Today I updated my gentoo server’s eselected PHP from 5.6 to 7.2 and wordpress phabricator and mediawiki didn’t even hiccup. WordPress went from a steaming pile of stubborn version upgrade refusal right back into line. I used mysqldump to back up all my databases, less than a GB. I git pulled phabricator’s stable branch (updated weekly from master) and ran a boatload of database patches that went smooth as coconut milkfat. I git-skipped the .arcconfig files so i could just update them in place. OK… why did that all just work?

Update: I went ahead and made the phabricator-recommended changes to mysql and PHP, including installing a PHP memory-based cache:

emerge -DavuN dev-php/pecl-apcu

And that, of course, cascaded me into a gentoo server update.

• first I had to [emerge -av glibc] as it was ancient
• do not put comments in [/etc/portage/package.use/zzz_autounmask]
• used advice from gentoo perl docs:

emerge -uDNav --with-bdeps=y --backtrack=100 --autounmask-keep-masks=y @world

And away we go…

UPDATE: ok these are a few more of my “favorite” things…

• mediawiki required an update, I had to manually tweak my multi-site LocalSettings overrides since some themes were removed, and some were added.
• I decided to go through all the phabricator tweaks that it complains about.
• I fell into an update of my fork of Simple Web Server, not really related except that it was YA deep rabbit hole.
• Files served up were made real pretty with this; I had to tweak the .htaccess to make it correctly mo safe.
• Moving to boost 1_69_0 was actually a lot of (CPU) work.
• While I was moving things around, I set up a nice git flow for my stock app, with branches:
  • develop
    • feature/postgress-archive
    • refactor/use-archive-db
  • master
    • release/1.55.41-pre-archive-database

I spent this morning exploring available tech to address this goal:

Add a bigdata database to my application, to archive older data out of the realtime local model

This is for my stock app, which deals with realtime in-memory data during market hours, with a delayed-write to local storage.  At the end of the day, it can then archive most of the data collected during market hours.

Because I have not achieved “success” in life yet, at least enough to allow me to pursue my larger goals uninhibited, I have to be very careful about how I apply my limited resources.  To be more precise:

• Follow patterns that are as simple as possible (but no less), and sustainable into the next decade.
• For my projects, limit languages, libraries and tools to those that are
  • well maintained
  • solve difficult problems more elegantly than I could solve with a medium level of effort

The result of today’s philosophically-informed research:

• The primary languages of my software projects should be Javascript and C++
• All data should be defined by JSON schema that is used to generate code, via quicktype
• Long-term libraries and tools include boost, jquery, bootstrap, accounting.js, moment.js, nlohmann::json, sqlite, postgres

Note that using quicktype with nlohmann::json is an elegant way to effectively get C++ reflection.  Once you serialize an object to JSON you can walk all its fields.  Then you can do things like automatically build SQL queries for your classes based on the JSON schema.  Beautiful.

PS. I avoided spotify-json, StaticJson/autojsoncxx, Google Prototype Buffers, Code Synthesis’s ODB, the sqlite JSON1 Extension, C++ reflection libraries like RTTR, lots of code from Stiffstream and Chilkat, etc. because while they are all brilliant and compelling, they bring extra weight.  The world keeps churning though, so keep searching.  Also, there are cases where my choices do not fit, most obviously being cross-platform mobile apps, which will have to be saved for another post… 🙂

When NPM gets bumped, you start with an empty module cache.  To restore it with optimal dependencies:

cd baseapp && rm -rf node_modules && npm -g install
cd dependentapp && rm -rf node_modules && npm -g install
cd thirdlevelapp && rm -rf node_modules && npm -g install

It’s not 2003 but the web-based Java applet whiteboard I set up then was as good as any obvious solution today. Wtf?

I played with several possible all-in-one solutions and came up short. I’m not paying and I prefer open-source, I would hope pay-to-play solutions are better, but I had to cobble something that works from pieces. TODO set up my own server of Mconf and OpenMeetings. For now, these will have to do:

• Google hangouts in CHROME ONLY (Chrome is a PIG these days, I use FF – but Google of course providing a SHIT implementation on Firefox, fu)
• AwwApp yes that is its name and there are many but this one worked on mobile with great zoom support

gcc seems to be getting smarter all the time. Sentience soon…?

/home/m/development/thedigitalage/AbetterTrader/server/src/TradingModel.cpp:2095:33: note: suggested alternative: ‘ba_’
ss << "WTF account " << pa_->strDesc_ << " sr " << db_id_ << " gain: " ^~~ ba_