headwedge

I’m back

ectpete — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:53:30 +0000

Today saw the first Beverley Linux User Group meeting for almost two years. Topics discussed were Linux, Linux Distributions and Apple Macs, iPhone and iPad (I couldn’t resist). We hope to meet every month from now on.

OS X How To: Installing Eclipse CDT

headwedge — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:27:26 +0000

N.B. Includes Snow Leopard “binary not found” fix.

In this context CDT is a three-letter abbreviation referring to the Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit and OS X is a UNIX based operating system.

However, unfortunately for would-be C++ programmers and unlike most flavours of Linux, OS X does not come with the standard development tools pre-installed that the Eclipse CDT requires in order to compile, link and execute C++ code!

Therefore, the following steps are required…

1. Install Xcode Suite of Developer Tools

Whilst we do not want the Xcode IDE itself we do need its modified version of the free software GNU Compiler Collection.

The Xcode suite is available on the Mac OS X DVDs/CDs that came with your computer, or you can download them from Apple:

Developer Connection
Developer Tools
Xcode 3.2.1 Developer DVD (Disk Image) (751.1 MB 08 Oct 2009)

Read about the suite here:

about_xcode_3.2.1.pdf

In particular page 3, Installing Xcode Developer Tools.

Simply follow the default install procedure for the Xcode developer make package Xcode.mpkg to get what you need.

2. Install Eclipse CDT

What is interesting for Mac/OS X users here is that since version 3.5 of Eclipse the download choices have increased…

These choices have been blogged about at length by others here (don’t agree), here and reconsidered here.

Given that I am running Snow Leopard with Java 6 on a Core 2 Duo I chose the 64 bit Cocoa Download.

The installation process is a doddle given the download presents itself as a GNU zipped & tarballed folder named Eclipse, that contains the Java application that is Eclipse plus some other bits & bobs, it is just a case of dropping this folder into Applications.

3. Upgrade the CDT to latest version

I have already blogged about what can be a very annoying bug with the CDT on 64 bit machines. It is most correctly fixed by upgrading the default CDT to version 6.0.2 (or greater) via the nightly build links:

To upgrade CDT:

Download the master zip file (cdt-master-6.0.2-I200912180606.zip)
Fire up Eclipse (The Platform Run-time 3.5 is minimum recommended)
Select Help->Install New Software
Add in the master zip as an Archive site
Under CDT Main Features select the one you want
-C/C++ Development Tools is the main one
Select CDT Optional Features category for lots of other goodies not least of which is the Mylyn bridge

4. Test the install with the built in Hello World project

5. Trouble-shoot any problems

As ever “your mileage may very” but this process should now have you up and running with Eclipse 3.5 CDT 6.0.2 with no problems.

If this is not the case then your first port of call should be here.

“binary not found” Snow Leopard Eclipse CDT Fix

headwedge — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:25:56 +0000

Cocoa Eclipse

Given that the new iMac is intended for software development the first port of call was the Eclipse Download site.

I selected the Cocoa 64 bit version of the OS X Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit, downloaded, installed and tested it with the ‘Hello World C++ Project’ that has long since come with Eclipse.

Binary Not Found

A faultless compilation but where is the binary? Why can’t I see it in the Run Configurations dialog when I search the project?

A quick search of the workspace/HelloWorld/Debug folder path reveals that the executable does indeed exist!

Further, it runs quite happily with ./workspace/HelloWorld/Debug/HelloWorld so what is going on?

!!!Hello World!!!

A quick trip to the Eclipse Community Forums reveals the problem presented by ‘Enrico’ in this thread Binaries not created in Snow Leopard (64 bit problem?).

Solution 1 -arch i386

It transpires that the explanation is that Mach-O parser does not understand 64 bit binaries generated by g++.

The short term solution (patch) is to inform both the linker and the compiler of your intended target architecture by adding the apple specific flag…

-arch i386

Linker

Compiler

Drawbacks

This is all well and good but needs to be done on project by project basis.

I suspect that a more complete solution would be to add

-arch i386 -arch x86-64

to generate a binary which runs as x86-64 code on that architecture, but still runs correctly on x86.

Whilst this may well be appropriate for portability of your executable it ought not be needed, hence…

Solution 2 Install Version 6 of the CDT via any nightly build >= 20091106

To quote Marc-Andre Laperle from the forum:

This is now fixed in 6.0.2 which you can get the nightly build here or get a more recent one (>= 20091106) here.

Just follow the instructions and everything seems to work very nicely, so far…

Bonuses

After implementing solution 2 you get Mylyn bridge etc but also IBM cXL toolchain to work with Power PC processors as your target and the GNU cross platform compiler!

Got iMac?

headwedge — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:03:07 +0000

for ($int i = 0; $i < 100; $i++) {
echo "I have an iMac w00t!";
}

Santa brought me a brand new iMac 21.5-inch!

Specifications

3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2×2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) and User’s Guide (English)
8x double-layer SuperDrive
Apple Magic Mouse

MSc January Goals

headwedge — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:18:06 +0000

rewrite research proposal done
meet with postgraduate advisor done
meet with course supervisor(s) done
reform code base to do
order CO2 sensor all going to be simulated

Paging Dr. Whack-a-doodle…

headwedge — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:55:06 +0000

…Dr Whack-a-doodle to the emergency mercury salmon poisoning room!

The Resuscitation Council is woefully inadequate when it comes to advice on how to resuscitate a moribund Research Masters Degree course. Thus, I will have to make it up as I go along. I wonder if the patient will make it through?

The first 6 months were very productive with respect to collecting background information, previous works, resources and developing a direction. The initial programming experiments seem useful and relevant but I have lost all sense of direction.

Unfortunately, rereading my original research proposal does not help because it too seems lacking in direction. Perhaps, as Thoreau said, it is better to “Simplify, simplify”?

Another year over…

headwedge — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:05:11 +0000

…and nothing ‘blogged’ for 13 months! (Triskaidekaphobia anyone?)

Well I was busy!

- started a part-time Research MSc at University (again)
- struggled to have time for MSc (again)
- learned to snowboard (o_O)
- put MSc on back burner (again)
- got kicked in the butt by economic down-turn (again)
- got wife pregnant (awesome)
- got a new job (hurrah)
- got a new baby (^_^)
- got a new iMac (student discount)
- went jogging (at last)
- decided to blog efforts to resuscitate MSc (gulp)

Yet More Mac Envy! 7 ways to make your PC look like a Mac…

headwedge — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:38:31 +0000

From techradar.com (this one is for ectpete)…

Why wait for Windows 7 though? There are loads of ways you can fiddle with Vista’s interface and cheer up the depressing and omnipresent black bars. To show you some of the options out there here are seven tricks for dealing with that most common of Windows’ viruses: Mac-envy.

Ubuntu Eee How To: Mount 8GB Transcend SDHC card as your /Home Step by step Guide

headwedge — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:04:39 +0000

This seems a logical step for many Eee PC owners and the Asus Eee PC Forum has a thread devoted to unraveling this issue [link] but for your convenience here are the steps laid out:

Format the SDHC card
- Use the graphical Gnome Partition Manager to partition all the available space and format the SDHC card file type as ext2 (the journaling of ext3 slows and uses too many writes).
- The Gnome graphical partitioner can be run as supervisor from the terminal:

sudo gparted

-Then follow the menu trail: 1. to select your SDHC card... -GParted --Devices ---/dev/sdb


2. to select all the space...

-Partition

--Resize/Move
3. to select file system...

-Partition

--Format to

---ext2
...and then apply the actions.
4. Finally make a note of the default mount point when the tasks are done, you will use this below (usually /media/card)
Move /home to the SDHC card

1. Assuming the SDHC mounted at /media/card  make an exact copy of all the data under /home onto your SD
sudo rsync -av --progress /home/ /media/card/
2. Make a backup copy of /home  
mv /home /home.old
**delete /home.old only when you are content all is working reliably**
3. Unmount the card from its default location
umount /media/card
4. Remount your home folder to the SD card
mount /dev/sdb1 /home
5. Make this change permanent by amending your file system table fstab file
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
add the following line
/dev/sdb1               /home                   ext2     defaults,noatime        1 2
Fix the shutdown unmount corruption error

When shutting down, Ubuntu fails to properly synchronize the buffered data with the SDHC card and fails to gracefully unmount it. This results in the file system consistency check tool fsck automatically running at each boot up to repair the SHDC filesystem. The ultimate forum derived solution [link] seems to be to edit Ubuntu's shutdown script to take care of the SDHC card appropriately.
1. Edit the unmount file system script umountfs
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/umountfs
2. Add the following lines after the do_stop () { ... } function
sync; sync

eject /dev/sdb1

sleep 3
3. Reboot and all should be working as desired :)
Thanks to all at the forum for this solution.



Asus Eee PC 900 Leather Case Goodness
headwedge — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:58:10 +0000

Yet again the magic that is ‘er in-doors has come up trumps with the best geeky accessory gift a proud new Eee PC owner could wish for.. a leather case!
Amazon have this hand made soft leather case for the 900 series at a great price [link]
I particularly like the pouches for your SD Cards and business cards. 

If you want to contribute to my flickr eee-pc page please feel free to login and upload some pics… [link]