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technology
Improving deployment of WSRP-related artifacts in GateIn
Mar 9th
As you may know, I am working on WSRP for GateIn. One problem I faced until today in my daily development was that deploying a new version of the WSRP module for testing required re-building GateIn completely, which takes quite a bit of time and has the side effect of also destroying any persisted data. This, in turn, resulted in even more wasted time spent on configuring GateIn so that I could perform my tests (configuring consumers, adding remote portlets to pages, etc).
I decided that I could make that process faster by just replacing the WSRP in an already built More >
GateIn 3.0 CR1 released!
Feb 18th
Where have I been? Well, mostly working towards releasing GateIn (we just released CR1, by the way, go grab it, put it through the motions and let us know if you find any issues).
We had a nice face to face meeting in Charmey, Switzerland with some of the eXo guys. It was nice to see my co-workers and meet new ones. Lots of good discussions. We even found a way to fit in some fun, which is always good to bind teams. Oh, and we did, of course, get to eat various melted cheese dishes and you can’t really go wrong More >
GateIn 3.0.0 Beta 2 released!
Oct 21st
As some of you may know, JBoss and eXo have decided to merge their portal efforts in an attempt to create the best open-source portal framework out there. This new, best-of-breed portal project is called GateIn.
Integrating both code bases has taken (and still does) a lot of effort from both teams. This has translated in some long hours and little sleep but we’ve just released a new beta version for you to try and enjoy! Apart from lots of improvements and fixes, the big news is, of course, that we now provide the complete source code! Read more about it More >
Beware of File.createTempFile
Sep 4th
By default, File.createTempFile (in Java, of course) creates a temporary file in the directory identified by the system property java.io.tmpdir. The problem is that on OS X, that directory can be quite weird. For example, on my system, it currently is:
scala> System.getProperties().getProperty("java.io.tmpdir")
res0: java.lang.String = /var/folders/ya/yaNATrKPGFu2HuSOWxSIu++++TI/-Tmp-/
Notice the ++++ in one of the directory names? Well, these little characters can later cause headaches! The reason, you ask? Simple, if that temporary file name is ever used in a URL, then those plus signs will be interpreted as spaces and whatever code is using a URL to find your temporary file will not More >
Code reminder: using an isolated local Maven repository
Aug 11th
I can never remember the command line option to use an isolated local Maven repository for a given Maven run (so that, for example, you can make sure that your dependencies are properly defined and you don’t run into conflicts due to a shared repository) and couldn’t find it again quickly enough via Google so I thought I’d post it here, as a reminder:
mvn -Dmaven.repo.local=/foo/bar
First Adium / Twitter integration thoughts in 1.4 beta 1
May 19th
It’s quite funny to see that, as I finally got some time to finish my first post on Twitter OS X desktop clients yesterday, a new one appeared the same day in the shape of Twitter support in Adium 1.4 beta 1. Well, to be fair, there already was support for Twitter in Adium but it wasn’t as widely available as a public beta. Here are some thoughts about Adium as a Twitter desktop client for OS X that I gathered as I used Adium exclusively for Twitter access yesterday.
First impressionFirst, there are some details on how this would work More >
OS X desktop Twitter clients: Twitterrific and beyond!
May 18th
I’ve had a Twitter account at the beginning of 2007 but it took me a while to really start using it. For one thing, I admit that I failed to see its potential then. Of course, it didn’t help that I didn’t know anyone with a Twitter account, thus not helping building interest… Any social application has to reach a critical mass, via positive feedback, where each new subscriber makes the whole network more valuable. I eventually got around to use it more intensively, as I started discovering usefulness to it and building a network. I do think though that the biggest More >
JBoss Portal 2.7.2 is released!
Mar 13th
It’s been a couple of really busy weeks at work as we have been ironing out the last couple of issues that we wanted to solve before unleashing JBoss Portal 2.7.2 unto the world! It’s finally done and 2.6.8 should follow suite soon. I can now re-gather my thoughts and energy towards 2.8 and beyond! Read more about the release from our fearless leader on the official JBoss Portal blog.
Java 5 pitfall
Nov 14th
Java 5 has some nice improvements over Java 1.4 that really make writing code simpler… Then again sometimes simpler also means dangerous. Case in point, Java 5 auto-boxing. Consider the following method:
public Boolean isValid()
{
// if we don't have any data, we cannot decide so we return null,
// which is why we're using Boolean instead of boolean
if(data == null)
{
return null;
}
else
{
// data.isValid() returns a Boolean
return data.isValid();
}
}
As you can see, we are using Boolean as a return type to provide a ternary result instead of a simple true/false decision: sometimes, More >
Kaneda’s bike?
Nov 13th
It was the end of the 80’s and as a dorky teenager, I was fascinated by Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, and in particular, its main character’s bike. This childhood’s dream of a bike seems eerily close today with the EV-X7 prototype electric bike. Looks like I won’t have to wait until 2019 after all!

