Cannot help but laugh and share.
I've been triaging and trying to reproduce some oldish bugs on
pkg-perl's packages. Some bugs are no longer there, some have to be forwarded upstream, and so on. Usual tasks, yes.
Until I stumbled with
#406227. I just
have to laugh and share! Hope nobody feels ashamed - The bug is the result of different people coding maybe under pressure and with quite different mindsets :)
For some reason I fail to understand, the submitter's test case (
rot13 implemented over a HTTP proxy) is invoked in the report as
./rot13 2>/dev/null. Of course, when trying to debug a bug report, the first thing to do is
not to ignore STDERR. So, off goes the 2>/dev/null. What happens next?
0 gwolf@mosca[2]/tmp$ perl ./rot13 &
[1] 4394
0 gwolf@mosca[3]/tmp$ GET -p http://localhost:8080/ http://www.debian.org/
Can't locate object method "filter" via package "UGGC::Cebkl::ObqlSvygre::fvzcyr=UNFU(0k604160)" (perhaps you forgot to load "UGGC::Cebkl::ObqlSvygre::fvzcyr=UNFU(0k604160)"?) at /usr/share/perl5/HTTP/Proxy/FilterStack.pm line 126.
500 EOF when chunk header expected
WTF... Well, at least the program name gives me a clue... Lets try to "decrypt" the error message...
gwolf@mosca[4]/tmp$ echo 'UGGC::Cebkl::ObqlSvygre::fvzcyr=UNFU(0k604160)' rot13
HTTP::Proxy::BodyFilter::simple=HASH(0x604160)
hrm... How comes the filter is filtering its own code and
only then refusing to find
itself!? Ok, time to open up the manpage - Remember, I'm only group-maintaining this pacakge, I am not yet at all familiar with it! Ok, so the core of the filter is when the submitter states:
my $proxy = new HTTP::Proxy();
$proxy->push_filter(response => new HTTP::Proxy::BodyFilter::simple(sub tr/a-zA-z/n-za-mN-ZA-M/; ));
While the manpage states it should be invoked as:
my $filter = HTTP::Proxy::BodyFilter::simple->new( sub $ $_[1] =~ s/foo/bar/g; );
$proxy->push_filter( response => $filter );
Of course, once looking at it, the answer is simple: The submitter left out
which element to act on in the anonymous function body - The
$ $_[1] =~ part. Adding it makes gur svygre jbex nf rkcrpgrq... Err, sorry - makes the filter work as expected.
Now, bonus points: For the non-Perlers out ther: How come we get the namespace translated as well? Oh, that's very simple: In Perl, as in Python (and concievably other languages I'm unaware of), the object is passed to any of its methods as the first argument. Functions in Perl receive their arguments via
@_ (read:
the default array). And, of course, the
tr (regex-based transliteration) takes by default the first thing it sees - the object itself. And what happens when you apply a (string-oriented) regex to an object? Of course, it gets stringified - which, by default, in Perl means converting it to the closest possible description: "a hash reference blessed as an object of the class such-and-such at this memory location". That string gets worked on, and we get UGGC::Cebkl::ObqlSvygre::fvzcyr=UNFU(0k604160). This proxy does not die on very-very-short web pages, where the whole content fits on one iteration of the code (although it does not work correctly - the text remains unaltered, of course, as it was not worked on), but if the request spans several chunks, the second time the filter is called, it will be... just gibberish.
Oh, and what about the extra
$ (...) around
$_[1]? Oh, simple: The string is passed as a
scalar reference, so it can be modified in place. Yes, it's the Perl way of pass-by-reference instead of pass-by-value (the default behaviour):
Of course the parameter is only passed as a value. Only that the value is incidentally a reference - but who cares? ;-)
Anyway... Many oddities. I would implement the module in a completely different way, and it looks quite backwardish in my book. But then again,
TIMTOWTDI.
... are still there, even if I don't blog about every single bit all the time. Most of the packages I care about are in good state, I even did jump on board of irssi co-maintaining and got its bugcount down a fair bit (though I won't rest at this stage, there are still some to go) and did jump onboard of the pkg-games Team.
... which brings me to wesnoth. For quite a while I am tracking the stable releases (1.2.x) of wesnoth in unstable while the development releases (1.3.x) are followed in experimental. With the upcoming stable release 1.4 this though will change. The development branch is feature frozen and thus will be (propably) compatible with the next stable release, and furthermore the current stable release isn't expected to receive any further update. My plan is thus to upload the next development release directly to unstable. If you want to give it some additional testing before that happens pull the package from experimental now and give your feedback, thanks.
Furthermore I am also tracking some packages for backports.org. I usually do the packaging of it almost synchronous to its upload into unstable although it is only allowed onto backports.org when it entered testing. For the timegap in between you can usually find it on my website repository. Directories that aren't empty there have some upload to backports pending and you can feel free to test the packages and send me feedback on them. Currently this includes bacula, slony1 and postgresql-8.3.
One last note, finally it happened: apache1 isn't anymore. There were two packages left in testing until recently which got their removal requests adjusted. Thanks to everyone involved in keeping track of this and helping cleaning up the archive.
As 
On Saturday February 9th, at 13:00, I'm going to be joining free
software and anti-DRM activists to 
I would like to suggest to my readers to ask airplane crews for
explanations of their rules. If we can get a larger number of
people to inquire about the reasons behind the do s and dont s on
airplanes, maybe the airline companies will adopt the practice.
In the context of a previous post on 
Cormac and Caoimhe at a patisserie with Chocolate lion in Concarneau, Brittany
.
The weather was fairly good: two wet days (though not overly so, compared to what we're used to in Galway); enough to give the
'authentic camping experience'. And for the children especially, just warm enough. Long drives South were not an option with young kids,
and we wanted to see Carnac and Brittany in general.
We went touring to two places: Mont St. Michel, on the way down, Carnac, and locally around Quimper and Concarneau.
At seven, Cormac is beginning to be old enough to enjoy this, but Sadhbh at 2 is too young, and easily aggravated.
Caoimhe can appreciate some of it, such as the well recommended Breton museum in Quimper, seeing the local costumes and clothing is
just her style at the moment. We're looking forward to going back when the kids are older, or we can enjoy touring on our own.
The camp site is dominated by English / Dutch / Irish. It is still term-time in Britain and Ireland, which meant the children on the site
was full of 2-4 year-olds, with a shortage of playmates for Cormac. Next time, synchronise with English school times, etc.
We went during Cormacs term-time because it was much cheaper (1000 Euro) than high-season. If Cormac was having difficulty in school
things would have been different, as it is, we had no qualms in doing so. Things will probably be different next year with Caoimhe
also in school at the same time, and we would go later. Suffice it to say I think synchonisation of school timetables is a bad idea,
as it has led to these huge price differentials and parents taking their kids from school. As a friend with experience of
the French school system points out, they've spent the last 40 years desynchronising their timetables ...
So would we go again, or buy our own tents, etc? possibly. The brochure for next year arrived already, with large discounts for
booking early ...
Finally, I think you assume a little to strongly that we do what we do because we have a pre-formed existing desired to do so. While I think this is the case for many things (and I knew the minute I learned about anthropology, I wanted to be one, which was odd but it proved to be correct), I think desire is also formed as much through experience and hence the importance of exposure to different worlds and experiences. I know that there are many things I could have never imagined I would have loved–karoake and sailing are two things that come to mind—until I tried them about both took some degree of courage. In the later case, it took a lot of guts to move onto some ship at the age of 18 instead of going to college and I am so glad I did. This is an instance where confidence and an initial curiosity led to discovering a love and passion I never knew I had. So if desire can be formed and not just expressed, I think it is key to make sure people have all sorts of opportunities to cultivate the passions they never knew they had.
By using my name in various web services I usually spot bad
implementation of displaying name field in their website. I can see that
over years the amount of servers which cripple my name to something like
iha is getting lower, but there are still lots of them. When I find
way how to report it, I usually do so and I always enjoy fields like
"How to repeat". This time the guilty one is the 
I’ve been 
