“...I've been working since 2008 with Ruby / Ruby on Rails, love a bit of Elixir / Phoenix and learning Rust.
I also poke through other people's code and make PRs for OpenSource Ruby projects that sometimes make it. Currently working for InPay who are based in Denmark...”
Old blog posts I never published, except I have now #5
The first time I used a computer I was about 7 I think. My mum was always ahead of her time and I actually cite her (or blame her) for being such a geek and getting interested in computers in the first place. She bought me my first computer the Amstrad CPC 6128. We got it 2nd hand I remember going round to the owners house and leaving with a pile of boxes of bits, games, manuals and other books.
I don’t recall the time I bought Treasure Island Dizzy but I remember being completely immersed in it, the puzzles and going back and forth trying to work out which items I’d need to get past each stage and open those locked rooms. I might even say this encouraged me to pay attention to detail at such a young age.
After so many years of 3D games. I’ve played them and I just don’t get on with them. Mario 64 on the Nintendo DS just annoyed me. I think World Of Warcraft is the only one I’ve stuck with. I really miss the 2D platform games I enjoyed during my formative years and I wish they still made them. I am so pleased to see now that Dizzy is making a comeback on iPhone, iPad and Android platforms. I did a little dance and I hunted high and low for information on the old games. I found the fabulous YolkFolk Dizzy fan site which has basically everything you need.
It seems also you can get Dizzy clones of the original games (as close to the original as possible) with Spectrum graphics. Presumably they are cloned to avoid copyright issues. There is even a Dizzy game engine named Dizzy Age which programmers can build their own Dizzy games with, and it was this engine that was used to build the clones of the original games.
Getting back on track, the lovely people at Codemasters have brought Dizzy back to life with a remake of Dizzy – Prince of the YolkFolk for modern mobile platforms. It’s between £1.49 and £2.49 depending on what your platform of choice is. I need to pinch Kat’s Motorla Xoom in order to play as my HTC isn’t supported. Dang.
They are running ongoing competitions on their Dizzy Game Facebook page which you should checkout. Always enter competitions…because even I managed to win myself some badges which I can wear with pride down the pub.
root@li38-149:~# netstat -ltanup
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
......
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3002 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 13807/sshd: root@no
......
…but if you can’t read the code without bashing your head against a wall, its pretty useless.
Old blog posts I never published, except I have now #2
Now I admit that this solution has some merit, it filters incoming params in a particular controller action and DRYs up some of the saving and redirecting that is common place in every controller. But when I took this project on it just complicated things so much that it took 4 times as long to make any changes to the app as it needed to.
do_object_edit("recruiter/new_subscription", :pay_subscription, :agreed_terms, :subscription_type_id) do |o|
o.transaction_detail = "INCOMPLETE"
o.amount_paid = 0
end
def do_object_edit(template, action, *fields, &block)
logger.debug "in do_object_edit"
logger.debug "allowing edit of #{fields.join(', ')}" unless fields.empty?
if submitted_using_button?("Cancel")
if action.is_a?(Symbol)
redirect_to :action => action
else
redirect_to action
end
return
elsif request.post?
fields.map!{|f| f.to_sym}
params[:object].delete_if{|k,v| !fields.include?(k.to_sym)} unless fields.empty?
@object.attributes = params[:object]
begin
ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
if block_given?
yield @object
end
@object.save!
flash_message "Details Saved"
if action.is_a?(Symbol)
redirect_to :action => action
else
redirect_to action
end
return
end
rescue ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid
logger.warn $!
flash_message "An Error Occurred"
end
end
render :template => template
end
Yes is DRY because this is repeated everywhere in some form or other, but its not as readable as this.
s = Subscription.new(params[:subscription]) do |s|
s.transaction_detail = 'INCOMPLETE'
s.amount_paid = 0
end
unless s.save
redirect_to failure
else
redirect_to success
end
So as another developer taking on a dead project, this just made things harder. So my comment really is, coding an application isn’t just for you its for the client and if you can’t read it easily a month after you’ve written it someone else won’t be able to either.
It stinks of coding arrogance over creating a maintainable project. And the client loses…because it takes 5 times longer to get someone to fix it or make changes in the future.
This week I had a really horrible bug. One spec in our suite in our CI knocked out every subsequent spec after skipping. The spec works in isolation. just not on CI and not in a full suite run.
RSpec.shared_contexts 'with some feature' do
skip('This is not available on CI') if ENV['CI']
original_driver = Capybara.javascript_driver
Capybara.javascript_driver = :something_else
ensure
Capybara.javascript_driver = original_driver
end
RSpec.describe 'something' do
include_context 'with some feature'
it do
visit '/'
end
end
Turns out our Capybara.javascript_driver ended up being nil, and our test suite fell over because CI doesn’t support non-headless Chrome. And the reason…
I would appear that variable assignment in Ruby still assigns nil if we attempt to assign a variable from another variable or method that is undefined.
irb(main):001> a = some_method_or_var_that_is_not_defined
(irb):1:in `<main>': undefined local variable or method `some_method_or_var_that_is_not_defined' for main (NameError)
a = some_method_or_var_that_is_not_defined
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
from <internal:kernel>:187:in `loop'
from /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/irb-1.14.0/exe/irb:9:in `<top (required)>'
from /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/bin/irb:25:in `load'
from /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/bin/irb:25:in `<main>'
irb(main):002> a
=> nil
Just deployed a new Ruby 3.3.0 branch to staging and it would appear that our Resque jobs just stopped working. Usual procedure check the logs, look for an error and backtrace. Not logs. Ok there is no log/resque.log. There is nothing in the staging.log. Ok. So the process that kicks off our service is monit. Monit log.
/var/log/monit.log
[UTC Feb 21 09:12:46] error : 'resque-scheduler' process is not running
[UTC Feb 21 09:12:46] info : 'resque-scheduler' trying to restart
[UTC Feb 21 09:12:46] info : 'resque-scheduler' start: '/etc/init.d/resque-scheduler start'
[UTC Feb 21 09:13:16] error : 'resque-scheduler' failed to start (exit status 0) -- no output
[UTC Feb 21 09:15:16] error : 'resque' process is not running
[UTC Feb 21 09:15:16] info : 'resque' trying to restart
[UTC Feb 21 09:15:16] info : 'resque' start: '/etc/init.d/resque start'
[UTC Feb 21 09:15:46] error : 'resque' failed to start (exit status 0) -- '/etc/init.d/resque start': /etc/init.d/resque: 12: kill: No such process
Brilliant, it states it has exit status 0 and nothing else. OK. Script tells us that it should boot the process, nothing out of the ordinary here. Nothing to indicate that it is locked to an older Ruby version or anything.
Ah, there is is. So the Resque::Logging.log proxies onto the Resque.logger if it is defined.
module Resque
# Include this module in classes you wish to have logging facilities
module Logging
module_function
# Thunk to the logger's own log method (if configured)
def self.log(severity, message)
Resque.logger.__send__(severity, message) if Resque.logger
end
# Log level aliases
def debug(message); Logging.log :debug, message; end
def info(message); Logging.log :info, message; end
def warn(message); Logging.log :warn, message; end
def error(message); Logging.log :error, message; end
def fatal(message); Logging.log :fatal, message; end
end
end
Let’s try it.
% rails c
Loading development environment (Rails 6.1.7)
rirb: warn: can't alias measure from irb_measure.
irb(main):001> Resque.logger.debug('blah')
/Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/lib/ruby/3.3.0/logger.rb:384:in `level': undefined method `[]' for nil (NoMethodError)
@level_override[Fiber.current] || @level
Ah, that’s a problem. The Resque.logger we’re using seem incompatable with Logger.
And we’re not the only ones to see this. https://talk.jekyllrb.com/t/error-when-executing-bundle-install/8822/6
It would appear that Logger has changed, there is a fix in Jekyll 4.3.3 for their issue. So what’s our issue.
They have also fixed it. Logger initializer has changed, so if you’re going to use it sub-class Logger use their initializer. Upgrading to bundle update mono_logger bumps the version to 1.1.2 and fixed our issue.
Honestly, Ruby 3.2.2 to Ruby 3.3.0 upgrades have been really painless. I’ve hit every server and installed Ruby 3.3.0 with YJIT enabled and we’re ready to go as soon as the new Ruby_3.3.0 branches specs pass.
However, this one is rather annoying.
% bundle install
Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/........
Resolving dependencies....................
--- ERROR REPORT TEMPLATE -------------------------------------------------------
NoMethodError: undefined method `version' for an instance of Bundler::IncompleteSpecification
This current Gemfile.lock indicates we last bundled this with Bunder 2.3.20. I know the latest version is 2.5.5
RUBY VERSION
ruby 3.2.2p53
BUNDLED WITH
2.3.20
Ok in the Gemfile we have locked to a specific version of bundler, I’m not sure why. I’d think that bundler is pretty safe to allow the host system to have whatever version is installed manage this.
gem 'bundler', '~> 2.3.8'
If I remove this line from the Gemfile, nothing changes. I still get Unfortunately, an unexpected error occurred, and Bundler cannot continue. It’s expecting that version of bundler to manage it still.
Bundler 2.3.20
Platforms ruby, arm64-darwin-23
Ruby 3.3.0p0 (2023-12-25 revision 5124f9ac7513eb590c37717337c430cb93caa151) [arm64-darwin-23]
Full Path /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/bin/ruby
Config Dir /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/etc
RubyGems 3.5.3
Gem Home /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0
Gem Path /Users/rl/.gem/ruby/3.3.0:/Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0
User Home /Users/rl
User Path /Users/rl/.gem/ruby/3.3.0
Bin Dir /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.3.0/bin
OpenSSL
Compiled OpenSSL 3.2.0 23 Nov 2023
Loaded OpenSSL 3.2.0 23 Nov 2023
Cert File /opt/homebrew/etc/openssl@3/cert.pem
Cert Dir /opt/homebrew/etc/openssl@3/certs
Tools
Git 2.39.3 (Apple Git-145)
RVM not installed
rbenv not installed
chruby not installed
Even if 2.5.5 is the default.
% gem list bundler
*** LOCAL GEMS ***
bundler (2.5.5, default: 2.5.3, 2.4.21, 2.4.0, 2.3.20)
bundler-audit (0.9.1)
capistrano-bundler (2.1.0, 2.0.1)
So I have to force bundler to use the correct version for this bundle install to work. And success.
bundle _2.5.5_ install
---8<---
Bundle complete! 115 Gemfile dependencies, 321 gems now installed.
Use `bundle info [gemname]` to see where a bundled gem is installed.
