The software install cascade

When it comes to running development software, I always fall victim to the time-consuming, software install cascade effect. It begins innocently. You download a software package then realize it depends on another, which depends on another and so on down the line. The software trip I took this morning was a textbook example of the cascade in action. It began with downloading and installing ColdFusion 9 then…

  • upgrading to MySQL 5 (my Mac had an ancient 4.0 version since I’ve fallen for SQLite and haven’t used MySQL in a long, long time.)
  • installing MySQL Workbench since the DB tool I had been using wouldn’t work with MySQL 5.x.
  • installing ColdFusion on Wheels.
  • making changes to my bash_profile to set the correct $PATH since I mucked it up weeks ago configuring Ruby Version Manager (RVM.)
  • updating RVM to 1.2.8 (this had nothing to do with getting ColdFusion running but while I’m at the command line, might as well fix it.)

All set. I can start coding!

Not so fast. BBEdit and TextMate, my text editors of choice, don’t recognize CFML (no syntax coloring, text completion, etc.) So I next,

  • fail to locate a bundle or extension that makes either editor CFML-aware*.
  • install Eclipse instead.
  • configure CFEclipse.

Great. But then,

  • Subversion isn’t behaving so off to subversion.apache.org to RTFM.
  • While skimming the Subversion packages, I end up at Apple’s Developer Tools area and discover that Xcode 4 is available today.

Xcode 4 is downloading now and I’m off to write some CFML. At five o’clock.

*A friend sent me a bundle for TextMate that added support for CFML. Thank you Louis.

New Server

After almost 48 hours of downtime, dixson.org is functioning again. On a new server at Joyent.

Server software: Apache
Server name: dixson.org
PHP 5.2.12
WordPress 3.1
Feed: dixson.org/feed/atom/
Theme Name: Genesis
Theme Version: 1.5
Plugins: Genesis Simple Edits, Google Analyticator, Google XML Sitemaps, WordPress Importer, and WP FancyZoom

 

Cocoa & Obj-C Books

Friends have asked for resources to learn Cocoa and Objective-C. Below is a short list of books with links to Amazon.

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

Cocoa Design Patterns

Programming in Objective-C 2.0

Learning Cocoa with Objective-C

Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

and the bible,

C Programming Language