General Development Archive

"Dylan is an advanced, object-oriented, dynamic language which supports the rapid development of programs. When needed, the programmer can later optimize programs for more efficient execution by supplying type information to the compiler. Nearly all entities in Dylan (including functions, classes, and basic data types such as integers) are first class objects. Additionally Dylan supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, and many other advanced features."

Mark Mitchell announced the availability of GCC 4.0.2. He explains, "this release is a minor release, containing primarily fixes for regressions in GCC 4.0.1 relative to previous releases."

Unfortunately, in the real world you will never see a project perfectly follow any of the development models. You will never be given a thoroughly detailed specification that perfectly meets the customer’s needs and you will never have enough time to do all the testing you need to do. It just doesn’t happen. This chapter will help you understand that software testing doesn't alway go perfectly, and help you prepare for that eventuality.

Amanith Framework is a cross-platform (Linux, Win32, Mac OX X, FreeBSD, Linux and IRIX) open source C++ framework for 2D and 3D vector graphics. The new 0.1.1 release adds support for 64bit. New supported environments are Linux x86_64 (with gcc) and Windows XP 64 (with Visual Studio .Net 2005).

The Python Enterprise Application Kit (PEAK) is a Python framework for rapidly developing and reusing application components. While Python itself is already a very high-level language, PEAK provides even higher abstractions. One fairly recent capability added to PEAK is the capability to create generic functions and specifically to dispatch them on predicates, not simply on type. Sounds mysterious?

This tutorial, first in a series, will walk through installation of a bundled Apache Tomcat and Jakarta Slide that will result in a working content management system. In Part 2 of this series, learn how to download the sources, set up Eclipse, and build the Jakarta Slide open source CMS. Part 3 will walk through the customization of Jakarta Slide with Eclipse to create a new store back-end adapter that will allow documents stored to Slide to also be stored in a database. Other options for creating stores will also be explained. Note that a free registration is required to view these articles.

Here are a couple of good articles from the SOA front. The first one provides guidence to architect a powerful and flexible Service-Oriented Architecture that integrates heterogeneous data, simplifying your IT solutions. The second article explores the next-generation business process server, which automates business processes and supports all styles of integration based on SOA and open standards.

In this interview, Hans discusses his background and how he came to create Namesys and Reiserfs. He looks back at Reiser3, describing the advantages it had over other filesystems when it was released and its current state. He then explores the many improvements in Reiser4, describing the plugin architecture and its exciting potential for future semantic enhancements.

"Due to being dissatisfied with the inability of existing open source Continuous Integration solutions to prevent developers from abusing the codebase, I've been prototyping a new proactive approach to Continuous Integration. Sin, a framework for Continuous Integration, is the result of this work. I discuss the problems with existing solutions and the advantages of Sin here."

GridShell is designed to incorporate grid concepts into command shell environments. In this article, the author describes the motivation for GridShell and provides a high-level description of the extensions to the language interface the tool provides. GridShell extends the TCSH and BASH syntaxes. Users familiar with both will be able to write scripts that include these grid shell language extensions, and orchestrate and coordinate the execution of programs across the grid.

This article will teach you how to define and test for parameters within the Java environment by creating a simple system for for tracking course enrollment.

Trying to locate an unresolved plug-in dependency can be strenuous and time-consuming. Almost every plug-in depends on a bunch of other plug-ins, and those plug-ins, in turn, may depend on many more. This article shows you how to resolve plug-in dependencies more quickly by automating their discovery.

Informit has published a sample chapter of William Nagel's new book, "Subversion Version Control: Using the Subversion Version Control System in Development Projects."

This article introduces PowerPC emulation and cross-compiling for developers without access to real hardware. It is intended for developers familiar with computer architecture who own an x86-based workstation but are interested in experimenting with PowerPC.