Author: Sam

  • Tying A Build Together with Jenkins

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    Recently I wrote about the project I’m working on, and mentioned the range of technologies used in support of that effort. Since then, I’ve written about the building, testing and documentation tools I used, but today I’d like to discuss how everything is tied together using Jenkins. Jenkins is a tool that enables continuous integration…

  • Automating all Aspects of a Build with Maven Plugins

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    I’ve mentioned in recent posts that I recently wrote some software called the MDCF Architect for my research, and along with the implementation (an eclipse plugin), I also built a number of supporting artifacts — things like developer-targeted documentation and testing with coverage information. Integrating these (and other) build features with Maven is often pretty…

  • Documenting a language using a custom Sphinx domain and Pygments lexer

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    Recently I’ve been looking at the software engineering tools / techniques I used when engineering the MDCF Architect (see my original post). Today I’m going to talk about Sphinx and Pygments — tools used by my research lab for developer-facing documentation.  Both of these tools work great “out of the box” for most setups, but…

  • Building an Eclipse Plugin with Maven Tycho

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    In a recent post, I wrote about my current research project: a restricted subset of AADL and a translator that converts from this subset to Java. Since AADL has a pretty nice Eclipse plugin in OSATE2, I think it’s pretty natural to build on top of that. Not only does this make for an easy…

  • Eclipse Plug-In Testing with JUnit Plug-In Tests

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    I recently mentioned that my current research project is a subset of AADL and an associated Eclipse plug-in which translates from that subset into Java.  Since both my advisors and I are interested in following recommended software engineering practices, I needed to figure out how to programmatically test my plug-in’s functionality. Unfortunately, testing an Eclipse plug-in…

  • Building a truly waterproof geocache

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    A friend whose family has access to a fairly large pond invited me and a group of friends out for a day of swimming and boating. While out enjoying a lovely Kansas day, I found a spot on the pond — an island — that I thought would make a perfect spot for a geocache.…

  • Using a subset of AADL to define medical application architectures

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    Late last year (October-ish) I began working on a way to specify the software architecture of applications (apps) that run on medical application platforms (MAPs).  The specification takes the form of a subset of the Architecture Analysis and Description Language (AADL) and some supporting tooling — namely a plugin for OSATE2 (an Eclipse distribution which…

  • A cache on a peninsula

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    Today I found a geocache wayyy out on a peninsula on Milford Lake: It was a really difficult hike (at times — one commenter described it as “by far the most rigorous cache I’ve found”) but I think it was worth it — the view from the edge of the peninsula (a sandy cliff maybe…

  • I made an Android app!

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    So, I’ve become a fan of watching professional videogames — in particular, Starcraft 2.  Unfortunately, since videogames aren’t yet popular enough to be covered by the likes of ESPN, it’s sort of difficult to quickly check the scores of popular matches on a smartphone.  I decided to try and build an app for my phone…

  • A trip to Dallas

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    On Monday, I got back from my third (and final, for a while at least) trip to a major city.  I’ve previously discussed my trips to Boston and New Orleans, which were both for work, but this trip was to a huge Starcraft 2 / League of Legends tournament at MLG Dallas.  I went there…