Richardson
				Alfie John

The duties of each of these roles are rather light.  We have a very small sum of 
money (possibly less than $100) which Ben will tell us about in the treasurer's 
report.  There should be at least two committee meetings a year, but there's not 
a lot of business to discuss so it's pretty light on the secretary too.  Scott's 
suggesting that each committee member take charge of organising one or two 
meetings a year, so that noone has to do it all the time.

Paul will be posting the current meeting agenda soon.  If you're interested in a 
position on the committee you can use the nomination form at:
http://perl.net.au/wiki/Melbourne_Perl_Mongers/Nomination_Form_2006 (although 
you'll want to change the date.  To nominate, accept a position or vote you need 
to be an actual Melbourne Perl Mongers Association member.  This means you've 
filled in a membership form and paid the fee (it used to be $10 it might be less 
now).  We can fix this up on the night.

Nominations have to be sent to the current committee a week before the actual 
AGM.  Based on last year this would be:
	Melbourne Perl Mongers,
	C/- Editure
	PO Box 650,
	Carlton South, 3053.
by COB the 6th of June.  If you're having difficulty getting two members to sign 
your own nomination, I'm sure that Scott and Ben at Editure will be happy to 
sign for you.

I have good reason to expect that the AGM won't take more than about 30 minutes, 
so it would be really good to also have one longish, or two short talks as well. 
  If you have one you'd be willing to give, please speak up!  (*nudge Kirrily 
nudge*).

All the best,

	Jacinta

From andrew.stuart at flatraterecruitment.com.au  Sun May 20 09:33:48 2007
From: andrew.stuart at flatraterecruitment.com.au (Andrew Stuart)
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 02:33:48 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Melbourne job: Passionate Object Oriented Software
	Engineer
References: <6462CBB658614845A7702E3798807698020E14D2@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
Message-ID: <006501c79afc$a528f770$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>

Passionate Object Oriented Software Engineer

* Internet company
* Challenging role
* Casual working environment

We know that a great software engineer can learn any new language or 
technology that they choose. After all, that's what they've been doing for 
their entire career.

Experience with specific computer programming languages doesn't matter to a 
*real software engineer* - if your experience is with Perl, Java, C++, 
Smalltalk, C#, PHP, Ruby - whatever.

What we care about is whether or not you are a great software engineer and 
an excellent coder.

We care about whether or not you are a fast learner.

We care about what you've done, and what you can do in the future.

We are looking for someone who is pragmatic and does not see computer 
language as religion. Someone who is language agnostic - happy to code in 
whatever language is needed to get the job done.

You'll be able to find or develop the theory you need to get your job done. 
You'll be literate, and able to communicate complicated technical concepts 
in simple language.

You'll be able to express yourself clearly and persuasively, whether in a 
design session or while explaining things to management. And you'll take 
personal responsibility for all your work, as a matter of course.

You'll take an active interest in the work of other people in the company, 
and be willing to apply your expertise to help with their problems and 
develop their skills.

REQUIREMENTS
There ARE however some fundamentals that you MUST have to qualify for this 
role:

** Strong understanding of OO concepts
** Strong understanding of SQL (well beyond SELECT * FROM table)
** Understanding of design patterns
** Strong logic and problem solving capability
** Demonstrated passion for learning
** Passion for software and coding
** Desire to work in a team of high achievers
** Desire to work in a casual, fun and hard working Internet culture

ABOUT YOU
** We're looking for someone flexible and willing to try new things
** We're looking for someone who thinks logically and can design the 
architecture for new systems as well as write the code to build them.
** We're looking for someone who is creative and innovative, who can 
contribute their good ideas and bring them to life in the software.
** We're looking for someone who is a tenacious problem solver, who will 
absolutely work out what the problem is regardless of how tough.
** We're looking for someone who does this work because they love it
** We're looking for someone who is self-driven and autonomous, who needs 
minimal direction and can see what needs to be done and will take up the 
challenge without the need for micro management.
** We're looking for someone with first class verbal and written 
communication skills. You must communicate extremely clearly and be highly 
articulate.
** We're looking for high-productivity, broadly-talented people

This company was built by people who never said, ``I can't do that.'' If 
you're the person we're looking for, you'll be able to design, implement, 
test, and debug complex software, both alone and collaboratively. The code 
you write will meet the highest standards of efficiency, maintainability, 
and modularity. You'll know how to integrate changes in large, complicated 
programs, and you'll combine design and implementation skills with an 
intuitive feel for the evolution of the product as a whole and for its 
position in the marketplace.

Apply now
info at flatraterecruitment.com.au

Telephone enquiries should go to Flat Rate Recruitment (03) 9696 1616

Thanks

With apologies to Autodesk :-)

Andrew Stuart

Managing Director
Flat Rate Recruitment
Head Office:
68 -72 York St
South Melbourne, Victoria 3205
Phone: 1300 55 91 92
Phone 03 9696 1616
Mobile: 0417 034 241
Email:  andrew.stuart at FlatRateRecruitment.com.au
Web: http://www.FlatRateRecruitment.com.au

From rick at measham.id.au  Sun May 20 16:29:33 2007
From: rick at measham.id.au (Rick Measham)
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 09:29:33 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Melbourne job: Passionate Object Oriented
 Software Engineer
In-Reply-To: <006501c79afc$a528f770$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>
References: <6462CBB658614845A7702E3798807698020E14D2@exhnat2.nsw.hpa>
	<006501c79afc$a528f770$0301a8c0@dudemacbookpro>
Message-ID: <4650D9DD.6050301@measham.id.au>

Andrew Stuart wrote:
> We are looking for someone who is pragmatic and does not see computer 
> language as religion. Someone who is language agnostic - happy to code in 
> whatever language is needed to get the job done.

Uh oh, It's a PHP job ..


Cheers!
Rick Measham

From brendon.oliver at gmail.com  Mon May 21 17:44:12 2007
From: brendon.oliver at gmail.com (Brendon Oliver)
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 10:44:12 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Web client programming
Message-ID: <200705221044.12718.brendon.oliver@gmail.com>

Hey all,

I have a need to automate the backup of a web forum database (mysql).  However 
the only 'public' access to said database is via phpMyAdmin.

Before I go charging off trying to reinvent the wheel, does anybody know of 
any scripts or modules out there which might help me interact with phpMyAdmin 
so that the backup can be run from cron.  I realise it's a rather fragile 
approach (as in being at the mercy of updates to phpMyAdmin) but don't really 
have any alternative.

I'm already looking at the LWP modules as a starting point, but I'm hoping 
there's something a bit more ready-to-run out there.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Cheers,

- Brendon.

-- 
I'm a nuclear submarine under the polar ice cap and I need a Kleenex!

 10:38:32 up 19 days, 21:17,  3 users,  load average: 0.05, 0.10, 0.14


From krobert at realestate.com.au  Mon May 21 17:59:32 2007
From: krobert at realestate.com.au (Kirrily Robert)
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 10:59:32 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Web client programming
In-Reply-To: <200705221044.12718.brendon.oliver@gmail.com>
References: <200705221044.12718.brendon.oliver@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <6FA6124E9378214883CA93A54AED601D065452BD@EMAIL.win.int.realestate.com.au>

Brendan wrote:
> 
> I'm already looking at the LWP modules as a starting point, but I'm
hoping
> there's something a bit more ready-to-run out there.

If you're already looking at LWP, then take a look at WWW::Mechanize,
which makes many LWP-like tasks much easier.  

K.



From brendon.oliver at gmail.com  Mon May 21 18:16:30 2007
From: brendon.oliver at gmail.com (Brendon Oliver)
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 11:16:30 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Web client programming
In-Reply-To: <6FA6124E9378214883CA93A54AED601D065452BD@EMAIL.win.int.realestate.com.au>
References: <200705221044.12718.brendon.oliver@gmail.com>
	<6FA6124E9378214883CA93A54AED601D065452BD@EMAIL.win.int.realestate.com.au>
Message-ID: <200705221116.30644.brendon.oliver@gmail.com>

On Tuesday 22 May 2007 10:59:32 Kirrily Robert wrote:
> Brendan wrote:
> > I'm already looking at the LWP modules as a starting point, but I'm
> > hoping there's something a bit more ready-to-run out there.
>
> If you're already looking at LWP, then take a look at WWW::Mechanize,
> which makes many LWP-like tasks much easier.

Thanks Kirrily - that's the sort of thing I was hoping to find.  Looks like it 
will be very helpful.

Cheers,

- Brendon.


-- 
It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you
did it wrong.
		-- H.W. Longfellow

 11:15:24 up 19 days, 21:54,  3 users,  load average: 0.19, 0.20, 0.18


From melbourne.pm at joshheumann.com  Tue May 22 21:34:35 2007
From: melbourne.pm at joshheumann.com (Josh Heumann)
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 04:34:35 +0000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] module importing
Message-ID: <20070523043435.GE16957@joshheumann.com>

Hi, all.  After some confusing book- and soul-searching, I come to the
group with a question.  I want to do something like this:

use MyModule env => test;

to tell the module that is being used that it should use the test
database.  What do I need to do to capture that in MyModule?

For extra credit, what if I want to use that information in something
in MyModule that happens in a statement that isn't in a subroutine?

All of my tests seem to indicate that I'm out of luck because the
statement outside of a subroutine gets executed at compile time, while
the use statement gets run at runtime.  I feel like I could cobble
something together, but it would be a hack and just plain wrong.

Thanks for your help.

Josh

From mathew.robertson at netratings.com.au  Tue May 22 23:46:18 2007
From: mathew.robertson at netratings.com.au (Mathew Robertson)
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 16:46:18 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] module importing
In-Reply-To: <20070523043435.GE16957@joshheumann.com>
References: <20070523043435.GE16957@joshheumann.com>
Message-ID: <4653E33A.5050805@netratings.com.au>

put this in MyModule.pm:

package MyModule;
use strict;
use warnings;
our $database;

sub import {
  my $class = shift;
  for (my $i=0; $i< $#_; $i+=2) {
    if ($_[$i] eq "database") {
      $database = $_[$i+1];
    }
  }
  if ($database) {
     print "Using database: $database $/";
  }
  return $class;
}

sub do_something {
  print "do_something(".join(",", at _)." with database $database $/";
}

sub DESTROY {
  if ($database) {
    print "Disconnecting database: $database $/";
  }
}

1;


Now this in test.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use MyModule database => "fred";

print "main $/";
MyModule::do_something("SELECTING...");


now:

set PERL5LIB="$PERL5LIB:."
chmod +x test.pl
./test.pl



So.... basically create a sub called "import" - the first argument is
the package/class name.  The rest of the arguments are whatever you
supply as arguments to the 'use'.  Parse the args and store your value
in an 'our' variable.

This help?
Mathew Robertson




Josh Heumann wrote:
> Hi, all.  After some confusing book- and soul-searching, I come to the
> group with a question.  I want to do something like this:
>
> use MyModule env => test;
>
> to tell the module that is being used that it should use the test
> database.  What do I need to do to capture that in MyModule?
>
> For extra credit, what if I want to use that information in something
> in MyModule that happens in a statement that isn't in a subroutine?
>
> All of my tests seem to indicate that I'm out of luck because the
> statement outside of a subroutine gets executed at compile time, while
> the use statement gets run at runtime.  I feel like I could cobble
> something together, but it would be a hack and just plain wrong.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Josh
> _______________________________________________
> Melbourne-pm mailing list
> Melbourne-pm at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/melbourne-pm
>   
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From melbourne.pm at joshheumann.com  Wed May 23 00:30:51 2007
From: melbourne.pm at joshheumann.com (Josh Heumann)
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 07:30:51 +0000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] module importing
In-Reply-To: <4653E33A.5050805@netratings.com.au>
References: <20070523043435.GE16957@joshheumann.com>
	<4653E33A.5050805@netratings.com.au>
Message-ID: <20070523073051.GF16957@joshheumann.com>

<quote who='leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au' when='Wed, May 23, 2007 at 04:10:57PM +1000'>
> Without looking at any reference material, a dim memory says you need to
> write a MyModule::import() sub, and look at the arg list therein....


<quote who='Mathew Robertson' when='Wed, May 23, 2007 at 04:46:18PM +1000'>
> So.... basically create a sub called "import" - the first argument is
> the package/class name.  The rest of the arguments are whatever you
> supply as arguments to the 'use'.  Parse the args and store your value
> in an 'our' variable.

Thank you both for your help.  Since I'm using Catalyst, the database
connection bit has to happen at compile time [1], so it looks something like
this:

package MyModule;
use strict;
use warnings;
our $database;

sub import {
      my ( $class, $name, $value ) = @_;
      $database = "my_prefix_$value";
      print "This gets printed at runtime\n";
}

__PACKAGE__->connection($database);

print "This gets printed at compile, time, and \$database is undef here\n";

1;

and over in the test, I'd like to be able to do this:

use MyModule env => 'test';

...and have it do the connection to the test database.  I've tried
moving the database connection bit into a subroutine, but since it's
doing all of it's object-creation magic in the background, it needs to
connect to the database at compile time.

It might not be possible to do what I want this way, which wouldn't be
the end of the world.

J

[1]: AFAIK.  If someone knows more about how Catalyst works, or if
there's even a way to tell it which db to use that's internal to
Catalyst, please let me know.

From jarich at perltraining.com.au  Wed May 23 16:52:35 2007
From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson)
Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 09:52:35 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] module importing
In-Reply-To: <20070523073051.GF16957@joshheumann.com>
References: <20070523043435.GE16957@joshheumann.com>	<4653E33A.5050805@netratings.com.au>
	<20070523073051.GF16957@joshheumann.com>
Message-ID: <4654D3C3.90808@perltraining.com.au>

Josh Heumann wrote:

> Thank you both for your help.  Since I'm using Catalyst, the database
> connection bit has to happen at compile time [1]

> [1]: AFAIK.  If someone knows more about how Catalyst works, or if
> there's even a way to tell it which db to use that's internal to
> Catalyst, please let me know.

G'day Josh,

I am certain you're attempting to do this the wrong way.  "use"ing a module is
the same as writing:

BEGIN { require 'MyModule.pm'; MyModule::import(...) }

Thus the import isn't strictly called at run-time per-se, but it is called after
the module has been evaluated in full, and before the next module is loaded.

Unfortunately I don't know enough Catalyst to tell you exactly how to solve
this, but I've spoken to a couple of people and they've suggested that:

* You can change your database connection details in the yaml config (which is
loaded at runtime).  Thus you can have different yaml files for production than
testing, and just put the preferred one first in the path.

* If you really want to do this in code then you might want to look at
Catalyst::Plugin::ConfigLoader and extend that.  Or instantiate something before
MyApp->setup.

Failing all else you will probably find an answer by asking on #catalyst on
irc.perl.org.  If you do find a good solution then the documentation could do
with a recipe on it.

All the best,

	Jacinta

-- 
   ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._          |  Jacinta Richardson         |
    `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)  |  Perl Training Australia    |
    (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'   |      +61 3 9354 6001        |
  _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'           | contact at perltraining.com.au |
 (il),-''  (li),'  ((!.-'             |   www.perltraining.com.au   |

From mathew.robertson at netratings.com.au  Wed May 23 17:40:41 2007
From: mathew.robertson at netratings.com.au (Mathew Robertson)
Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 10:40:41 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] module importing
In-Reply-To: <20070523073051.GF16957@joshheumann.com>
References: <20070523043435.GE16957@joshheumann.com>	<4653E33A.5050805@netratings.com.au>
	<20070523073051.GF16957@joshheumann.com>
Message-ID: <4654DF09.7070301@netratings.com.au>


> Thank you both for your help.  Since I'm using Catalyst, the database
> connection bit has to happen at compile time [1], so it looks something like
> this:
>
> package MyModule;
> use strict;
> use warnings;
> our $database;
>
> sub import {
>       my ( $class, $name, $value ) = @_;
>       $database = "my_prefix_$value";
>       print "This gets printed at runtime\n";
> }
>
> __PACKAGE__->connection($database);
>
> print "This gets printed at compile, time, and \$database is undef here\n";
>
> 1;
>
> and over in the test, I'd like to be able to do this:
>
> use MyModule env => 'test';
>
> ...and have it do the connection to the test database.  I've tried
> moving the database connection bit into a subroutine, but since it's
> doing all of it's object-creation magic in the background, it needs to
> connect to the database at compile time.
>   
I'm not familiar with catalyst, so I'm not sure if this helps but you
could try moving the "connect" inside the import:

package MyModule;
our $database;
our $connection;

sub import {
    my ($class,$name,$value) = @_;
    $database = $value if $value;
    $connection = __PACKAGE->connection($database) if (! $connection &&
$database);
}

sub DESTROY {
    $connection->disconnect;
    $connection = undef;
}

sub connection {
    my ($class, $db) = @_;
    ...
    return $connection;
}

1;

or something like that...
Mathew

From melbourne.pm at joshheumann.com  Wed May 23 20:15:12 2007
From: melbourne.pm at joshheumann.com (Josh Heumann)
Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 03:15:12 +0000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] module importing
In-Reply-To: <4654DF09.7070301@netratings.com.au>
References: <20070523043435.GE16957@joshheumann.com>
	<4653E33A.5050805@netratings.com.au>
	<20070523073051.GF16957@joshheumann.com>
	<4654DF09.7070301@netratings.com.au>
Message-ID: <20070524031512.GB29450@joshheumann.com>

Thanks, everyone.  I think I've discovered that the specific thing I
wanted to do isn't possible, but there are probably ways to do it
through Catalyst.  If I find something brilliant while trolling through
the docs, I'll post it.

Thanks for your replies.

Josh

From alecclews at gmail.com  Sun May 27 21:25:06 2007
From: alecclews at gmail.com (Alec Clews)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 14:25:06 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book
Message-ID: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>

I know this is not a Perl question so my apologies. However I figure there
might be knowledge and opinions on the list.

I have a serious case of Mac lust and I'm thinking of sinking some money
into a Power Book (but not yet, there are rumours of new machines in June)

The questions I have is as follows:

* What can OS/X offer that Linux can't

* What is the downside of migrating to OS/X?

* Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some of
the things that I particularly interested in are: GNU Cash (possible to
install I believe but not a supported platform); Apache, Perl and  all that
goes with it (i.e. CPAN), MYSql (I believe there is a port supported by the
vendor), svk.

Thanks

-- 
Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com>             Melbourne, Australia.
Jabber:  alecclews at jabber.org.au             PGPKey ID: 0x9BBBFC7C
blog:http://alecthegeek.wordpress.com/
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From skud at infotrope.net  Sun May 27 22:16:01 2007
From: skud at infotrope.net (Kirrily Robert)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 15:16:01 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book
In-Reply-To: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <b08e1490705272216rd5cbc1dv9f7e538c7db8446c@mail.gmail.com>

Alec, I moved to OSX for my home machines about 2 years ago.  I did it
because I was moving countries and needed to put my entire digital
life onto a laptop to take with me, and there was a dip in Linux
laptops at the time.

On 5/28/07, Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com> wrote:
> The questions I have is as follows:
>
> * What can OS/X offer that Linux can't

Smooth, sexy media handling.  I no longer have a TV, and do heaps of
downloading and watching of media in all kinds of formats that
would've been a PITA under Linux.  (It's probably better now, but
still not up to Mac standards.)  Since switching to OSX I've also
found myself doing video editing and stuff like that, and I'm really
enjoying it.

> * What is the downside of migrating to OS/X?

You'll need to mind-switch a bit.  Rather than thinking "how do I
configure application X to have behaviour Y?" you need to think "I
wonder if I can download an add-on to get me behaviour Y."

> * Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some of
> the things that I particularly interested in are: GNU Cash (possible to
> install I believe but not a supported platform); Apache, Perl and  all that
> goes with it (i.e. CPAN), MYSql (I believe there is a port supported by the
> vendor), svk.

Personally and very much IMHO, no.  For me it's mostly just a matter
of not having terminal emulators that work as I expect them to. (I've
tried Terminal.app, iTerm, and xterm under X11, for those who are
thinking of offering suggestions.)  I could probably retrain myself in
time, but to be honest I haven't done so yet, and my productivity has
dropped. I'm intending to get a Debian or Ubuntu box to actually do
more serious development on.

As for CPAN, MySQL, etc...  basically stuff will install in
non-standard places and you'll spend a bit of time figuring it out,
but once you've got used to it, it's fine.  For any particular app
you're wondering about support for, a quick google should tell you
whether it exists.  Most open source stuff is available, but you might
have a bit of annoyance figuring out which of the various install
mechanisms is right for any given package.

K.

-- 
Kirrily Robert
skud at infotrope.net
http://infotrope.net

From alecclews at gmail.com  Mon May 28 01:47:13 2007
From: alecclews at gmail.com (Alec Clews)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 18:47:13 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book
In-Reply-To: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3c2b63c00705280147p5a7cafdv9b493923c48abc5a@mail.gmail.com>

Many thanks to all the people who replied both on and off the list.

I think I'll stay with Linux because I'm too old to have a digital life --
only software and data in my world.

(shame -- the Mac is so cool...)


On 28/05/07, Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I know this is not a Perl question so my apologies. However I figure there
> might be knowledge and opinions on the list.
>
> I have a serious case of Mac lust and I'm thinking of sinking some money
> into a Power Book (but not yet, there are rumours of new machines in June)
>
> The questions I have is as follows:
>
> * What can OS/X offer that Linux can't
>
> * What is the downside of migrating to OS/X?
>
> * Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some
> of the things that I particularly interested in are: GNU Cash (possible to
> install I believe but not a supported platform); Apache, Perl and  all that
> goes with it (i.e. CPAN), MYSql (I believe there is a port supported by
> the vendor), svk.
>
>

-- 
Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com>             Melbourne, Australia.
Jabber:  alecclews at jabber.org.au             PGPKey ID: 0x9BBBFC7C
blog:http://alecthegeek.wordpress.com/
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From shlomif at iglu.org.il  Mon May 28 01:53:12 2007
From: shlomif at iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 11:53:12 +0300
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book
In-Reply-To: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200705281153.13111.shlomif@iglu.org.il>

On Monday 28 May 2007, Alec Clews wrote:
> I know this is not a Perl question so my apologies. However I figure there
> might be knowledge and opinions on the list.
>
> I have a serious case of Mac lust and I'm thinking of sinking some money
> into a Power Book (but not yet, there are rumours of new machines in June)
>
> The questions I have is as follows:
>
> * What can OS/X offer that Linux can't
>
> * What is the downside of migrating to OS/X?
>

Well, I started writing a page against Apple here:

http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/

From my impression Apple Inc. is often as bad as Microsoft and sometimes even 
worse. The applications that Apple sells for Mac OS X, or provides with them, 
tend to be much more limited than their Linux equivalents: 

1. Amarok is much better than iTunes.

2. There are much better image management for Linux than iPhoto.

3. KDE and Beryl are more usable than the Mac OS X desktop, which Windows, KDE 
and even GNOME users will find alien and unusable. Mac OS X has no virtual 
workspaces by default.

4. Microsoft Office for Mac OS X is crippled and does not support Hebrew and 
BiDi as well as MS Office or OpenOffice.org.

------------

I talked with someone on IRC and he directed me to a web-gallery. The gallery 
contained small thumbnails, and when I tried to view the large image, it took 
ages to view the larger image, which didn't seem too large. As it turned out 
the image was scaled to be small, but was in fact very huge in quality and 
dimensions (and as a result file size). I told him it was unusable for me 
(and I have an ADSL ~200 KBytes-per-second connection), and that it sucks, 
and he told me : "Well that's what I prepared with iWeb which integrates well 
with iPhoto on Mac".

Even earlier, there was that:

http://osdir.com/ml/culture.hackers.israel/2005-11/msg00091.html ("Look ma, no 
code").

Also note that many applications that work perfectly on Linux and X won't work 
on Mac OS X, because of different OS semantics - these are often bugs in the 
application which is primarily developed on GNU/Linux on an x86. As a result, 
using FOSS in Mac OS X is more of a challenge than on Linux. I'm not claiming 
it's Mac OS X fault's just that it's a fact.

Note that if you buy an Intel-based Macintosh, you can always run other 
x86-based OSes on it, including Linux (such as Mandriva), and Microsoft 
Windows. You can also run them within an emulator such as VMware. Note that 
for Linux, the Nvidia-based graphics card may give you some grief:

http://www.petitiononline.com/nvfoss/

> * Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some of
> the things that I particularly interested in are: GNU Cash (possible to
> install I believe but not a supported platform); Apache, Perl and  all that
> goes with it (i.e. CPAN), MYSql (I believe there is a port supported by the
> vendor), svk.
>

Apache, Perl, MySQL and SVK should have no problem running on Mac OS X. Perl 
development has had a problem in which one had to use GNU tar instead of the 
Mac OS X tar because the OS X tar has placed the OS X-added file system 
metadata attributes for Makefile.PL under a dot-file that ends with PL. It 
happened several times already:

1. http://advogato.org/person/fxn/diary.html?start=401

2. http://lists.scsys.co.uk/pipermail/catalyst/2006-April/thread.html#6918

One can easily workaround it, so it's not that critical.

======================

The reasons I'm not going to buy a Macintosh are:

1. I'm too used to the Windows->KDE conventions to ever believe I can get used 
to the Mac OS X desktop. Even GNOME gives me enough grief.

2. I've recently developed an allergy to most non-free software. If you want 
to know why (and it's not considered OT here), I can forward parts of a 
message I wrote about it to writers at mit.edu.

I don't think proprietary software is unethical or illegitimate, or that it 
should be outlawed or anything, and am still using high-quality non-FOSS 
software sometimes (but usually I try not to depend on it). 

However, I prefer not to use it or depend on it. If other people do - that is 
their choice, and they may (and often will) suffer the consequences.

3. Mac hardware is over-priced, and is basically still a Pentium machine. 
OTOH, I can install a modern Linux distribution such as Mandriva (my 
favourite one, and the one I'm typing from) on any machine that runs Windows, 
and chances are that it will work very nicely. 

I realise that the Intel-Mac computers are higher quality and tend to last 
longer than random desktop x86 computers, but the price is still not 
justified, and shelling out all the money at once is not justified.

4. Mac OS X upgrades cost money. OTOH, upgrades of Linux are free. So I'll 
need to pay more and more.

5. I've heard a lot of bad things that Apple did, and do not trust them. 

--------------

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif at iglu.org.il
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
    -- An Israeli Linuxer

From alecclews at gmail.com  Mon May 28 01:47:13 2007
From: alecclews at gmail.com (Alec Clews)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 18:47:13 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book
In-Reply-To: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3c2b63c00705280147p5a7cafdv9b493923c48abc5a@mail.gmail.com>

Many thanks to all the people who replied both on and off the list.

I think I'll stay with Linux because I'm too old to have a digital life --
only software and data in my world.

(shame -- the Mac is so cool...)


On 28/05/07, Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I know this is not a Perl question so my apologies. However I figure there
> might be knowledge and opinions on the list.
>
> I have a serious case of Mac lust and I'm thinking of sinking some money
> into a Power Book (but not yet, there are rumours of new machines in June)
>
> The questions I have is as follows:
>
> * What can OS/X offer that Linux can't
>
> * What is the downside of migrating to OS/X?
>
> * Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some
> of the things that I particularly interested in are: GNU Cash (possible to
> install I believe but not a supported platform); Apache, Perl and  all that
> goes with it (i.e. CPAN), MYSql (I believe there is a port supported by
> the vendor), svk.
>
>

-- 
Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com>             Melbourne, Australia.
Jabber:  alecclews at jabber.org.au             PGPKey ID: 0x9BBBFC7C
blog:http://alecthegeek.wordpress.com/
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From shlomif at iglu.org.il  Mon May 28 02:15:17 2007
From: shlomif at iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish)
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 12:15:17 +0300
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book
In-Reply-To: <b08e1490705272216rd5cbc1dv9f7e538c7db8446c@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
	<b08e1490705272216rd5cbc1dv9f7e538c7db8446c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200705281215.17503.shlomif@iglu.org.il>

On Monday 28 May 2007, Kirrily Robert wrote:
> Alec, I moved to OSX for my home machines about 2 years ago.  I did it
> because I was moving countries and needed to put my entire digital
> life onto a laptop to take with me, and there was a dip in Linux
> laptops at the time.
>
> On 5/28/07, Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The questions I have is as follows:
> >
> > * What can OS/X offer that Linux can't
>
> Smooth, sexy media handling.  I no longer have a TV, and do heaps of
> downloading and watching of media in all kinds of formats that
> would've been a PITA under Linux.  (It's probably better now, but
> still not up to Mac standards.)  

Really? There's no problem in downloading things under Linux: you have 
BitTorrent, eDonkey, g2p.org (Google hacking for finding media files), 
plain-ol'-HTTP (GarageBand.com, etc.), youtube-dl, etc. These are plain 
TCP/IP protocol which don't care what OS you run. Are you referring to iTunes 
and other DRM-encumbered services? Or buy-mp3s-for-pay services? iTunes 
cannot run on Linux without wine or VMware, but there's no way I'm going to 
use it to buy songs. As for buy-mp3s-for-pay services - they are usually a 
standard web store.

As for playing them - mplayer could play anything I've thrown at it. There's 
also xine and VLC. I once had some artificats while playing a QuickTime 
movie, which had an .mpg extension (the famous Peanuts + "Hey Ya!" cross), 
and it was solved after adding some obscure flags to mplayer, which I found 
out after talking with people on the IRC.

One thing to note is that the GUIs for the players still tend to suck pretty 
badly, but as far as displaying the raw video is concerned, it is very good.

> Since switching to OSX I've also 
> found myself doing video editing and stuff like that, and I'm really
> enjoying it.

You can do video editing in Linux. Holywood studios have recently switched to 
Linux wholesale, for both their front-ends, and back-end needs. Obviously, 
some of the software that they are using is commercial, non-free and very 
pricey, and they also have a lot of in-house, custom, software, which they 
depend on.

In any case, I'm aware of several open-source video-editing applications for 
Linux, and while I cannot compare them to their Mac equivalents, 
video-editing in Linux should be doable.

>
> > * What is the downside of migrating to OS/X?
>
> You'll need to mind-switch a bit.  Rather than thinking "how do I
> configure application X to have behaviour Y?" you need to think "I
> wonder if I can download an add-on to get me behaviour Y."
>

Hmmmpfff...

> > * Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some
> > of the things that I particularly interested in are: GNU Cash (possible
> > to install I believe but not a supported platform); Apache, Perl and  all
> > that goes with it (i.e. CPAN), MYSql (I believe there is a port supported
> > by the vendor), svk.
>
> Personally and very much IMHO, no.  For me it's mostly just a matter
> of not having terminal emulators that work as I expect them to. (I've
> tried Terminal.app, iTerm, and xterm under X11, for those who are
> thinking of offering suggestions.)  I could probably retrain myself in
> time, but to be honest I haven't done so yet, and my productivity has
> dropped. I'm intending to get a Debian or Ubuntu box to actually do
> more serious development on.

Interesting.

>
> As for CPAN, MySQL, etc...  basically stuff will install in
> non-standard places and you'll spend a bit of time figuring it out,
> but once you've got used to it, it's fine.  For any particular app
> you're wondering about support for, a quick google should tell you
> whether it exists.  Most open source stuff is available, but you might
> have a bit of annoyance figuring out which of the various install
> mechanisms is right for any given package.
>

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif at iglu.org.il
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
    -- An Israeli Linuxer

From cas at taz.net.au  Tue May 29 18:48:44 2007
From: cas at taz.net.au (Craig Sanders)
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 11:48:44 +1000
Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book
In-Reply-To: <b08e1490705272216rd5cbc1dv9f7e538c7db8446c@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3c2b63c00705272125wd527579v4f2e09989f9f555@mail.gmail.com>
	<b08e1490705272216rd5cbc1dv9f7e538c7db8446c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20070530014843.GA27227@taz.net.au>

On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 03:16:01PM +1000, Kirrily Robert wrote:
> On 5/28/07, Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com> wrote:
> > * Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some of
> 
> Personally and very much IMHO, no.  For me it's mostly just a matter
> of not having terminal emulators that work as I expect them to. (I've
> tried Terminal.app, iTerm, and xterm under X11, for those who are
> thinking of offering suggestions.)  I could probably retrain myself in

i've got a mac on my desk at work, cant remember which model (one of the
ones with a big LCD monitor and everything built into that).

i found Terminal.app really sucked. i made it suck less by redefining
the Home, End, PgUp, Shift-PgUp, PgDn, Shift-PgDn etc keys so that they
worked more like i am used to.

can never get used to having to manually press Copy and Insert keys
rather than just highlight with mouse to copy and middle-click to
paste....end up having to do each cut-and-paste at least twice because i
forget.

i intended to install or compile multi-gnome-terminal on the mac, but
then i realised i could reformat the SuSE box that was also on my desk
and install debian sid on it it. now i use the debian box 99% of the
time and only use the Mac for the tiny handful of things that only run
on mac. the linux box also has a nice big Dell 24" LCD monitor too :)

also, all the animations annoyed the hell out of me . i hate sound
effects and animations and things moving when they should stay still.
annoying distractions, the lot of them. and a waste of CPU power.

overall, my impression is that Mac OS X is kind-of-nice, but it also
kind-of-sucks at the same time. i'd rather use linux.


craig

ps: i use the sawfish WM with gnome. the only reason i use sawfish
is that it's the only WM i know of that supports middle-click on the
maximise button to only maximise vertically, and right-click to only
maximise horizontally. very useful feature that, especially for getting
max height xterm windows.


-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

You can build a throne out of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for very long.
		-- Boris Yeltsin