Universe SoC

Testing the CPython Core

lh — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:57:00 +0200

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

When Guido van Rossum mentioned that one of our Google Highly Open Participation Contest™ (GHOP) students, Benjamin Peterson, was interested in doing a more extensive project on Python testing, we were happy to help. Benjamin Peterson recently finished his work on testing the CPython core and was kind enough to send us this report.

Benjamin writes:
With sponsorship from Google, I’ve just spent the summer working on the tests for the CPython core.

I spent a lot of time working on the test driver, regrtest.py, in order to make implementing features easier in the future. One of the ugliest parts of regrtest.py is that it kept a list of all the tests that could be expected to be skipped on a platform, so I moved this logic to the tests themselves. In the end, I wasn’t able to fully remove Python core related logic from it, but the removal of expected skip lists simplified the program greatly.

I made command line use of regrtest easier in several ways. When specifying tests, one no longer needs to give the test_ prefix. I also implemented test selectors which allow a range of tests to be specified. For these new features, I added unittests. Another major feature is that regrtest automatically writes a list of the tests run, with failures and skips noted, after each testing session. The session can be rerun exactly the same way on another computer by reading the file with the -f option.

Finely grained test skipping is another important feature. New decorators in test_support allow whole test cases and individual methods to be skipped. Decorators range from the generic skip_if, which skips when the condition passed to it is true, to skip_on_platform, which skips if any of the listed platforms are in sys.platform. I hope that some form of these decorators can be included in unittest eventually.

I visited each of the 361 tests to upgrade it to use my new features. I was able to consolidate some tests with each other. A few tests that escaped earlier sprints were converted to unittest.

I really had a fantastic experience this summer. I learned an incredible amount from nice, patient people and look forward to next year! Many thanks to Georg Brandi, my awesome mentor, Guido van Rossum and the rest of the Python core development team, and Google’s Open Source Programs Office for making this possible.
And in other news Python and GHOP, Zachary Voase, another Python GHOP student, recently attended Campus Party in Valencia, Spain, and spoke about his experiences in the contest. You can check out the video of Zack, along with some of our Google Summer of Code™ students, on YouTube. (Campus Party site and video are both in Spanish.)

Testing the CPython Core

lh — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:57:00 +0200

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

Benjamin writes:
With sponsorship from Google, I’ve just spent the summer working on the tests for the CPython core.

I visited each of the 361 tests to upgrade it to use my new features. I was able to consolidate some tests with each other. A few tests that escaped earlier sprints were converted to unittest.

I really had a fantastic experience this summer. I learned an incredible amount from nice, patient people and look forward to next year! Many thanks to Georg Brandl, my awesome mentor, Guido van Rossum and the rest of the Python core development team, and Google’s Open Source Programs Office for making this possible.
And in other news Python and GHOP, Zachary Voase, another Python GHOP student, recently attended Campus Party in Valencia, Spain, and spoke about his experiences in the contest. You can check out the video of Zack, along with some of our Google Summer of Code™ students, on YouTube. (Campus Party site and video are both in Spanish.)

Mobile fish farms

lglira — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:34:00 +0200

A quick update, just to break the silence

jmingtan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:23:00 +0200

I’ve posted a new Windows build, and am currently trying to get the client to work fully with the python-ogre deb on Ubuntu. As expected, getting python-ogre to work on Mac is quite a chore, I’m almost there, got everything compiled but running the demos gives me a “wrapper” error, and I’ll probably have to understand how the code generation in python-ogre works to figure it out.
Packaging issues aside, I’ve made a few updates to the client. The lines in the screen represent “Wormholes”, which are basically routes between star systems. Currently, only the Risk ruleset uses this feature, so lines won’t display anywhere else, such as on the demo1.thousandparsec.net server which usually runs Minisec.

I’ve also tweaked the “Information” window to show more useful information such as the planetary resources (I tested it with the “Armies” resource in Risk). In general, I’m trying to locate more crashes by testing the client with different systems and python-ogre builds. OgreAL has been a little problematic, and it’s one of the things which I am trying to get working with the linux python-ogre deb file.
My main concern about the client is the performance on older hardware. Mithro informed me that even the login screen runs at a crawl on his laptop, which is probably due to the large textures used in the skybox (1024x1024). I guess a solution to this would be to offer a lower-resolution skybox thats selectable from the options menu.
I’ve started my industrial attachment, so I’m pretty much limited to weekends. Nevertheless, I’ll be continuing to update the client, and when tp04 support has been added content management will be a lot more elegant, allowing “media” tags which mean no more hardcoded graphics. Another thing I’m looking forward to is more battlexml support in the servers. On my end, I also hope to include some shaders to give game objects a more realistic look, but there are still many things to work out before I have time for that.

P.S. If you zoom in on the pictures it kinda looks like those old VGA games.

From Dev Hobby

Knight Foundation's News Challenge Contest

lglira — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:29:00 +0200

Knight Foundation has launched the third year of the Knight News Challenge, a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news and information exchange. The deadline for applications is Nov. 1, 2008.

A simple online entry form is available at www.newschallenge.org.

Comienza la Liga

penyaskito — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:11:29 +0200

Pequeño descanso en mi apretado horario esta semana. Ojeada a la prensa deportiva, que este fin de semana de primera jornada no he podido seguir el comienzo de la liga.
Noticia destacada del Marca: “el R.Madrid vuelve a la carga con Villa”.
Noticia destacada del Mundo Deportivo: “[Arshavin] No se mueve”.
¿Los resultados de ayer? Barça y Madrid perdieron. Y me alegro. Soy simpatizante del Barça, pero esto es fútbol y no un circo, que es lo que montan estos dos equipos.
Espero que este año gane la liga el Osasuna.

Алфавит 2008 по версии Google.ru

sv — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:58:00 +0200

Алфавит по версии версии google suggest:

а=анекдоты
б=билайн
в= в контакте
г=гороскоп
д=дом 2
е=евросеть
ё=ёж
ж=жди меня
з=зайцев нет
и=игры
й=йога
к=контакт
л=любовные смс
м=музыка
н=новости
о=одноклассники
п=погода
р=работа
с=сонник
т=техносила
у=укрзалізниця
ф=фото
х=хонда
ц=цитаты
ч=чат
ь=ьнызфсу(myspace)
ш=шкода
щ=щитовидная железа
ъ=ъж
э=эльдорадо
ю=южная осетия
я=яндекс

Интересно то, что алфавит для .ru и для .com немного отличаются.

Алфавит 2008 по версии Google.ru

sv — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:58:00 +0200

Алфавит по версии версии google suggest:

а=анекдоты
б=билайн
в= в контакте
г=гороскоп
д=дом 2
е=евросеть
ё=ёж
ж=жди меня
з=зайцев нет
и=игры
й=йога
к=контакт
л=любовные смс
м=музыка
н=новости
о=одноклассники
п=погода
р=работа
с=сонник
т=техносила
у=укрзалізниця
ф=фото
х=хонда
ц=цитаты
ч=чат
ш=шкода
щ=щитовидная железа
ь=ьнызфсу(myspace)
ы=ыьщекш(smotri.com)
ъ=ъж
э=эльдорадо
ю=южная осетия
я=яндекс

Интересно то, что алфавит для .ru и для .com немного отличаются.

Summer of Coders at Google Krakow

lh — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:48:00 +0200

By Martin Harvan, 2008 Student for the SIP Communicator project

I was thrilled when I found out there would be a Google Summer of Code meetup in Krakow, not far from where I live. I not only wanted to visit Google’s offices and see behind the scenes of Google, I was excited to meet fellow Summer of Code students and some of Google’s engineers. The office visit, which was held on August 4th, turned out to be just as fun as I anticipated.

After we arrived, our hosts showed us around the office and offered “java” and snacks. Following refreshments, a few of the employees informally introduced the projects they are working on and told us about life at Google. It was very interesting to see how many different projects are done in this single office.

Each of us 20+ students then got a short time to introduce what we were working on for our Summer of Code projects. Once again it was interesting to see the wide variety of projects. After we finished talking about our projects, we were given some cool Google swag and there was time for discussion, more food and some fun (table tennis, Wii tennis, RockBand etc.). Time went by very quickly and too soon it was time to go, so we took some pictures and said goodbye to our hosts.

The Science and Policy Behind Water

lglira — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:44:00 +0200

The National Academies have released “Drinking Water: Understanding the Science and Policy Behind a Critical Resource”. It is a free booklet designed to give the public a comprehensive introduction to drinking water issues.