Illumos: An OpenSolaris Replacement, or Vaporware

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OpenSolaris Logo

The end of the OpenSolaris project was cold blooded, and rather uneventful. Is that because we saw it coming, or has the relevance of OpenSolaris questionable?

There is no doubt that OpenSolaris was the barometer of where Solaris should be heading in an open source world. It included an incredible tool set, and an opportunity to contribute to a great project. The unceremonious end at the hands of Oracle is a brutal barometer to its intentions with regards to open source. This has nothing to do with its current legal battles with Google which is by no means innocent in those legal proceedings.

It was announced in SD Times, and in the Twitter space that Illumos was going to take up the banner for the OpenSolaris cause. As of today, there are no binaries, or code. I am not sure if the legal proceedings have killed the project, or seriously given the project owners a case of heartburn.

The last news is that it will support Mono. This news is least bit interesting to me, and actually I think I caught a chunk in my throat.

I like the idea of continuing the open source development of OpenSolaris, but I am wondering if it is going to fall under the veil of a legal clouds, or a Chinese puzzle box of legal quagmires. Let us not forget that Mono is a bulls-eye for Microsoft.

What are your thoughts?

Signed,

The disaffected, and disillusioned OpenSolaris advocate.

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JRuby and Rails 3

Rails 3.0 has been released. I know a number of you are excited about all of the possibilities. Along with the release of Rails is a new point release of JRuby.  So the big question is how do you use them together.

The default Rails environment uses SQLite as the database. Let me show you how to get started.

Riding on JRuby on Rails

1. Start by downloading JRuby, and install it.
2. Once it is installed you will want to install jruby-openssl.
   jruby -S gem install jruby-openssl
   
3. Next lets install the SQLite database gems.
   jruby -S gem install jdbc-sqlite3 activerecord-jdbc-adapter \
activerecord-jdbcsqlite3-adapter
   
4. Once we have installed the gems for SQLite, we can install Rails.
   jruby -S gem install rails mongrel warbler
   
5. Now that Rails is installed, we can create our example application. This will create our application.
   jruby -S rails new blog
   
6. Next we replace the following line in the Gemfile
   
gem 'sqlite3-ruby', :require => 'sqlite3'

   with the following:
   
if defined?(JRUBY_VERSION)
gem 'jdbc-sqlite3'
gem 'activerecord-jdbc-adapter'
gem 'activerecord-jdbcsqlite3-adapter'
gem 'jruby-openssl'
gem 'jruby-rack'
gem 'warbler'
else
gem 'sqlite3-ruby', :require => 'sqlite3'
end

   This allows us to run the application in JRuby, or Ruby.
   
7. Next we need to modify the config/database.yml file.
   
# SQLite version 3.x
# gem install sqlite3-ruby (not necessary on OS X Leopard)
development:
adapter: jdbcsqlite3
database: db/development.sqlite3
pool: 5
timeout: 5000

# Warning: The database defined as "test" will be erased and
# re-generated from your development database when you run "rake".
# Do not set this db to the same as development or production.
test:
adapter: jdbcsqlite3
database: db/test.sqlite3
pool: 5
timeout: 5000

production:
adapter: jdbcsqlite3
database: db/production.sqlite3
pool: 5
timeout: 5000

   
8. Next we need to migrate the database.
   jruby -S rake db:migrate
   
9. Finally we can start our new Rails 3 application.
   jruby -S rails server
   

That's it. You are riding on Rails in 9 steps.

References:

• JRuby:Wiki:GettingStarted
• JRuby and SQLite3 Living Together
• Deploy a Rails 3, Sqlite3 application in Tomcat using JRuby
  

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Programming with Reason...

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First Graphical User Interface

I just read an article in Dr. Dobb's entitled Programming with Reason: 1. The article does not cover any new ground. I have read these programming mantras before. However, it is often mentioned that the more you see something, you are more likely to remember it; marketing.

Anyway, the general programming rules are:

1. Simplicity: design programs to do exactly what they need to do and no more.
2. Elegance: simple programs which do what they need to do an do no more are elegant. This can be achieved by abstraction, and encapsulation.
3. Graphical User Interfaces (GUI): a simple elegant program must have the same aspects in its interface. The author, and I have both admittedly created a "quick" mock-up for an interface only to have it become the final one. The eyes are the path to the soul, and your GUI is the path to your program. Don't create a bloodshot allergenic interface unless you want to hurt your users eyes.

Again, nothing new here, but something worth reminding all of us to take into consideration everyday.