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OK, this one only hit me today, but it bugged me, so I’ll blog it before I forget. Hopefully someone else will find it useful.

MinGW, or may be more specifically GDC, cannot find the standard include “object.d” if you are compiling files on a different drive in Windows.

To be more specific, my source code is stored in a directory on a network share mapped to a drive “P:”. If I try and compile the source code using GDC from the “P:” drive, it errors saying that it cannot find file “object.d”. However, if you change to the “C:” drive (or wherever MinGW is installed) and compile the file on the remote drive from there, it works.

E.G.

p:\> gdc mytest.dCannot find file "object.d"p:\> c:c:\> gdc p:\mytest.d<No Errors>

It seems to be, that the libraries are searched on the drive of the working directory, and not “always c:\”. I’m pretty sure that you can get around this with “-L” or “-I” directives to GDC, or setting some environment variable, but finding any reference to how to do this is like looking for rocking horse poo.

I can’t confirm whether this happens on other platforms yet or not, but I suspect it wouldn’t on systems with a Unified Directory Structure (such as Linux and MacOS X), as you are always on the same “drive”.

Mark Uncategorized

I’ve been having a problem with Apache Ant for sometime. Whenever I ran it, I got an error about “tools.jar” not being found.

I finally got fed up with it this morning, and have quite quickly managed to find the solution to the problem. And wonderfully it’s all summed up in one short mailing list post, here.

Basically, on my Windows PC, I had installed the Java 1.5 JDK and the JRE. My path was set to use the JRE version of Java, but this does not have the “tools.jar” provided with it. However, it is supplied with the JDK.

So, to solve it, I simply added an environment variable called “JAVA_HOME”, and set it to the root of the JDK directory (in my case “C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_09″). I’ve just tried it, and the message has gone.

I can’t believe it was that easy!

Mark Uncategorized

I’ve discovered something that I don’t like about Mozilla Thunderbird.

At work, I got a new PC about 4-5 months ago, and went about installing all the software that makes life bearable.

It wasn’t until about two months though that I realised that I couldn’t send HTML emails. I usually send emails in Plain Text, but sometimes use HTML for sending jokes, or sprucing my presentation once in a blue moon. Problem was, it looked like I was completely missing the options to turn on the HTML toolbars, and select “HTML Format” from the menus etc.

I’ve just discovered what was wrong. In my Account Settings (Account? What does this have to do with my Account? It’s a preference thing, not an Account Setting!), I discovered the “Compose Messages in HTML format” option.

And here’s what gives me the rub. It’s a binary thing.

I’m either writing Plain Text emails, or writing HTML emails. No middle ground, no ability to tune it on a per email basis.

In Outlook (boo! hiss!), you have the option to default to Plain Text, but then convert to HTML whilst writing the email.

Admittedly in Thunderbird, you get the option later on, but it’s not the same. It just doesn’t flow well enough.

Please Thunderbird team, let me work fluidly, not rigidly.

Mark Uncategorized

I’ve just accidentally called people without a degree stupid. Right in front of my two managers, neither of which have degrees.

Does this, by default, make me stupid? Discuss.

Mark Uncategorized

Apparently Progress Software is able to manipulate the fabric of time, just by simply restoring a database.

restore: 11:14:38       Estimate 0 hours  1 minutes more processing    94 Percent complete.
restore: 11:15:38       Estimate 0 hours  1 minutes more processing    102 Percent complete.
restore: 11:16:38       Estimate 0 hours  1 minutes more processing    110 Percent complete.
restore: 11:17:38       Estimate 0 hours -1 minutes more processing    117 Percent complete.
restore: 11:18:38       Estimate 0 hours -2 minutes more processing    124 Percent complete. 

Thank god for that, those last two minutes were really dull – I’m glad I’ll get them back again.

Mark Uncategorized