Hadoop::Streaming PAUSE registration submitted

Submitted a PAUSE (Perl Authors Upload SErver) request to register Hadoop::Streamingin the User Interface tree at CPAN. I wasn't really sure which top-level category to put it in, but settled on UI as it provides a simple adaption of the Streaming interface of Hadoop.

Woo, my first registered module space.

Hadoop::Streaming 0.102490 pushed to CPAN

I've pushed a new release of Hadoop::Streaming to CPAN. It should be available in a couple of hours, depending on how long it takes your CPAN mirror to do the mirror update dance.

The release includes expanded documentation in the base Hadoop::Streaming placeholder file. Also included is a Hadoop::Streaming::Combiner role, for creating combiners. Combiners are like reducers that run post-map, per-merge. Once can reuse the reducer as combiner, if the reducer produces the same key/value format on output as input.

After writing my new documentation, test and code, I tested it with dzil test. After passing tests, it's a simple 1 step push to CPAN and github via dzil release. AWESOME! Dist::Zilla makes maintaining CPAN modules brilliantly easy.

Happy Labor Day!

Links

CPAN - Comprehensive Perl Archive Network

http://search.cpan.org

Hadoop::Streaming perl modules

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Hadoop::Streaming

Dist::Zilla

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Dist::Zilla

There's no Step Two!

[andrew@mini]% dzil release                                1 ~/src/hadoop-streaming-frontend
[DZ] beginning to build Hadoop-Streaming
[DZ] guessing dist's main_module is lib/Hadoop/Streaming.pm
[DZ] extracting distribution abstract from lib/Hadoop/Streaming.pm
[DZ] writing Hadoop-Streaming in Hadoop-Streaming-0.102490
[DZ] writing archive to Hadoop-Streaming-0.102490.tar.gz
[@Basic/TestRelease] Extracting /home/andrew/src/hadoop-streaming-frontend/Hadoo
p-Streaming-0.102490.tar.gz to .build/dVEDcaew44
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for Hadoop::Streaming
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming.pm
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Combiner.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Combiner.pm
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Role/Emitter.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Role/Emitter.p
m
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Reducer/Input/ValuesIterator.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streamin
g/Reducer/Input/ValuesIterator.pm
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Reducer.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Reducer.pm
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Reducer/Input/Iterator.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Redu
cer/Input/Iterator.pm
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Role/Iterator.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Role/Iterator.pm
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Reducer/Input.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Reducer/Input.pm
cp lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Mapper.pm blib/lib/Hadoop/Streaming/Mapper.pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Combiner.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Role::Emitter.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Reducer::Input::ValuesIterator.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Reducer::Input::Iterator.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Reducer.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Role::Iterator.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Reducer::Input.3pm
Manifying blib/man3/Hadoop::Streaming::Mapper.3pm
PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/bin/perl "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-e" "test_harness(0, 'blib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/*.t
t/00-load.t ....... ok
t/01-wordcount.t .. 8/? # perl path -> /usr/bin/perl
t/01-wordcount.t .. ok
t/02-analog.t ..... ok
All tests successful.
Files=3, Tests=19,  3 wallclock secs ( 0.05 usr  0.01 sys +  2.34 cusr  0.20 csys =  2.60 CPU) 
Result: PASS   

[@Basic/TestRelease] all's well; removing .build/dVEDcaew44
*** Preparing to upload Hadoop-Streaming-0.102490.tar.gz to CPAN ***

Do you want to continue the release process? [y/N]: y
[@Git/Check] branch master is in a clean state
[@Basic/UploadToCPAN] registering upload with PAUSE web server
[@Basic/UploadToCPAN] POSTing upload for Hadoop-Streaming-0.102490.tar.gz
[@Basic/UploadToCPAN] PAUSE add message sent ok [200]
[@Git/Commit] Committed Changes
[@Git/Tag] Tagged v0.102490
[@Git/Push] pushing to origin

github + cpan = gitpan

Gitpan is a clone of all the modules on cpan in git form, nearly twenty-two thousand public repositories. This is not a place for development of modules. Instead it is a place to easily pull the current source for a module to make a patch and send to the maintainer, without having to find where she maintains her golden copy.

I read about gitpan a while ago, but then when I wanted to find it last week, I couldn't find the correct search terms. [github cpan] produces a list that doesn't include gitpan in the first page, as it is crowded out by the many perl modules developed on github for release to cpan and of course things like Net::GitHub and GitHub::Import, and an interesting discussion at perlmonks on (informal) perl naming convention for github projects.

Now that I know the name, it is still hard to find information! From the FAQ section of the readme:

What is gitPAN?
---------------
gitPAN is a project to import the entire history of CPAN (known as BackPAN) into a set of git repositories, one per distribution.

Why is gitPAN?
--------------
CPAN (and thus BackPAN) is a pile of tarballs organized by author. It is difficult to get the complete history of a distribution, especially one that has changed authors or is released by multiple authors (for example, Moose). Because releases are regularly deleted from CPAN even sites like search.cpan.org provide an incomplete history. Having the complete history of each distrubtion in its own repository makes the full distribution history easy to access.

gitPAN also hopes to make patching CPAN modules easier. Ideally you simply clone the gitPAN repository and work. New releases can be pulled and merged from gitPAN.

gitPAN hopes to showcase using a repository as an archive format, rather than a pile of tarballs. A repository is far more useful than a pile of tarballs, and contrary to many people's expectations, the repository is turning out smaller.

Finally, gitPAN is being created in the hope that "if you build it they will come". Getting data out of CPAN in an automated fashion has traditionally been difficult.

Where is gitPAN?
----------------
The repositories are on github.com at http://github.com/gitpan (watch out, it may overload your browser).

Code, discussion, and issues can be had at http://github.com/schwern/gitpan.

[...]

How can I contact gitPAN?
-------------------------

Email:   schwern+gitpan@gmail.com
Web:     http://github.com/gitpan/
Dev:     http://github.com/schwern/gitpan
Issues:  http://github.com/schwern/gitpan/issues
Twitter: #gitpan

Links:

google search for [github cpan]

http://google.com/search?q=github+cpan

google search for [gitpan]

http://google.com/search?q=gitpan

gitpan at github -- 21,976 public repositories and counting!

Schwern's announcement of gitpan on his use.perl blog.

http://use.perl.org/~schwern/journal/39972

http://github.com/gitpan

discussion of gitpan and code:

http://github.com/schwern/gitpan

gitpan issues:

http://github.com/schwern/gitpan/issues

a page with 4 links at integra.net

http://gitpan.integra.net/

LA.pm august meeting prep (exclusive behind-the-scenes look!)

"Uh oh, an email from Aran, one of my presenters for tonight," I thought as I opened it with terpidation.

Tommy said to me yesterday "So, you're presenting tomorrow?" And I was like "I am?" And he was like "Ya." And then I was like "Dude, I gotta make my presentation!" And he was like "Burn!" And I was like "Its cool, should be an easy one to prep for." And he was like "Cool." And I was like "Cool." And then I asked "Are you presenting?" And he was like "I was, but I flaked and now Andrew is forced to present." And I was like "Burn!". And he was like "Ya man." And I was like "Cool." And he was like "Cool."

See ya in a couple hours!
Aran, 2:28pm

"Cool," with Tommy leaving me a late night voicemail on Tuesday to postpone his presentation, I was not looking for another presentation slot to fill. Happy dance! Aran always does lovely, polished talks with cute slides. What was I thinking, not checking my email until 5pm anyways?

What's this, he's replied to his own message? "Ruh roh!" said the alarm bells in my head as I opened it to read his retraction and cancellation from 2:48pm. There goes my plan of finishing (writing) my presentation during Aran's talk. " 'Burn!' ," to use the parlance of our times.

Dear Perlers,

Yes Laziness is a Virtue[1] but so is Hubris. "Get up and present!" I say Impatiently.

kthxbai,
Andrew (your la.pm[2] host and default presenter)

P.S. Please try and pick more sensible defaults.

--me

Links

1. http://threevirtues.com/
2. http://la.pm.org/

LA.pm august meeting: Wed Aug 25

Just a quick reminder: next los angeles perl mongers meeting is Wednesday, August 25

The september meeting will be on Sep 22.

la.pm.org

perl iron man posts missing

I've noticed my posts not making it into the iron man blog aggregator. I haven't been able to ascertain why they are being excluded. I've emailed the organizers and attempted to sign-up a second time. No dice.

Any ideas?

perldoc Completion in zsh

I just saw a link to a bash perldoc completion script: http://github.com/ap/perldoc-complete. I was confused by his need to write it and then realized that bash hadn't cribbed the awesome completion for perldoc that zsh has. I thought there was pretty good parity after bash improved their system to (nearly) match zsh, apparently I was incorrect.

Checking out the git source for zsh and running git status on _perldoc , I found that perldoc completion has existed since at least 2001, when it was moved from User/_perldoc to Unix/_perldoc. Roxor!

And people wonder why "I <3 Zsh!".

[agrangaard@willamette]% git status _perldoc
                                                           1 ~/src/zsh/Completion/Unix/Command
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
[agrangaard@willamette]% git log _perldoc                                                                                          0 ~/src/zsh/Completion/Unix/Command
commit 3d215fd53ed47cbec57283509b2b3c36165303dd
Author: Peter Stephenson 
Date:   Wed Aug 2 22:20:45 2006 +0000

    22579: find .pod files in include path for perldoc

commit 0ba8ae87eac21281e0b17eb9cbb523d133067a4a
Author: Oliver Kiddle 
Date:   Wed Jun 8 12:45:24 2005 +0000

    21315: make completion functions give precendence to descriptions passed as
    parameters and cleanup descriptons in calling functions

commit c3b929c6340834dacf7888a96ce505325c3a85af
Author: Oliver Kiddle 
Date:   Fri Feb 13 18:42:03 2004 +0000

    19418: update completions to new versions

commit 63b336243fdf5e60058472fa456ed11e75280189
Author: Oliver Kiddle 
Date:   Wed Jan 21 13:53:28 2004 +0000

    19387: add (-.) glob qualifier to globs where only files are directly applicable

commit 88fc3c951f3758acffcecc1e1016d23ca31a3560
Author: Sven Wischnowsky 
Date:   Mon Apr 2 12:00:14 2001 +0000

    moved from Completion/User/_perldoc

Everything in its place.

While trawling the Ironman perl aggregation[1], I found this lovely snippet linking to App::MisEnPlace [2].

It is an example of "using source control to manage a homedir" and serves as an example of an App::Cmd[3] application -- specifically MooseX::App::Cmd[4]. Tommy, this one is for you!

PS. It has a nice set of tests[5] as well!

Finishing my project/file/repository management tool.[2]
http://genehack.org/2010/08/stuff_im_working_on_august_2010/ [5]

Links:

1. http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org
2. http://github.com/genehack/App-MiseEnPlace
3. http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?App::Cmd
4. http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?MooseX::App::Cmd
5. http://genehack.org/2010/08/stuff_im_working_on_august_2010/
6. http://github.com/genehack/App-MiseEnPlace/tree/master/t

Iron Man Badges have returned!

Woohoo! Iron man badges have returned.

My badge listing page is listing all the images as the same. I'm in the system as both "First Last" and "FirstLast", I wonder which is up-to-date? I haven't seen my posts in the iron man stream for a while.

AndrewGrangaard:

Andrew Grangaard:

Sign up now for the Perl Iron Man blogging Challenge!

RJBC presentation on App::Cmd

Writing Modular Commandline Apps with App::Cmd

RJBS looked into writing command line apps and didn't find many options. (Just one?!). What happened to TMTWWTDOI? So he wrote App::Cmd. I've been looking at this for a few weeks and finally got a chance to dig into it today.

I'm happy to see that there is a ::Simple version for writing 'single command' commands, which seems a nice way to get started.

I hope to get my example app written and pushed to cpan soon.

App::cpanoutofdate for keeping local::lib cpan up-to-date

A new version of App::cpanoutdated was released yesterday which ads a new -l and -L option to the bundled binary,cpan-outdated. These flags work the same as -l and -L in cpanminus, pointing to a local::lib controlled directory.

--compare-changes shows the difff to the changes file between releases. That's awesome.

This code will update all of the out of date modules in /apps/perl5 which is a local::lib controlled directory on my system: cpan-outdated -l /apps/perl5 | xargs cpanm -l /apps/perl5

--compare-changes example

cpan-outdated --compare-changes| head -20
S/SA/SARTAK/Any-Moose-0.13.tar.gz
0a1,23
> 0.13  Wed 19 May 2010
>   * Add load_first_existing_class (gfx)
> 
> 0.12  Fri 02 Apr 2010
>   * t/000-version.t for better diagnostics (tokuhirom)
>   * Slight performance improvements for is_class_loaded,
>       lazily loading Carp, etc (Sartak)
>   * Start some real documentation (Sartak)
>   * Document $ENV{ANY_MOOSE} (Sartak)
>     - fixes [rt.cpan.org #52339]
>   * Test that Moose is loaded, not CMOP (Sartak)
>     - fixes [rt.cpan.org #56093]
>   * Alias class_of and more functions (Sartak)
>     - requested by [rt.cpan.org #52275]

Usage:

cpan-outdated --help                
Usage:
        # print list of outdated modules
        % cpan-outdated

        # verbose
        % cpan-outdated --verbose

        # output changes diff
        % cpan-outdated --compare-changes

        # alternate mirrors
        % cpan-outdated --mirror file:///home/user/minicpan/

        # additional module path
        % cpan-outdated -I extlib/

        # install with cpan
        % cpan-outdated | xargs cpan -i

        # install with cpanm
        % cpan-outdated | xargs cpanm

July LA.pm meeting recap

Los Angeles Perl Mongers meeting for July 28th, 2010.

We had two speakers, Troy Will and Guy Shaw. This was Troy's first visit to LA.pm. Thank you both for presenting. Guy was a last minute fill to cover when Aran took ill.

Troy talked about his weight tracking project Getfit, written in perl. He also talked about GNU Stow, a perl system for packaging.

Guy is talking about pe-cpp, a partial c-pre-processor evaluator for making simplified header files. pe-cpp produces "sliced" cpp header files and does partial evaluation of arithmetic expressions. It does not simplifiy data structures. This is a source-to-source transformation for c header files to create simpler c header files that have been compressed by collapsing the known options. Yacc/Bison style!

After a thorough analysis of the available projects in this space, he found he needed to write his own to work around the limitations of the other. Originally written to assist C+asm integration and uses Sun's CTF for definitions of offsets and the like. "It's less scary than looking into h2ph," says Guy.

A good question: what happened to preprocessors? They seem to have fallen out of fashion, one camp views preprocessors as needed "only to cover up bad language design." Perhaps with Common Lisp and pure functional languages getting a resurgence of interest we will see more use of source-to-source transforms of code like this.

Convert::Binary::C may be useful to a similar audience, if one wants to use C data structure definitions within perl.

Hadoop::Streaming module updated and awesome

Verison 0.101881 of my Hadoop::Streaming module is released on CPAN.

This is a bug fix release -- fixing bugs in my test suite! I had problems with errors from the smoke testers, even though it all "worked for me." To fix this I wrote my tests in a sane manner, so they weren't held together by "gravity and good luck." See Bug #59164 for the gory details. 

I'm happy and proud to report that version 0.101881 has 81 PASS and 0 FAIL results from cpants!

Now all I need is a well written tutorial on how to use it.

links

Bug #59164 for Hadoop-Streaming: Test failures on a variety of platforms

https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=59164

Hadoop::Streaming Module

Documentation

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Hadoop::Streaming

Module Overview:

http://search.cpan.org/search?q=Hadoop::Streaming

Test Reports:

http://www.cpantesters.org/show/Hadoop-Streaming.html#Hadoop-Streaming-0.101881

Open Bugs (0!):

https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Hadoop-Streaming

Git Repo:

http://github.com/spazm/hadoop-streaming-frontend

morning reading: Getopt::Long::Descriptive (GLD) and App::Cmd

"Getopt::Long::Descriptive - Getopt::Long, but simpler and more powerful"

given a descriptive getopt argument, returns a usage summary and an object containing set options.

I am a fan of this less is more approach of "simpler AND more powerful."

Getopt::Long::Descriptive

"App::Cmd - write command line apps with less suffering"

Simplify writing command line apps by breaking functionality into module(s) with a minimal runner script. Makes extending command line apps easy by adding additional sub-modules.

Uses Getopt::Long::Descriptive.

App::Cmd

Have you ever asked "why do I have to document my command line options twice? once in the usage command and once in the Getopt statement?" I know I was asking just last week at the Thousand Oaks Perl Mongers meeting. If you don't ask, is it because you consider your Getopt command documentation? We discussed and compared various Getopt alternatives: Getopt::Long, Getopt::Euclid, Getop::Clade, etc.

One interesting solution is Getopt::Euclid. Euclid parses specially formatted pod commands to create the Getopt configuration. This is an awesome idea, but leaves me with two problems: 1) There is an extra step to create this parsing setup, and that means I can't test the exact code that my user will see. 2) it employs a source filter which freaks me out. Perhaps the source filter has been upgraded to use one of the PPI parsing modules instead, that would be less scary than the black magic happening in source filters.

GetOpt::Long::Descriptive (GLD) is built on Getopt::Long and takes a more verbose/descriptive input format. It outputs a usage command and an object containing options and values. Unlike Euclid, it doesn't read or create perldoc/POD.

I think adding a podweaver+Getopt::Long::Descriptive plugin would be interesting. Creating a nicely documented POD section during the dzil build step of my Dist::Zilla based modules would be a big win. I just browsed the code for Getopt::Long::Descriptive::Usage, and it looks like adding a weaver transform would be possible, if I could figure out how to extract the usage code from the module during the build step. This may be easier to visualize once I start investigating App::Cmd.

Example
From the SYNOPSIS section:

use Getopt::Long::Descriptive;

my ($opt, $usage) = describe_options(
    'my-program %o ',
    [ 'server|s=s', "the server to connect to"                  ],
    [ 'port|p=i',   "the port to connect to", { default => 79 } ],
    [],
    [ 'verbose|v',  "print extra stuff"            ],
    [ 'help',       "print usage message and exit" ],
);
print($usage->text), exit if $opt->help;
Client->connect( $opt->server, $opt->port );
print "Connected!\n" if $opt->verbose;

...and running my-program --help will produce:

  my-program [-psv] [long options...] 
    -s --server     the server to connect to
    -p --port       the port to connect to
                  
    -v --verbose    print extra stuff
    --help          print usage message and exit

I'm quite fond of how s|server became -s --server, showing both the long and short form of the arguments.

Go play with these modules and let me know if you start using them. Many thanks to their Authors for sharing their work on CPAN. You guys rock. I'm going to start using these modules and will report back when I have a better feel for them. This will likely become a future topic for the Los Angeles Perl Mongers (LAPM).

Links:

Getopt::Long::Descriptive

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Getopt::Long::Descriptive

App::Cmd

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?App::Cmd

Getopt::Euclid

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Getopt::Euclid

Dist::Zilla

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Dist::Zilla

Pod::Weaver

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Pod::Weaver

PPI documentation

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?PPI

Los Angeles Perl Mongers

la.pm.org

Thousand Oaks Perl Mongers

http://thousand-oaks-perl.org

cpanminus with CPAN::mini?

At the July Thousand Oaks Perl Mongers [1] open-discussion meeting, we discussed both CPAN::Mini [2],[3] and App::cpanminus [4],[5]. They both work well individually, but can they be combined?

I did an example install of CPAN::Mini[2] for the meeting. This was a learning experience for me, as I'd only briefly heard of it before and this was my first install. CPAN::Mini makes a minimal private mirror of CPAN[6], of all the current release versions of all the CPAN modules! The idea is you keep this mirror up-to-date and anytime you need to install a module, you have it available. To keep the repository more manageable only the current version of each module is mirrored. Installation was super simple, the hardest being polling the room for a preferred CPAN mirror. We settled on ASK's develooper.com.
% cpan CPAN::Mini
% mkdir -p $HOME/mirrors/cpan
% minicpan -L $HOME/mirrors/cpan -R http://cpan.develooper.com/

Tommy then discussed his four favorite modules-of-the-moment for perl5 development and usage, one of which was App::cpanminus[4]. I'd heard of this previously, but hadn't gotten around to testing it. It installs a binary, cpanm[5], that is used to install modules. It tries to just do-the-right-thing, and install modules and keep the output to a minimum. I especially liked the flag to install to a local::lib maintained directory, which is useful in a sudo case where environment variables are annoying to pass.

I then tried to merge the two. First I installed App::cpanminus from my local CPAN::Mini mirror using cpan with the network unplugged. Success!

Then I tried to install a module with cpanm, and found that it was going to the network even though my repo was at a file:// url. Bummer!

I haven't gotten back to testing this, and a brief search found one comment from a user who reverts to cpan to use his CPAN::Mini mirror when he's away from the network. Does anyone have this working? Is it just part of the cpanminus magic that it looks online for the CPAN meta data?

My only reason to teach cpan.pm after that is to support CPAN::Mini and a local CPAN mirror. Thats the only reason I still use CPAN, I'm usually offline.
-- Pedro [7],[8]

Links

Thousand Oaks Perl Mongers

http://thousand-oaks-perl.org

CPAN::Mini

href=http://search.cpan.org/search?q=CPAN::Mini

cpanmini

href=http://search.cpan.org/search?q=minicpan

App::cpanminus

href=http://search.cpan.org/search?q=App::cpanminus

cpanm

href=http://search.cpan.org/search?q=cpanm

C.P.A.N. -- the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.

http://cpan.org

Pedro

http://www.simplicidade.org/

Modern perl comment

http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2010/04/should-novices-prefer-cpanminus.html#comment-362

ironman badges, I miss you

I miss my smiling ironman badge. It is a beautiful thing.

I know it's been months, but I still miss it. Am I the only one? It was so good at reminding me to write. And not just self referential ironman related posts.

mmm skyscraper I love you.
mmm skyscraper I love you.
mmm skyscraper I love you.
mmm skyscraper I love you.

thirty thousand feet above the earth. it's a beautiful thing.
and you're a beautiful thing.
thirty thousand feet above the earth. it's a beautiful thing.
everybody's a beautiful thing.

---- Underworld, Skyscraper, I love you

Lot's of exciting happenings of late. I have two la.pm mongers write-ups that are in the todo list. Last week I hit two events. Wednesday was thousand-oaks.pm last week for an open rap session. Last Tuesday was a great talk at The Hammer museum at UCLA on the question of what is current internet use doing to our brains, which left me rejuvenated and ready to spend some quality time focusing rather than skimming back and forth.

DavMail gateway provides LDAP and WebDav interface to MS Exchange

Goal: Get calendar and ldap-lookup working in thunderbird to my corporate hosted exchange service.

Status: WORKING!

Tools:

DavMail

DavMail provides a gateway from open protocols to MS Exchange

davmail.sf.net

Lightning

Thunderbird plugin for calendaring, built on sunbird

Current version requires Thunderbird 3.1.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/

Thunderbird

Email client.

Calendar Client (with Lightening installed)

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Exchange Server

My office uses an exchange server hosted by AppRiver's Shoreline system.

http://www.appriver.com/exchange

Installation

1. Install DavMail
   On my ubuntu system, I downloaded the deb from sourceforge and installed it manually with dpkg. I ran into a problem where I didn't have the proper swing libaries installed and the partially installed dpkg blocked the install of the swing libraries. In reality it was as simple as answering "Y" to "delete DavMail" and letting the swing install go through.
   
   1. #manually download deb from http://sourceforge.net/projects/davmail/files/
   2. sudo aptitude install sun-java-6 libswt-gtk-3.5-java
   3. sudo dpkg -i davmail_3.6.6-1032-1_all.deb
   
   The install integrated into the menu system, providing a menu entry to launch the app: Applications->Internet->DavMail.
2. Upgrade/Install Thunderbird 3.1
   3.1 is currently required for lightning. I installed via the ubuntuzilla repository. Caveat: only 32 bit builds are available. I installed via the ubuntu repository, as per the Instructions.
   
   1. Create a new sources file /etc/apt/sources.d/ubuntuzilla.list containing:
      deb http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt all main
   2. Then add the key, update and install:
      1. sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com C1289A29
      2. sudo apt-get update
      3. sudo apt-get install thunderbird-mozilla-build
3. Install Lightning into Thunderbird.
   This is most easily done directly through Thunderbird:
   1. Tools->Add-ons menu item.
   2. [Get Add-ons] button
   3. Type Lightning in the search box and press enter to search.
   4. push [Add to Thunderbird] button on the Lightning item.
   5. confirm install
   6. Restart Thunderbird

Configuration The devil is in the details. Getting the correct configuration from our hosted exchange server took quite a bit of trial and error. The email system predates the current company, so I have at least three logins:

My primary email address

username @ rubiconproject.com

This is the address used to send and receive mail.

Same account at a different domain (the founder's vanity domain).

username @ addante.com

This is the address used to authenticate with the pop/imap servers and to access Outlook WebMail.

my username with internally assigned id number attached. No domain.

username_12345

Used internally. Will be used in our ldap setup.

1. Launch and Configure DavMail
   1. Launch from menus Applications->Internet->DavMail, which launches to a gnome icone in by the clock.
   2. Open settings right-click DavMail icon->Settings...
   3. Set the OWA (Exchange) URL : https://exg3.exghost.com/Exchange
   4. Make note of the ports for CalDav (1080) and LDAP (1389), change if desired.
2. Configure calendar in Thunderbird-lightning
   1. File->New->Calendar...
   2. choose [*] On the Network and [Next]
   3. 1. choose [*] CalDav
      2. Location: http://localhost:1080/users/username@addante.com/calendar
      3. [Next]
   4. Configure the name, color and alarm settings as desired. Email should by your work email, aka username@rubiconproject. [Next]
   5. Provide login credentials, the same as if you were using the webmail tool, for for me that is the username@addante.com account.
3. Configure LDAP
   1. Thunderbird Edit->Preferences->Composition->Addressing
   2. [Edit Directories]
   3. [Add]
   4. Configuration settings. Base DN and Bind DN were tricky.
      • Name: proxy ldap
      • Hostname: localhost
      • BaseDN: ou=people
      • Port: 1389
      • Bind DN: username_12345
      • [OK]
   5. Test the connection:
      1. select proxy ldap and press Enter
      2. [Offline] tab
      3. [Download Now].
      4. enter username@addante.com as username and correct password in the authentication box.
      5. if the download completes and "Replication Succeeded" appears, all is working.

And there you have it, working exchange integration through open standards. Yay! It'll only take 15 minutes or so total to install now (after my hour putzing it around and 3 hours writing it up.)

I now have ldap lookup and caldav alerts functioning. I haven't delved that far into the system, but it's a big step up from my previous interaction lightning. I'll see what happens when I get my next meeting invite and attempt to reply via thunderbird.

Do you have CPAN::Reporter installed? Go do it!

Do you have CPAN::Reporter installed? Did you maybe not know what it is, what it does, and why it's the easiest way to help the perl+cpan community? CPAN::Reporter sends back test results every time you download a module from CPAN. This gives module authors something tangible to know that people are using their modules and to automatically report errors.

Now anyone with an up-to-date CPAN.pm can contribute to CPAN Testers -- no smoke server needed.
...
Becoming a CPAN Tester with CPAN::Reporter is easy. From the CPAN shell prompt:

cpan> install CPAN::Reporter
cpan> reload cpan
cpan> o conf init test_report
cpan> o conf commit

  --  http://use.perl.org/articles/06/11/08/1256207.shtml

My Hadoop::Streaming module has all sorts of crazy errors on esoteric platforms. I only know this because of automated smoke tests run by CPANTesters. It would be nice to have some reports from actual users mingled in with the automated runs.

In the latest release I pushed out over Independence Day weekend, I added monitoring on STDERR from my sub-command tests. Now I have some test results that capture error messages from external apps I try to run from my tests. At least now I have a chance of figuring them out... not sure I understand these error messages yet. Maybe they'll make more sense tomorrow. I'd like to make it so all my users see this output from cpan:

All tests successful.
Files=5, Tests=12, 2 wallclock secs ( 0.05 usr 0.00 sys + 2.04 cusr 0.20 csys = 2.29 CPU)
Result: PASS
(/usr/bin/make test exited with 0)
CPAN::Reporter: Test result is 'pass', All tests successful.
CPAN::Reporter: preparing a CPAN Testers report for Hadoop-Streaming-0.100270
CPAN::Reporter: sending test report with 'pass' to cpan-testers@perl.org

next LA.PM meeting: Wed Jun 30.

Hiya Mongers! See ya tomorrow, Wednesday June 30th for our next perl mongers meeting. All the details are at the la.pm.org website. Presentations are still "to be determined."

Please let me know if you are coming and if you'd like to present!

Tentative presentation ideas:

1. CPAN author tools: care and maintenance of your cpan module, the rt queue, cpants. Scenario: "my module works great for me but fails install tests on 90% of hosts, how to fix that." I wish that was completely hypothetical.
2. Perl hadoop streaming examples follow-up. I didn't get to show much code for Hadoop::Streaming::Mapper last time around. I'd like to show snippets of the code I'm working on now for $work (cleansed appropriately)
3. mega extreme prorgramming to the max. "Pairing" with a room full of coders (instead of just a pair) trying to code onto the main display. Expanding App::PM::Announce to our nefarious purposes

What:	Los Angeles Perl Mongers Meeting
When:	7-9pm
Date:	Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Where:	The Rubicon Project HQ - 1925 S. Bundy, 90025
Theme:	Perl!
RSVP:	Responses always appreciated.

Iron Man Challenge -- what happened to the status images?

Does anyone out there know the status of the "IronMan Status Images"? They disappeared when the code rewrite went out. I miss seeing mine, but I miss seeing them on random blogs even more.

I don't have the tuits to rewrite that part of the system, but maybe if I knew where the blog meta info was kept, or even if the old csv list is being updated with each blog's posts listed by date( unsorted ). Maybe I will be writing it afterall.