spb's blag

Regression testing IRC software

esspeebee — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 12:46:31 +0000

If there’s one theme in all IRC-related software that is most unfortunate, it’s the near-universal lack of any automated test suites. I’ve been guilty of this too, but it feels like time to start doing something about it.

There are a few factors that contribute to this, not least the fact that so much of the server software around is derived from ircd2.8, written in C, and not modular enough to unit test sensibly. That shouldn’t prevent end-to-end regression testing, though. I’ve started playing around with such a test harness for Atheme, but then started wondering whether it wouldn’t be possible to write a more generic regression harness for this type of network software.

Has anyone attempted this in the past? Know of any existing software that does it? I’m fairly language agnostic as long as it’s C, C++ or Perl.

Garlic prawn linguine, or What I Had For Dinner

esspeebee — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 21:08:48 +0000

Since I’ve been asked for the recipe to this thing I made for dinner:

Ingredients:

Prawns. Raw, peeled. I used seven.
Butter, around 60g for seven prawns
Garlic. Three cloves wasn’t enough for my liking; use your judgement on how much you want.
Flour.
White wine.
Parsley. A handful, or thereabouts.
Linguine.

Boil water for the pasta. Crush the garlic cloves and fry slowly in all the butter to infuse the flavour. There’s not really an upper time limit on this, as long as the garlic doesn’t start to burn.

While that’s happening, clean and butterfly the prawns.

Once you’re happy with the garlic butter, use it to fry the butterflied prawns. Around this time, put your pasta on to boil. Once the prawns are cooked, remove them and set aside.

Quickly set about making a roux with the butter in your frying pan. For these quantities, around 1tbsp of flour should be sufficient. Add white wine to make a thin sauce. I didn’t measure quantities here. Once it’s the right consistency, add the chopped parsley and season. Combine everything in a bowl and serve.

The above is for a smallish single serving. I can’t help much with exact quantities, mainly because I didn’t get it quite right myself — not enough garlic, too much flour. I’d try it again to refine it, but I find I’ve eaten all my prawns.

Obligatory photo:

Presentation isn’t my strong point, nor is food photography.

Paludis 0.32.4

esspeebee — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:05:28 +0000

Paludis 0.32.4 has been released.

DEFINED_PHASES can now be cached for 0-based EAPIs.
Tidy up documentation and completion functions after the removal of –checks and –debug-build.
Profile EAPI files are now supported for E repositories.
Fix bug where IUSE=”foo +foo -foo” would show three foos rather than one.

For those wondering…

esspeebee — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:37:42 +0000

…why I’ve been slacking even more than usual lately, this might explain something. Go and play around. Cookies for anyone who finds a bug.

Now what does this remind you of?

esspeebee — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:30:03 +0000

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/11/sabotage-manual-from.html

The Gentoo council, anyone?

On meetings, and missing them

esspeebee — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:26:05 +0000

I am somewhat at a loss to understand how, one week after a meeting, one of its participants can still be completely unaware of what was agreed at it. I know that when minutes of meetings I attend are published, I at least skim over them to make sure I haven’t missed or forgotten anything important.