Programming & Scripting

Revised: 2006-06-15 devin

Table Of Contents
    AppleScript is a scripting language that can automate repetitive tasks that users usually perform manually. It is powerful and easy to learn. These web pages are geared toward using AppleScript to manage a group of Mac's & Macintosh servers.

    When the kernel crashes on Mac OS X, the system displays a panic message. At this point the system will have to be restarted. But before hitting the reset button, how can one find out what caused the crash? Kernel panics are often caused by one or more of the following issues; defective or incompatible RAM, incompatible, obsolete, or corrupted kernel extensions, Incompatible, obsolete, or corrupted drivers, hard disk corruption, incorrect permissions or bugs. James will show how to set up 2 machine kernel debugging, which commands to run to do proper kernel autopsies, and which mail lists to send the results to in order to have someone else tell you what to do next. He'll also briefly cover setting up a Kernel Core Dump server, and how to build a custom kernel.

    Eclipse was originally designed for building integrated development environments (IDEs), that were versatile enough to create applications for a range of programming languages. The intention was to provide tools makers with an IDE that would include mechanisms and rules that would consistently result in seamless tools integration. Since then, Eclipse has evolved to include an IDE that provides benefits for a wide range of development projects. Because it is Java-based, Eclipse includes the Java Development Kit (JDK); and yet its architecture supports all major programming languages from C/C++ to Cobol. Gary gave an overview of Eclipse and background of its use under Mac OS X.

    Eggplant allows you to automate software testing, system administration, network administration or any activity you can name. It’s cross-platform and works across the net. The developers, Redstone Software, describe its ease-of-use as “anyone can use it to automate operations within two hours.” You can see Eggplant in action at www.redstonesoftware.com. John, who is with RedStone Software, will show you Eggplant and discuss how you can use it.

    Git is a free distributed revision control, or software source code management project with an emphasis on being fast. Git was initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. Every Git working directory is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server.

    iHook is a graphical frontend for any commandline executable. With iHook, your scripts or UNIX tools can provide user feedback in an aqua window. It is much easier than writing a Cocoa NSTask wrapper or an AppleScript Studio application. James has been using iHook as part of Student Computing Labs' Mac OS X deployment. He will cover why iHook is an important tool as well as discuss how to use it.

    Matthew Stoker is the co-founder of Pixio Software and developer of MobileFinder. He has been involved in iPhone development since July 2007. His work on the iPhone has been featured in Popular Science. He is currently serving as President of the iPhone Programmer's Association.

    This presentation will show how to use the PerlObjCBridge to read plist files in Perl scripts.

    RSS is a standard for syndicating frequently updated content from a site via a news aggregator, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. With the popularity of the iPod, there has emerged a new category of RSS called Podcasting. James will give an overview of RSS & XML, with coding examples, RSS & XML tools, and info about tutorials and sites.

    Ruby on Rails is a web framework that makes developing webapps really easy. In many ways it has thrown away past conventions and caters to the developer by providing easy commands to do the stuff that every webapp does. For example, one can use a single command to verify that a field on a form submission is a number before adding it to the database. Another example is a single command that allows the developer to send messages to the next webpage, and that message goes away with a refresh, messages like "incorrect password".

    Overview on how to create StartupItems, LoginHooks, and LogoutHooks, which are useful to run maintenance or start automated daemons.

    TextMate is a versatile plain text editor with a unique and innovative feature set which caused it to win an Apple Design Award for Best Mac OS X Developer Tool in August 2006. A rapidly growing community have created modes for more than a hundred different "modes" including support for all major programming languages, writing prose in structured formats such as LaTeX, Markdown, Textile, etc., blogging, running SQL queries, writing screen plays, doing your budget, and much much more.