ae.utils.funopt is a std.getopt enhancer:

import std.stdio, ae.utils.funopt;

int run(bool verbose, string input, string output)
{
	// ...
	return 0;
}

int main(string[] args)
{
	try
		return funopt!run(args);
	catch (Exception e)
	{
		stderr.writeln("Error: ", e.msg);
		return 1;
	}
}

Running program --verbose input.txt output.txt will cause run to be called with the appropriate arguments. Continue reading →

Some projects eventually get split up into multiple source repositories for whatever reason. Sometimes, it is useful however to present the project as a single repository – it’s more difficult to examine a project’s development history when it is scattered among several repositories. Specifically, git bisect will not be very helpful if there is strong inter-dependency between the repositories, such as with the reference D programming language implementation. Or you may just not like the layout, which pushes you into using a complicated build process you may not want to use, which was the case for me with the new DerelictOrg repositories. Continue reading →

I’ve recently completed an overhaul of the graphics package of my D library. The goals for the overhaul were inspired by D’s std.algorithm and std.range modules:

• Present everything as small, composable components
• Avoid implicit copying and prefer lazy evaluation
• Use templates for efficient code

From its first iteration, all components of the image processing package were templated by the color type. This is not a conventional way to implement graphics libraries – most libraries abstract away the exact color type the image uses behind an OOP interface, or they simply convert all images to a single in-memory pixel format. However, for most cases, this is wasteful and inefficient – usually, the programmer already knows the exact format that an image will be in, with notable exceptions being applications in which the image data comes from user input (e.g. image editors). Instead, this library declares all image types as templates, with the type indicating the image’s color being a template parameter.

I’m rather pleased with the result of this overhaul, so I’d like to share some highlights in this article. Continue reading →

Certum is granting open-source developers free code signing certificates. I have applied, and got a certificate in less than a day.

I’ve signed most executables I have released on files.cy.md, and plan to sign those I release in the future, especially for programs that need to run elevated (such as TrimCheck). Continue reading →

My personal dream of an ideal programming language is one that allows defining flexible, configurable components that can be coupled together with very little overhead, producing in the end code that, if reverse-engineered, would appear to be hand-written and optimized for the specific task at hand. Preconfigured component configurations / presets would be available for common use, favoring safety and feature-completeness, but for performance-critical cases, the programmer could break them down and strip out unneeded features to reduce overhead, or customize by injecting their own components into the mix. Continue reading →

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout a while ago, but English is only my third language. I’ve used the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to create Dvorak-based variants of the Romanian and Russian layouts.

The layouts are: Continue reading →

When working from the command line, I pass compiler output through a small tool that matches output lines against regular expressions and prints them in various corresponding colors. Continue reading →

I switched the blog to a new theme today.

The old theme was a fixed-background modification of Sam’s Pixel theme.

The new theme is a minimalistic child-theme modification of the standard WordPress twentytwelve theme.

Let’s say you have your own Apache 2 setup in your home directory, and you want to build and install PHP as well, and set it up as an Apache module without root privileges (e.g. if you want to use a different PHP version than the one installed globally).

You may run into problems such as PHP’s configure script not detecting apxs2 (and thus not building an Apache module). Continue reading →

I got fed up with waiting/pestering Richard Mitton (aka Kayamon / @grumpygiant) to integrate the Very Sleepy patches I’ve sent him last year or putting the code on a software forge, so I’m publishing my patches on GitHub myself.

Very Sleepy is a polling Windows profiler with a wxWidgets-based GUI. This is a fork of the latest released version at the time of writing (0.82).

There have been a few more forks of Very Sleepy (e.g. here and here), but these are based off older versions. It’s possible that their changes had already been merged into the official version.

Update: I’ve continued development of my fork, at the above-mentioned location. Check the GitHub project for the changelog, downloads, and more information.

Update 2: Very Sleepy CS is now Very Sleepy!