evan.musing << current

So, I got fed up trying to get wordpress to behave nicely on my server, so I’ve moved my blog to wordpress.com, where they’ve got everything already setup nicely.

Let me know if anything isn’t working.

I’ve cut 0.8, another developer preview for people to play with.

It’s available at on rubin.us

Rubinius still very much still a work in progress, so there are a lot of rough corners you’re bound to experience.

A long overdue update about my big project rubinius.

Scheduling

The team is still moving along nicely, still aiming for a 1.0 release by RubyConf 2007. We’ve still got a ways to go, but I’m confident. A part of the team is getting together for a sprint in mid September. Other projects have used sprints to really pull away, productivity wise, and I’m hoping we can do the same.

Git

In the last few days, I decided to migrate the project off Subversion to Git, the DSCM. While I’m certain some will see this as a complete waste of time, I feel that it’s important for the project in the long term, and the developers in the short term.

Long Term

As many people are aware, the mainline ruby interpreter (MRI) suffers a lack of transparency. The perception (I can only speak for rubyists in the US, and perhaps a few in Europe) is that ruby-core team works at their own pace and doesn’t accept much input into the process, nor does it report on the process much.
Now, whether or not you agree with that assessment is not what I’m concerned about. It’s the long term perception and possibility that this same thing could happen to rubinius. So rather than wait and see, I’ve decided that the best way to avert this is to make it as easy as possible to contribute and progress rubinius. Again, some will argue that git was not required to reach this goal, and that is a valid argument. Part of it was just a irrational decision, I’ve been interested in git for a while and wanted to play with it more.

Short Term

Local branches, sane merging, a toolkit interface, oh my! I’ve already fell in love with the parts of git that svn lacks, which in my book, was a reason to switch anway. The tools are richer and more powerful. The code is cleaner. Nuff said.

Application Push

We’re currently in a phase of development I’ve been calling Application Push, which is just a fancy term for try to run shit. The existing body of ruby code is quite dense and provides an excellent proving ground to flesh out rubinius. The project has finally progressed enough that this level of proving can be done. Charles has talked about how this style of dev is what really pushed JRuby to 1.0, so we’re hoping to follow in those same footsteps.

Currently playing in iTunes: The Outernationalist by Thievery Corporation

It’s again been too long since the last update. If anyone has a good way to keep yourself disciplined on writing regular posts, please comment and let me know the secret.

I’m going to keep this one personal, then write another with tech stuff. Abby and I are adjusting to life in LA nicely. Lots of restaurants to explore as always, and our new favorite game: Spot the celebrity! I’m ahead in the standings due to an uncanny ability to pick up the subtle clues they give off.

Most recently, I spotted Jane Lynch (40 Year Old Virgin) at Urth Caffe with courtney. Abby has recently started to do well, spotting Cassidy Lehrman (Sarah Gold, Entourage) at the Santa Monica pier, and Ben McKenzie (Ryan Atwood, The OC) at Stardust last night.

Hopefully we don’t seem vapid and fame-obsessed, but this is LA, where this happens quite a bit. Think of it like a post-modern Slug Bug.

As always, Fog, our muse around the house, has provided much entertainment. Since I’ve begun working at home, we’ve started to get on a routine: Feed her, play a little, she sleeps for 4 hours, we play more, watch some TV, sleep a bit more, feed again, repeat. It’s tough being a Felis domesticus.

Update: I have evidence