Month: December 2008

OS X

SVN on OS X – /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin

I recently installed the openCollabNet OS X Universal binary for SVN 1.5.4 from Tigris and found something odd. I had installed the openCollabNet binary for 1.4.4 a while back, and don’t recall changing any install paths, but apparently something changed. After installing I ran svn –version and saw something that I shouldn’t have seen:

svn, version 1.4.4 (r25188)
compiled Sep 23 2007, 22:32:34

Copyright (C) 2000-2006 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

Strange, I should have seen the new 1.5.4 there. So I did a bit of digging. Everything I saw about the openCollabNet binary said it installed in /usr/local/bin, but when I ran which svn I saw /usr/bin/svn. So I looked in /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin. Sure enough, two installs in two different places. Not being one to do anything rash (like deleting svn from /usr/bin and then changing the path on all my tools that rely on it) I decided the best thing to do was fix it in a way that was reversible. So, I fired off a sudo ls (to get my password in scope in the shell) and then a simple

for i in `ls /usr/bin/svn*`; do mv /usr/bin/$i /usr/bin/$i.old && ln -sf /usr/local/bin/$i /usr/bin/$i; done

Once I had fired off that command another call to svn –version revealed the fix:

svn, version 1.5.4 (r33841)
compiled Oct 27 2008, 11:19:10

Copyright (C) 2000-2008 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

I am still a little confused as to how 1.4.4 ended up in /usr/bin while 1.5.4 went to /usr/local/bin (where it is expected to go from the openCollabNet binary installer). I wondered, did I change the install path at some point in the install? Somehow I doubt it, as that is not a change I would be likely to make. Just another little mystery for the unsolved cases file.

Job Hunting

Code samples!?

Due to a RIF I find myself back in the job hunting game. And I just had an awful realization: I have no recent code samples for those who ask. At least none that are complete, professional quality, and not property of my (soon to be ex) employer. I have a few unfinished projects laying around, as well as some quick and dirty snippets for one-off tasks, but nothing like any serious code. I’m not sure how I will deal with this, but I had better think of something soon!

WordPress

WordPress 2.7 SVN headaches

When upgrading my blog to WordPress 2.7 using my favorite method (svn sw) I ran into the same problem plenty others were seeing from standard ftp upgrades. Namely: Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wp_remote_request() in /... path to blog .../blog/wp-includes/update.php on line 58. (See more about it here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/224102?replies=36) I tried all sorts of craziness, including deleting everything but my uploads, my images and my custom theme, and then doing an svn up. Still no good. So finally, I got desparate. I did a fresh svn checkout of the 2.7 tag, copied my config, themes, uploads, images and plugins from the old version over, and all was good.

You can imagine, I am sure, that I was not really happy about the thought of going through the whole ordeal again for my wife’s blog. As fate would have it, svn sw worked like a charm on hers. Go figure.

Gentoo

Gentoo emerge error: Can’t locate Module/Build.pm

When trying to do my regular emerge today I ran into minor snag. When emerge tried to build dev-perl/IO-Socket-INET6-2.56 emerge failed with the following error:

Can't locate Module/Build.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/i686-linux /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i686-linux /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i686-linux /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at Build.PL line 3.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at Build.PL line 3.

I did some searching and didn’t come across anything directly related to IO-Socket-INET6, but I did see references to other Perl libraries failing to build with the same error, and remark in one of the threads that the only work-around was to emerge the Perl Build module. So, I did an emerge Module-Build and followed it up with my usual emerge -auvD world and IO-Socket-INET6 built just fine.

It seems that there may be a few Perl libraries in Portage that are relying on the Build module but aren’t adding it as a requirement in their ebuild. If you have lots of Perl libraries installed that you manage via Portage you may want to save yourself some hassle and emerge Module-Build now.