Chistoph Online

Thanks!

Christoph — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:29:00 +0000

Thanks to everyone who's been sending in bug reports and ideas or otherwise supporting JarInspector! Your feedback is greatly appreciated. I just uploaded release candidate 5 which I planned to be the last before the final version. Go get it at codeland.org

Converting NSString to OSType

Christoph — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:37:00 +0000

OSTypes, formerly known as ResTypes, are four byte sequences to identify data formats and creator applications under MacOS X. To convert from NSString to OSType the straight forward solution might be:

OSType convertNSStringToOSType(NSString* str) {
OSType app = 0;
memcpy(&app, [str cstring],sizeof(app));
return app;
}

which works but of course ignores the encoding completely. So:

OSType convertNSStringToOSType(NSString* str) {
OSType app = 0;
NSData* data = [str dataUsingEncoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];
[data getBytes:&app length:sizeof(app)];
return app;
}

This works great until moving the whole thing to Intel! For a java hacker puzzling at first but then, recalling computer architecture class, the endians! So a look in the Universal Binary Programming Guide yields

OSType convertNSStringToOSType(NSString* str) {
OSType app = UTGetOSTypeFromString((CFStringRef)str);
return app;
}

The CFString cast is okay http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?CFStringRef

Building Universal Binaries for Cocoa-Java based Apps

Christoph — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 08:55:00 +0000

With the introduction of Intel based Macs, Apple also introduced a new binary format that is capable to run natively on both architectures x86 and PowerPC. The Apple developer tools feature support for all project types to compile universal binary versions. For all projects types? All but Cocoa-Java based ones.
Apple silently dropped support for Cocoa-Java which might explain the lack of information on how to build universal binaries for Cocoa-Java based apps. In general it is quite simple but there are a few non obvious obstacles. In order to create universal binaries the respective target in XCode must be upgraded to native. XCode, however, prohibits targets with java source code to be upgraded. The solution is to split the target in pure Obj-C part and a pure Java part. See this post on the XCode mailing list. Since the release J2SE 5.0 Release 4 the above approached fails with "Unable to find class:" exceptions or similar unless you make sure both targets specify the same target VM (1.3*, 1.4* ..). See also Technical Q&A QA1474.

JarInspector 1.0b5

Christoph — Fri, 12 May 2006 20:26:00 +0000

The JarInspector version 1.0 beta 5 has just been released. The beta 5 is a landmark release with a newly designed document based architecture. The new architecture is an important step towards the first release candidate (1.0RC1) as well as future versions. But it is already visible in the current beta which includes a feature for multiple jar file edit. Additionally the manifest editor has advanced to a general purpose editor for jar file contents. This means you can edit web.xml, jboss.xml and suchlike on the fly without the need to extract and rebuild the whole jar.

In summary the features are:

- jar file viewer
- integrated editor
- syntax highlighting
- java class decompiler
- file extraction
- full integration into Mac OS X

You can download the JarInspector here

A jar file viewer for Mac OS X

Christoph — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 22:27:00 +0000

The Jar Inspector is a cocoa based application for Mac OS X. It is a utility to view and edit jar files on the mac. Currently it features:

a file manager for jar entries
manifest viewer and editor
file extraction
java decompiler

Go check it out at codeland.org

qmail and Mac OS X

Christoph — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 06:52:00 +0000

I still get a lot of hits on my site from people searching for qmail+macosx. Back in 2001 I wrote a tutorial on howto setup qmail on macosx but lost it during a server crash in 2003, sorry. Anyway, qmail needed a patch to compile on osx. The patch is still there. You can get it here. Maybe this is of help for you. Please note that the patch is not from me but credit goes someone that also worked on the topic back then (don't remember the name). It is probably out of date anyway. I personally switched from qmail to postfix cause qmail required to lot of effort maintaining and adjusting to each new version of osx.

JBoss, myfaces and tomahawk extensions

Christoph — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 14:44:00 +0000

Jboss uses Apache myfaces as JSF implementation. The api and impl packages are included in jbossweb-tomcatXX/jsf-libs. Unfortunately when trying to deploy a webapp that uses the tomahawk extensions you run into classloading problems (java.lang.ClassCastException) because the impl package as well as the tomahwak.jar contain both shared classes. To solve these problems make sure that all jars are loaded by the same classloader (i.e. copy tomahawk.jar to jbossweb-tomcatXX/jsf-libs or remove jsf-libs and add myfaces-api.jar, myfaces-impl.jar and tomahawk.jar to your WEB-INF/libs). With the former solution, however, you're not able to access any resources from your webapp. Therefore it is best if you remove the jsf-libs and include all required libs in the webapp.

High load...

Christoph — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 14:34:00 +0000

The other day when compiling a project ...

I guess I should buy a new computer. Or should I? Concluding from this amazing piece of scientific work I could as well slack on the beach for two years then come back, buy a new computer, start the calculation and still be done earlier! Only drawback is that computations need complex enough and require appropriate amounts of cpu time.

Code from the genius himself

Christoph — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 19:47:00 +0000

from the worst-code-ever-dept.

/**
* @author root
*
* To change the template for this generated type comment go to
* Window>Preferences>Java>Code Generation>Code and Comments
*/

The other day at a Chinese restaurant

Christoph — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 18:39:00 +0000

mhmmm yummy.

Took a couble of beers but then: delicious!

favicon.ico 404

Christoph — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 18:37:00 +0000

Favicons are small (16x16 or 32x32 pixels) page icons displayed in the browsers addressbar or your favorites listings (hence: favorites icon). Most modern browsers support favicons and therefore send a http request for either /facicon.ico or whatever is specified in the <link rel="icon"...> tag specified in the header of the page. If the favicon.ico file does not exist browsers show a standard icon and ignore error responses from the server. Simlarly many web servers filter favicon related error messages to keep their error logs readable.

If the favicon.ico file resides in a protected directory (which is likely if the context root is protected) browsers get confused and display a resource not found (404 ) error message. When a browser is pointed to http://somehost.com/ it requests the favicon file /favicon.ico. However since / is protected the browser is redirected to the login page. After specifying the correct login and password, the favicon is loaded and shown - but not the content of / (e.g. index.html).

To solve the problem save the favicon file in a public context or specifically allow access to the file. For example:

 
<security-constraint>
  <web-resource-collection>
   <web-resource-name>restricted</web-resource-name>
   <url-pattern>/public/favicon.ico</url-pattern>
   <http-method>GET</http-method>
   <http-method>POST</http-method>
  </web-resource-collection>
 </security-constraint>

Then in the header of the login page specify the location of the icon file


<link rel="icon" href="public/favicon.ico" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/public/favicon.ico" />

ClamXav & Fink

Christoph — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 11:55:00 +0000

ClamXav comes with its own installer for the clamav engine. The installer, however, is not as frequently updated as is the clamav engine itself, yielding:

LibClamAV Warning: ********************************************************
LibClamAV Warning: ***  This version of the ClamAV engine is outdated.  ***
LibClamAV Warning: *** DON'T PANIC! Read http://www.clamav.net/faq.html ***
LibClamAV Warning: ********************************************************

in the log files. The fink version of clamav is much more recent. To make clamXav use the fink version follow this procedure:

Download the lastest clamXav (if this is the first install preceed like here: http://www.clamxav.com/index.php?page=FAQ
Run the removeEngine script
Run fink install clamav
Run fink install clamav-daemon
Edit ~/Library/Preferences/uk.co.markallan.clamxav.plist and set User Defined clamav Path to /sw (or whereever your fink installation is)
If not already there copy ClamXav to /Applications

Forest

Christoph — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 18:08:00 +0000

from the coolest-software-ever-dept

I've been looking for something like this for a very long time. Forst generates ambient sounds "as if you were walking in a forrest". Besides forrest there are several worlds to chose from: garden world, night world, storm world. Sounds are generated randomly thus forest can run for hours without repeating itself. Sound quality is a bit bad, though. Check it out at http://www.macunicorn.com/forest/index.htm

JBoss and Postgresql

Christoph — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 19:58:00 +0000

To setup JBoss to use postgresql instead of hsqldb follow this procedure

Shutdown JBoss
delete hsqldb-ds.xml from [server]/deploy
copy postgres-ds.xml from [jboss.home]/docs/examples to [server]/deploy
edit postgres-ds.xml and replace all occurences of PostgresDS with DefaultDS
delete hsqldb-jdbc?-service.xml (leave hsqldb-jdbc-state-service.xml there) [server]/deploy/jms
copy postgres-jdbc3-service.xml [jboss.home]/docs/examples/jms to [server]deploy/jms
edit postgres-jdbc3-service.xml and replace all occurences of PostgresDS with DefaultDS
Start JBoss
Adapt your applications and redeploy them

Tested with JBoss version 4.0.3 and postgresql 8.0.4-21

Premium Code

Christoph — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 20:18:00 +0000

from the worst-code-ever dept.

Found this code fragment:

ComboBox c = new ComboBox();
c.add("0");
c.add("1");
c.add("2");

...

c.add("97");
c.add("98");
c.add("99");

Total 101 lines of code!