As many of you know, WordPress depends upon a variety of software packages to do the things that it does, as a weblog product (and some of you have extended it even further…). Two of these things are foundational items: PHP, the language and operational runtime for WordPress, and MySQL, the persistence datastore that WordPress uses.

Both of these are being incremented upward to more current versions.

For many WordPress  administrators, this will not be a dramatic issue, other than confirming your settings with your site host; some may require some configuration switches being “flipped” to use PHP 5.2 and MySQL 5.0.15. There may even be some adjustments to your site’s php.ini file.

However, if you’re a big-time hacker, and you’ve been coding in some changes to the base WordPress package (and who doesn’t these days, right?), then you will need to ensure that your code has not been exploiting some of the PHP 4 quirks that have changed in PHP 5 syntax: you will have to rewrite or redesign those parts of your code. For some developers, this endeavor may not be trivial.

On the other hand, the MySQL upgrade is generally better tolerated, since a lot of PHP developers tend to use the provided MySQL connector API. Again, however, if you are one of those who enjoys spinning up your own, parallel data persistence API or are using another package in addition to the WordPress one, you will have to ascertain the LoE for modifying your code. Also, if you have crafted some stored procedures for your MySQL 4 instance(s), you may have to re-implant them into your waiting MySQL 5 instance(s) once they are ready. Code-wise, it should be a straightforward import for most developers.

N.B.

Further reading of interest:

• PHP
• MySQL (now owned by Oracle)
• WordPress

I’ve always wondered how some popular open source and GPL projects keep going. Many times, they seem to implode upon themselves, whether due to internal or external forces imposing their undue influences upon the work at hand. The good ones realize that they are imploding and take measures to stop it from happening… and sometimes, they manage to successfully execute an appropriate plan of action in time.

Here’s an interesting live example: WordPress.

Scenario: WordPress

Jane Wells posted yesterday about an anticipated change to how WordPress development will change to fit a model that should address their scope creep problems that have been hampering their releases, of late. She refers to project management as providing the answer for their woes with scope creep; yes, there’s additional verbiage in the post, but essentially, that is what she is primarily referring to. There is that additional component to the problem, in the form of release scheduling, which plays a part in the problem set.

At this point, some of you will be nodding sagely toward your display screens (LCD’s, iPhones, BlackBerry devices, et al.) and thinking, “Well, project management techniques would help manage what is going on, but… there’s something else in play that needs to be controlled, right?”

Management Perspective

Yes, sage thought (or thinking sagely, perhaps?), indeed.

While project management in general is a useful discipline or tool to have, even for small teams, especially those that conform to a matrixed (or “mixmaster”) configuration, it is not the magic bullet that many people think it is.

In essence, it is a way to react to chaos in the workplace by arbitrarily grouping workstreams into some semblance of order, based on a variety of criteria, like limited resource availability, priorities, scheduling conflicts, release dates, et al.

However:

What if trying to rope in the insanity of scope creep and meandering requirements are symptoms of a greater problem? Using reactive techniques to mitigate further damage to a production schedule is only an immediate-term fix.

Instead, determining a new way to manage requirements intake and development, and a new workflow cycle for controlling change and releases, would be much closer to a longer-term solution. Figuring out the most appropriate mechanism by which to introduce and control change (whether fixes, new features, extensions, etc.) and to align them with ongoing development and documentation is the basis for the transition toward a fully-realized workflow that integrates configuration management with project management. Of course, not an easy task (certainly, easier to simply state what seems to be needed for this scenario, as opposed to actually implementing it)… But a lot of the basic tools to build upon are already in-place or being used or available.

So, this will be an interesting live scenario to follow.

After several weeks, the long-awaited update to NetBeans 6.7, now with JavaFX support, is finally released to the general public.

As you may recall, it was our expert recommendation to NOT uninstall or replace your NetBeans 6.5/6.5.1 IDE if you are actively developing for the JavaFX platform, since it was not available as a feature in NetBeans 6.7. And since there are no significant issues with installing NetBeans 6.7 alongside an existing 6.5 or 6.5.1 installation, that was a usable pattern at the time.

With the release of NetBeans 6.7.1, you may choose to replace your previous installation of NetBeans 6.7 with this update. For those of you who are cautious or conservative in your dev rig upgrading processes, it is advised that you do not immediately remove NetBeans 6.5/6.5.1 from your dev rigs until after you have determined that NetBeans 6.7.1 provides you with a satisfactory level of JavaFX programming functionality comparable to what you currently enjoy with the previous version.

Here’s a fun news bit, on the cusp of the upcoming FCS release of NetBeans 6.7:

Just when you thought you’d heard everything about declarative programming on the NetBeans platform… there’s the “rise” of Scheme, as both a dev language supported on NetBeans technology and as an implementation of an alternative NetBeans-based IDE on its own.

LambdaBeans is the IDE in question (at 1.0 RC1 as of this writing), built specifically to support Scheme development in a NetBeans-like development context. Geertjan interviewed the intrepid developer who embarked on creating LambdaBeans; it seems surprising that fans of other languages have not created similar IDEs targeting their languages of choice. After all, NetBeans itself is the prime example of a decently sophisticated application built on the NetBeans Platform. So why not just use as much of the IDE source as possible, remove the extraneous code not applicable for your features, and then focus on adding language-specific highlighting and management?

Good times, folks… good times.

N.B.

Want to try LambdaBeans 1.0 RC1? Download it now from the Project Kenai site.

More than a year ago, we mentioned the TIOBE Index and how, despite being a popular scan of popular programming languages, is the creature of a commercial venture.

A few days ago, Tim Bunce discussed on his blog about how the TIOBE Index can be, and perhaps has been, gamed, primarily through having owners of various Web pages/sites crowdjamming their content with keywords that appear on the ‘index.

So, is it valid? Sure, if that’s what you’re tracking, of course.

Then again, the Internet has plenty of room for other techniques to track programming language popularity, so let’s keep ‘em coming!

Snip-snip-snip–

Snipt!

No, this shouldn’t be confused with SnipSnap…

Snipt is a new Web-based service that has a promising slogan: “long-term memory for coders”. The premise of the offering is to allow coders (developers, programmers, enthusiasts, etc.) to store their code snippets online and, presumably, to also share them with others.

Clearly, Snipt has entered into the sphere of influence that has traditionally been populated (and in some cases, dominated) by wikis, code repositories, code portals, code management software, knowledge base cores, and bulletin boards. It has the glamor of fun that Twitter has, but whether it will survive past its initial year of gee-whiz into its maturity phase as a stable work-horse product for the masses is anybody’s guess at this point.

Management Perspective

Snipt represents a curious touchpoint for IT and development managers and directors.

As code becomes more streamlined over time, it would be easy for a coder to place proprietary code or restrictive open source licensed code onto Snipt, which may be inadvertently or deliberately shared. Does this make Snipt a vulnerability that leading-edge tech firms cannot afford to be exposed to?

Also, should corporate developers be allowed to use content from Snipt? Should Snipt’s TOS be more strongly worded to prevent ambiguity? How does licensing enforcement work for large code blocks?

Hmm… Definitely something to consider. If your organization does not have a clear and concise policy of using external code and exposing corporate code to the public (like a vetting process or scrubbing automation, for instance), this is yet another reason to formulate one.

March 11, 2009 Clarification Update: To be clear, the “Snipt” referred to in this article is actually Snipt.net.

A Little Bit More to Tokbox: Free Video Calls, Anyone?:

A fellow reader had posted a comment earlier today about where to find sample Java code on Tokbox’s site for their product.

It appears that their original URL that was offered on their site no longer links to the sample code that they touted months back. It seems that the materials have been relocated/linked onto another page.

Hopefully this new URL will remain helpful for awhile.

“Shhh! It’s a secret! Don’t tell anybody that you can get Chrome now!”

If you’re not interested in source code, please go back to our article about Chrome availability.

If you’re a developer, however, you’re most likely going to want to visit Google’s [GOOG] Chromium code page. This is the open source project page for the Chrome Web browser. Like on many other Google open source projects, you may fetch a source tarball to get yourself started, as well as check on project progress and other niceties. They even tossed in a build tracker page for their CI server(s).

At this time, they’re focusing on the Windows builds, so if you’re like me, you’re going to have to dust off your Visual Studio 2005 and perhaps (again, like me) update it with the new APIs and SDKs. However, since a checklist (“Getting Started”) is provided, this should be a fairly straightforward procedure.

If you’re interested in Chromium, browse the project, including the developer and tester pages. You may be surprised or amused by some of the processes being espoused; you may want to adopt some of the practices in your own organization; or you may take the presented materials as a cautionary tale for your dev group. As usual, YMMV.

The Setup

When discussing the PlayStation 3 Ubuntu Linux construct, I mentioned Sony’s previous attempt at a hobbyist kit for the PlayStation 2.

This is the story of that kit.

The Premise

On May 22, 2002, a limited release of an “enthusiast” developer product was released that converted a PlayStation 2 (with the original shell, not the compressed smaller form factor) into a viable MIPS-based Linux host. This is the PlayStation 2 Linux Kit. While it was not a massive bestseller, it was a valuable niche product that gave a glimpse to thousands of people into how PS2 games are designed, as well as acting as a potential onramp for professional PS2 game development.

Unlike the do-it-yourself nature of the PS3 Linux setup, the PS2 Linux Kit was actually packaged and sold by Sony in limited quantities. It came with a Gentoo distro set, and it provided limited support for CRTs and LCDs. It also came with a hard disk that slotted into the hidden open drive bay in the original PS2 consoles via a proprietary plug interface; a USB keyboard; a USB mouse; an A/V cable; and a network adapter.

Although the release of the product caused a bit of excitement, it shortly became clear that the “enthusiast” aspect of the dev kit meant that there would be little additional product development for it: what-you-got-is-what-you-got. Nevertheless, although it seemed as if Sony as a company did not invest a lot of time or effort in supporting the dev kit, other than for warrantied issues, a developer community quickly arose around the dev kit. Even individual Sony developers got into the swing of things at times.

While the PS2 Linux Kit has seemingly been marginalized even further with the advent of the PS3 and the dramatic change in the latest PS2 consoles (thereby preventing the use of the dev kit), there are still sites devoted to providing useful information and code for it, so there’s still some longevity left for it.

The Action

… And here’s a few of those sites:

• Linux for PlayStation 2 Community : This is the main congregating point for many of the dev kit users and developers, so it’s definitely worth visiting.
  • Coding for the PS2
• Dr. Henry S. Fortuna’s PS2 dev page

More Reading

A Little Bit:

Tokbox‘s premise is a Web-based free video calling service. It was highlighted earlier today on CNBC, and it is being funded by one of the YouTube founders. In addition to providing a consumer-facing interface (so you can vidcall your buddies, and even me, if you’re so inclined), the Tokbox site also provides information about their exposed API, including some code samples and docs. And yes, somebody was kind enough to contribute a Java code sample for the API.