Category Archives: Programming

Material related to computer programming.

Advice From An Old Programmer

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29

Just recently I read Zed Shaw’s Advice From An Old Programmer, and in it he says:

I’ve been programming for a very long time. So long that it’s incredibly boring to me.

That’s been in the back of my mind for a few days, and something I’ve been thinking about as I hope for people to join ProgClub. It seems to me that the longer you program the less you are interested in programming. But, it takes time to be a good programmer, so the better you get, the less interested you become. ProgClub wants first and foremost people who are *interested* in programming, and secondly it wants people who are *good* at programming. Though it doesn’t seem like there are going to be that many good programmers out there who are going to have the time or the interest for ProgClub. Which means that ProgClub’s best bet is probably to encourage participation from enthusiastic beginners.

WordPress hooks

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41

I wanted to configure the “From” email address that WordPress uses when emailing password resets. The way to do this is with a WordPress hook, specifically a filter hook in this case. So, in wp-config.php I added the following code:

add_filter( 'wp_mail_from', 'pcblog_mail_from' );
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from_name', 'pcblog_mail_from_name' );

function pcblog_mail_from() {
  return 'pcblog@progclub.org';
}
function pcblog_mail_from_name() {
  return 'ProgClub blog';
}

Subversion release script

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34

I wrote a script to manage project releases for ProgClub. Basically you pass the project name to the script, and it will create a release tag in tags/release/year/month/day/serial and update tags/latest with the latest release.

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" = "" ]; then
  echo "Expected project parameter.";
  exit 1;
fi
if [ "$2" = "" ]; then
  echo "Expected comment parameter.";
  exit 2;
fi
pcrepo="https://www.progclub.org/svn/pcrepo";
project="$1";
comment="$2";
echo Releasing $project;
svn info $pcrepo/$project 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
  echo $project does not exist.
  exit 3;
fi
year="`date --utc +%Y`";
month="`date --utc +%m`";
day="`date --utc +%d`";
serial="0";
serial_formatted="0";
svn_status="0";
while [ "$svn_status" = "0" ]; do
  serial="`echo \"$serial + 1\"|bc`";
  if [ "$serial" = "100" ]; then
    echo "Out of serial numbers. You can't do any more releases today. Take a break!";
    exit 4;
  fi
  less_than_ten="`echo \"$serial < 10\"|bc`";
  serial_formatted=$serial;
  if [ "$less_than_ten" = "1" ]; then
    serial_formatted="0$serial";
  fi
  url="$pcrepo/$project/tags/release/$year/$month/$day/$serial_formatted";
  echo Checking availability of release: $url
  svn info $url 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
  svn_status="$?";
done
trunk_url="$pcrepo/$project/trunk";
svn copy $trunk_url $url -m "Releasing $project: $year-$month-$day-$serial_formatted. $comment" --parents
latest_url="$pcrepo/$project/tags/latest";
svn delete $latest_url -m "Updating $project/tags/latest...";
svn copy $url $latest_url -m "Updating $project/tags/latest. $comment";

MediaWiki extensions repository

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27

I found the svn repository for MediaWiki extensions:

http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions

There are a lot of extensions in there. Not sure if adding it as an external on my own repository was a good idea or not. Let’s see how that goes.

At a glance I found a few interesting extensions. I bumped into them while searching for a NoTitle extension, which I couldn’t find. There was StalkerLog, which logs user logins/logouts; and WhoIsWatching, which displays who is watching particular pages.