A Concurrent Affair

Someone wrote on SourceForge about DrJava:

This program is excellent for its’ intended use. Best part is that you can put it on a memory stick and run it.

Thanks! I concur.

The latest weekly build of DrJava contains a compiler adapter for Mint. That means it is possible to conveniently compile Mint programs in the DrJava IDE.

To experiment with Mint and DrJava, please do the following:

Download the new weekly release of DrJava: drjava-weekly-20090929-r5094.jar. Download the latest version of Mint [...]

Please be advised that Computer Shopper magazine has ceased publication after the April 2009 issue. [...] Special arrangements have been made with Esquire magazine to service your subscription for its full remaining term. You will receive three issues of Esquire for every issue remaining on your Computer Shopper subscription.

(Emphasis in bold mine)

Cripes, I’m going to receive [...]

I just merged the trunk-mint branch of DrJava back into the trunk and made a new weekly release1: drjava-weekly-20090929-r5094.jar. Footnotes: I actually issue these “weakly” releases more often than just weekly. It’s just a convenient mechanism to benefit from the auto-update feature. [back]

After reading the ACLU’s report about Facebook app privacy problems and taking the quiz demonstrating them, What Do Quizzes Really Know About You?, I was a little upset at first.

The privacy settings just seemed completely insane. Let’s use one’s sexual orientation as (spicy) example and assume we have two facebook users, A and B, with [...]

I just made a new ConcJUnit release available on SourceForge: version 20090927.

While working on integrating Mint into DrJava, I tested it on Mac. Since Mint requires Java 6, that involved using Soylatte, and Soylatte is based on OpenJDK. To my surprise, Mint did not work in DrJava. Upon investigation, this was only the case when [...]

I have now managed to hack DrJava and Mint together. I still have to improve the source, because right now a few things are hard-coded, but it is a working proof-of-concept.

Welcome to DrJava. Working directory is C:\Program Files\JavaMint\langtools\mintTest > java edu.rice.cs.mint.runtime.Mint Power_For 131072.0 >

This is the output for the Mint program

1234567891011121314import edu.rice.cs.mint.runtime.Code; public class Power_For {   public [...]

Here are some quick instructions on how to download and install Java Mint.

Linux

You need Sun’s JDK 6 installed.

Download the “binaries only” Java Mint zip file from the Java Mint implementation page. In this example, I have saved the file in my home directory, i.e. at /home/mgricken.

[...]

I’m still trying to integrate Mint into DrJava, and I’m running into a problem with the class loaders in Mint and DrJava.

If I understand the class loader inside the Interaction JVM correctly (a PathClassLoader, I believe), it can change the class path dynamically, and that way it can find classes with different source roots. Once [...]

The DrJava built from my trunk-mint branch now manages to compile Mint programs on all three major operating systems: Windows, Mac and Linux.

I had to make a bugfix in the Mint compiler (I will make a new release soon), and I don’t quite know why we never ran into this. Perhaps the Sun JDK implements [...]

Sweet! DrJava with Mint on the Mac just came within reach, or at least as close as it is on the other operating systems. For some reason, when I ran DrJava under Soylatte and X11 earlier, no compilers showed up. I thought there were some more serious problems with running DrJava in that environment, but [...]

I’ve been trying to get the Mint compiler to work inside DrJava. This has turned out to be more tricky than I thought.

The preempting class loader that we use to load different compiler adapters is still giving me headaches, and the fact that the “Mint SDK” is only a partial JDK (really only a replacement [...]

After attending an excellent workshop on converting CVs to resumes by the Rice Center for Student Professional Development, worked on improving my resume a bit.

First of all, I created two versions, a shorter resume (pdf) and a longer, complete curriculum vitae (pdf).

In the CV, I have included more information on my publications. Both documents still [...]

I noticed that the Houston Chronicle article I was interviewed for isn’t available on the Chronicle website anymore, so I wanted to re-post it on my blog.

From the Houston Chronicle, Jan. 9, 2009:

Legal immigrants battle red tape

Pakistan native Adeel Mehmood started building a life in Houston after the U.S. government granted him asylum more than [...]

The POPL 2010 reviews of our Mint paper are in. We got four reviews of “weak paper, but I will not fight against it” and one review of “strong paper, I will champion it at the program committee meeting”.

We now have another day to submit minimal comments that address some misunderstandings. A lot of the [...]

I was working on the next tutorial for the Java…

In order to understand future examples, we firs…

Jennifer Harris was kind enough to video-tape m…

Now I’ll take a break, then I’ll proof-read it …

DrJava hit 850,000 downloads today. We should b…