Choosing Java Versions on Mac OS X

While debugging another manifestation of the "wrong library for groovy webtest" bug recently, I found an email thread that makes reference the java_home command (sadly, I can't find an online manual page to link to) to cleanly select a specific version of the JVM under OS X. Here I thought manually pawing through /System/Library/Frameworks to look for versions to set JAVA_HOME to was the "right" way to do it. Learn something new every day.

enjoy,
Charles.

Does OpenOffice Base suck?

Is it just me, or does OpenOffice Base (the database tool in their suite) suck? Or maybe it just sucks on the Mac? Honestly, I'm not throwing bombs just to be a tool. If I'm doing something wrong, please tell me.

For some time I've been looking for a database tool along the lines of Access, but which runs on the Mac and possibly other platforms. It's not that I'm a big Access fan - I've only used it a time or two, but every now and then, I have a task that cries out to be implemented with a database. Creating a desktop application from scratch using something like Swing and JavaDB/Derby seems like overkill (not too mention, way too much work), but I've always thought that there should be a database tool that's based on Java (cross-platform) and some open-source database (e.g., Derby or SQLite).

On paper, Base is just that tool. I heard somewhere that it's written in Java, and I know that it uses HSQLDB, but can use any JDBC database. Looking through the interface it's got tables, forms, and reports. And OpenOffice runs on Macs, Windows, and Linux. Sounds perfect.

Here's just a short list of the issues I've had:

• The first time I ran it, it crashed before I'd even defined any tables. D'oh!
  
• Once, the UI locked up (no visible updates but the mouse still worked) while I was trying to add a List Box. I kept trying until it crashed. When it came back, I had a zillion List Boxes in the spot where I was adding them.
• After removing the List Boxes, it crashed again. After restarting, the recovery process restored all those list boxes. I removed them all again, it crashed again, and they were all restored again.
• Eventually, I removed the List Boxes, saved and quit. After restarting, the boxes were finally gone. This marked a new work pattern - save and quit every ~5 minutes. Sometimes, saving alone wasn't enough to prevent work from being lost.
• The replace form control function crashed consistently enough for me to realize it doesn't work. This is a shame because the form wizard creates text boxes by default, which need to be converted. I had to add new controls, wire them up, remove the original text box, and move the new control into place - all while saving frequently.
• It took me forever to get a List Box that wasn't tied to a database table or query - e.g., Gender can only be Male or Female (or Gelded on our farm). To do that, you have to turn off wizard mode.
• There are various UI boogers on the Mac - e.g., list boxes are sometimes not quite tall enough so the text in the box is chopped when the list is not dropped down.
• The documentation that I could find was minimal, at best. I realize that's a common complaint about open-source projects, but for something as big as OpenOffice, I expected more.
  

Anyway, it's so unusable, I don't think I can use it for my own personal purposes, let alone recommend it to clients. Quite a shame. I'm thinking to checking out FileMaker. It runs on both PCs and Macs, and it has a free 30 day trial.


Charles.

Increasing Memory for Ant

I had an issue today with the javac Ant task running out of memory when compiling a project (~800 files) under Java 6 on the Mac. It was fine under the default Java 5 compiler on the Mac, and it was fine under Java 6 on the PC. Initially, I set memoryMaximumSize on the javac task, which also required that fork be set.
This was OK, but since this was specific to compiling on the Mac, I figured the solution should be specific to my environment on the Mac. After looking at the source of the ant script, I realized that the ANT_OPTS variable could be set to contain an option (-Xmx512m) for the JRE running Ant, and that ANT_OPTS could be set from either ~/.antrc or ~/.ant/ant.conf. So, I created ~/.antrc with one line: ANT_OPTS=-DXmx512m.
(Update: oops, that should be ANT_OPTS=-Xmx512m)
And it worked perfectly, of course - so simple it had to work.

enjoy,
Charles.

Universal???

Apple has released Java6 for the Mac, which I have been eagerly awaiting. However, their download page is a bit contradictory:


This is limited to 64-bit Intel macs (which is fine with me), but yet they still call it Universal. What's Universal about that? The only way I could imagine it being less universal is if it they specified a number of cores or CPU speed.

Anyway, Java6 is good stuff for those of us on Universal Core2 Duo iMacs.


Charles.

Netbeans is a memory hog?

I was looking at Activity Monitor on my iMac, and I couldn't read the size entry for the Netbeans process that was running. So, I selected it and got a detail report:



I knew that Java and Netbeans could be memory hogs, but 16 million TB (16 exabytes) is a bit much. Good thing I have virtual memory! (I didn't alter the image, but clearly it's a bug with Activity Monitor and/or OS X 10.5.2.)


Charles.

Remove Office on Mac sux

The Remove Office program that comes with the trial version of Microsoft Office just sucks. The two times I've used it, it's failed. The first time, I had my old iMac connected via Firewire (target disk mode) to my new iMac. I ran Remove Office on the new iMac to remove the trial version, and it removed the non-trial version on my old iMac - without even asking me which version to remove. Now, on my new MacBook, I tried running Remove Office (without any other computers connected), and it couldn't find the trial version to remove - never mind the fact that I was running Remove Office from the folder containing Office.

My advice to anyone is to just use 'rm -r' from the Terminal window. If you just drag it to the trash (without emptying the trash), the trail version will keep launching.

enjoy,
Charles.

Subersion on the Mac

If you've ever used Subversion (SVN) on Windows, chances are you've used TortiseSVN. (If you haven't, definitely check it out.) It works as an extension to Windows Explorer. What this means, is that you don't have a separate UI for SVN - you do everything in Explorer. I was really struck by how cool this was when I was working on an old project using an old version of Perforce; it seemed barbaric to have to keep switching between the SCM UI and Explorer.

Until recently, there wasn't anything like that for the Mac, at least not anything that was free/open source and that I knew about. Then, along comes SCPlugin. From the web page: "The goal of the SCPlugin project is to integrate Subversion into the Mac OS X Finder. The inspiration for this project came from the TortoiseSVN project."

As of this writing, it's at version 0.7, which means it has a few rough spots, but for the light use I've put it to so far, it's been mostly pretty good. And since it's 0.7, it has nowhere to go but up.

enjoy,
Charles.

Getting Maxtor OneTouch III to work on MacTel

I recently bought a Maxtor (or is it Seagate?) OneTouch III external hard drive. It's a pretty sweet drive, maybe a bit big and noisy, but perfect for my needs - backing up my systems. One really nice thing is that it's totally Mac-centric: it ships preformatted with HFS+, it supports Firewire 400 and 800 (nice with the new iMac), and it includes Retrospect Express backup software, which originated on the Mac, as I recall.

It include a button on the front that you can program to do various things, the most obvious being to initiate a backup. But it didn't work; I'd push the button and nothing would happen. After poking around, I found this update for Intel Macs. After installing it (and rebooting), it works like a charm.

enjoy,
Charles.

What's in an OS X Package (.pkg) file?

I recently had occasion to figure out how packages work on OS X. This isn't an extensive treatise on the subject, and I didn't bother to look for any docs. This is just some poking around I did in the Finder and mostly in Terminal.

The original motivation was that I wanted to uninstall a package that I'd installed. The package file is Subversion-1.4.4.pkg. The first thing I learned is that packages are another case where a directory (aka folder) shows up as a single file in the Finder. You can see the contents in the Finder by control-clicking on the package file and selecting Show Package Contents. The Finder opens up a new window (just like any other folder).

All I see in my package is a folder called Contents. Within that folder, is a file called Archive.pax.gz, which is a compressed pax archive. Pax is an archive program like tar and cpio. (Actually, it's an experiment on genetic engineering - in order to "solve" the tar vs. cpio wars, they merged the two and called it pax, Latin for peace.) The pax archive was subsequently compressed with gzip - hence the gz extension.

Too see what's in the archive, we need to decompress it and get pax to print a listing of the contents. I did this as follows, although there are other ways to skin this cat:

cd /tmp
gzip -d < Subversion-1.4.4.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz | pax -v

(Pax contains an option to do decompression, but I'm too old fashion.) Note that I redirect the compressed archive into gzip. I did this because I wanted to leave the archive compressed. I could have decompressed the archive and then ran pax on that, but I wanted to leave the entire package unharmed. The first bit of the output looks like:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1664424 Jun 22 23:57 ./usr/local/bin/svnadmin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1571744 Jun 22 23:57 ./usr/local/bin/svndumpfilter
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1664612 Jun 22 23:57 ./usr/local/bin/svnlook

So, we can see that these are the files that got installed (in /usr/local). One nice thing to note is that the path names are all relative - they begin with "./" rather than just "/". This means the files can be installed anywhere - change into a directory, extract the archive, and the files will show up in a directory called usr/local below your current directory.

How can I use all of this to uninstall these files? Again, there are many ways to skin the cat, but here's what I did. I extracted the archive to /tmp. ("I thought you wanted to remove the files. Why are you extracting them again?" Patience, my friend.)

cd /tmp
gzip -d < Subversion-1.4.4.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz | pax -r

This creates all of the files, but under /tmp - e.g., /tmp/usr/local/bin/svnadmin. I can now use find to get me a list of just the files:

find usr -type f -print > /tmp/fff

I then looked through the file names in /tmp/fff, and they made sense, so I removed them all.

sudo rm -i `cat /tmp/fff`

The sudo command was needed because the files were not owned by my user ID. The package installer asked for the administrator password and installed the files owned by root (as I recall). Of course, I could have avoiding "installing" the files in /tmp by running the output of pax -v through some awk or perl, but the archive was small, and I knew the options to find off the top of my head - I would have had to look up some awk or perl, since I don't use them that often any more.

enjoy,
Charles.

P.S. This post almost never was: Blogger mangled the fonts repeatedly, and I almost gave up on it. Stupid JavaScript HTML editors!

New iMac

Even though I was wishing for a Core2 Mini, when it was (finally) released (somewhat silently), I opted instead for one of the new iMacs, and I'm loving it.

My original plan was to get a Mini and use a KVM along with the PC boat-anchor that I keep around for a client. However, after using a KVM for a while with other PCs, I realized that KVMs can be kinda hokey. For example, my KVM makes a keyboard look generic - i.e., it hides any special keys. Also, although I have a cool 22" Viewsonic LCD, it's not as nice as an Apple display.

I opted for the 20" 2.4Ghz model with the stock 1GB of memory. I was very pleased to see how easy it will be to upgrade the memory when I get a few extra dollars. The 24" was pretty tempting (the price is quite reasonable), but I figured if I ever need a larger display, I can use the external video connected to my (somewhat inferior) Viewsonic for a ~40" display experience.

The CPU is hella fast, although I admit I'm comparing it to an 800 Mhz G4 iMac which was significantly taxes (~20% CPU) running Firefox and Gmail. To date, the only time I'm maxed out the two cores was converting audio files into MP3 with iTunes. My Internet is still only 128K ISDN, which makes for slow Gmail, but Steve Jobs can't be expected to fix that.

The new, thin keyboard is something that cannot be appreciated in a store standing over it. You have to sit in front of it with a real chair in a real working position to appreciate the nice ergonomics. My one gripe is that my thumb drive is too fat to fit in the USB sockets.

And finally, the Apple educational discount and promotions were sweet. After the rebates, I'll have a free Nano and printer, both of which I gave to the wife - score!

Anyway, Joe Bob says, 5 stars (on a scale of 4) - check it out!

enjoy,
Charles

Core2 Mac Mini

There has been a fair amount of speculation about when/if Apple will release a version of the Mac Mini using the Core 2 Duo processor. For example:

Apple hints at Core 2 Duo Mac mini?

How Soon Will the Mac mini Go Core2?

Personally, I'm dying to see a Core2 Mini. At the moment, I'm stuck with a 800 Mhz G4 iMac that just doesn't cut it any more, but I can't afford a 20" Core2 Duo iMac.

For the sake of argument, why would Apple not update the Mini to the Core2? Part of that depends where Apple really sees the Mini. When the (G4) Mini first came out, one of the pitches was for PC developers to use it in addition to a PC via a KVM switch. In this scenario, it made sense for Apple to make it beefy.

When the first Intel Macs came out, the Mini had a Core processor (I'll call the Core processor the "Core1" just to be extra clear) just like the other Macs, in particular the iMac. They wanted the Core archiecture, but there weren't many of those processors, so the Mini and the iMac were pretty similar. Then the Core2 came out and Apple bumped the iMac to a Core2 but left the Mini at a Core1.

I take this to indicate that Apple is trying to create some diversity in the product line - i.e., the need to differentiate the Mini from the iMac. Thus, they need to keep the Mini crippled, and they're no longer pitching the Mini as a developer machine. This is (unfortunately) like the IBM PC Jr back in the day. Now, they have bumped both Mini models to a Core1 Duo, but it's still a Core1 not a Core2 - i.e., still crippled.

The other possible motive (for Apple) of keeping the Mini at Core1 is profit margin. When the Core2 came out, Intel slashed the price of the Core1, but Apple has not dropped the price of the Mini. If Apple had a big stock of Core1 processors (especially Core1 Duos) when the Core2 came out (not likely given how shrewd Apple often is), this gives them a way to flush their Core1 inventory. More likely, Apple is just making bank on the reduced cost of the inputs.

So, I can see a few reasons why Apple may not bump the Mini to a Core2 very soon. I hope I'm wrong it because I'd really like a Core2 Mini. The MacWorld release timeframe that is being rumored would fit my budget very nicely.

enjoy,
Charles.

Flex: Debug Flash Player on OS X

As noted in "Building and Deploying Flex2 Applications" (Live Docs), the output of trace statements can be configured in the standalone debug version of the Flash player. The documentation describes the location of the mm.cfg file on Mac OS X using Mac-style (non-Unix) path notation with colons to separate directories.

I set up a config file, but for the life of me, I couldn't find the output file. Then, I found an old, pre-Flex2 blog post by Christian Cantrell which fills in two missing parts of the documentation. First of all, if no TraceOutputFileName directive is given, the trace output will go to flashlog.txt in the same directory as the config file - fair enough. Once I removed the directive, I found the output file.

Also, if a path name is given, the path must be specified in the old Mac-style notation (with colons) rather than Unix-style (with slashes). I suppose that's why they specified the location of the config file in that notation, but the significance of the colons was lost on me. One totally trivial tidbit correctly noted in Christian's blog post is that the directory name is "Macromedia" not "macromedia", as indicated by the docs. (Since the Mac's HFS+ file system is basically case insensitive, it doesn't really matter.)

Once I figured that stuff out, I could get my trace output and get on to fixing my bugs.

I do have (at least) one gripe with the debug Flash player on the Mac compared to the PC - it doesn't keep a history of recent URLs. So, every time you go to open an URL, you have to type it in again (or paste it from a browser, which does keep history.) Even if you keep the player running, it still doesn't remember the last URL it opened.

Enjoy,
Charles.