A friend contacted me today, asking me “What are the best practices for failover with Postgres?” And he mentioned pgpool-II.
He was interested in 9.0, since 9.1 hasn’t been released yet. (but, it’s looking like we’re gearing up for a September release!)
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I am working on a little project that requires a bit of perl and some database modules. I’m running Leopard, which ships with Perl 5.8.8. That kinda sucks.
So, I tried to work with a binary installer. Which was, for a number of reasons, a failure.
Given my recent experience with virtualenv and Python, I started looking into what’s the state of the art in this area for Perl.
The suggestion from the Perl home page is “perlbrew”. I took it for a spin.
tar zxvf App-perlbrew-0.28.tar.gz
...selena@lulu:Downloads #553 14:12 :( cd App-perlbrew-0.28
selena@lulu:App-perlbrew-0.28 #554 14:12 :) perl Makefile.PLChecking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Warning: prerequisite Devel::PatchPerl 0.26 not found.
Warning: prerequisite File::Path::Tiny 0 not found.
Warning: prerequisite IO::All 0 not found.
Warning: prerequisite Path::Class 0 not found.
Warning: prerequisite Test::Output 0 not found.
Warning: prerequisite Test::Spec 0 not found.
Writing Makefile for App::perlbrew
Hmmm… So I tried to use cpanm to get it going:
selena@lulu:App-perlbrew-0.28 #557 14:13 :( sudo cpanm App::perlbrew
...
Building and testing App-perlbrew-0.28 for App::perlbrew ... FAIL
! Installing App::perlbrew failed. See /Users/selena/.cpanm/build.log for details.
🙁
So I asked a friend. Who pointed me at his build script. And, at least for this project, that’s what I’m going to use.
Is perlbrew what most folks use for this type of thing? Is there some other virtualenv equivalent out there?
The Sunday before OSCON, I gathered a group of women who work with open “stuff” to participate in a workshop on negotiation with David Eaves. He talked a little bit about his recent work in open source communities in an interview with Ed Dumbill. I’ve mentioned David a few times in previous posts here, and was excited to finally get to meet him in person.
My goal in bringing people together was to launch an effort among open source communities to recognize negotiation as a core, required skill. I decided to target women in open source as the initial audience.
The day-long training was structured around two simulations, one based on personal experiences, and the other using an entertaining business situation – where two sides come together after about 45 minutes of research to negotiate an agreement.
Much of the “lecture” time was spent identifying key steps in a negotiation, and sharing a framework that helps individuals prepare for difficult conversations. A key feedback loop was:
It’s a very simple loop, but crystalizes much of the core of what negotiation is about. Preparation, execution, targeting a goal and reflection.
Like much of what I covered in the “Mistakes were made” talk, the diagram documents and reveals common sense as a system. Negotiation is a feedback loop, and there’s always opportunity for even better, more collaborative and satisfying deals.
Another revealing point in the workshop was that the goal of a negotiation is not necessarily to come to an agreement, but to find an acceptable resolution. That includes a BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). Which is to say – enter into a negotiation with a clear idea of what your alternative is, and what your bottom line is so that you can feel comfortable walking away knowing what your next step is (even if it is not your preferred step).
Finally, during the workshop and simulations, I realized how many of the research and bits of process that were suggested I was already doing! It was very nice to leave with a framework for future negotiation, and a set of questions to ask myself and others.
My reaction to the preparation was to consider how I could share whatever I prepared with my negotiating partner in the future. And then I realized that probably wouldn’t always work, but it was a lovely thought. What if we could develop the strength in more of our relationships to be that open and direct?
I highly recommend attending any workshop that David gives in the future, and will be blogging about some suggested reading as I get through the books.
Leslie Hawthorn has blogged about her experience.
We were able to hold the workshop, thanks to the sponsorships of Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, Google, Technocation, Inc and O’Reilly.
Update: added “code review” to the things that we’re doing well below.
There were a couple themes for me from OSCON last week. One is transitions and change. I’ve got a whole slew of thoughts on this, particularly from my experience leaving the management team of Open Source Bridge.
But the other is the importance of doing things badly. In particular, the importance of doing things badly in open source.
Tim Anglade, at about 41:10, says that he thinks the reason why open source companies make money is because open source is kind of shitty (from an interview he did with Cliff Moon last fall). So, on one hand there’s a Money Making Opportunity. Probably not the one that we’d all prefer, but it is what it is.
When he said that, I immediately thought about the other things that we do badly (other than documentation) and the discussions I’d been having with people last week.
Basically, we had a problem in the Postgres community of experienced developers solving every small bug at nearly the moment it was reported. It’s sort of like a cat sitting at the entrance of the only mousehole.
The effect on the code is amazing – we have clearly documented, concise and consistent code. But the effect on the community is that we don’t have mid-level developers, and it is very difficult for inexperienced developers to build up a portfolio of small projects, based on bugs.
I don’t have a ready solution for this problem. And I do not mean this as a criticism of the thousands of hours our core teams have devoted to fixing bugs. We all benefit from the dedication. I am just pointing out that our system had a clear tradeoff – fewer contributors.
What we could do a bit worse (to address the point of this blog post) is lengthen our response time to solving bugs, and let some less experienced developers respond to the bugs queue. This probably involves creating a bug tracker and holding the tension a bit longer on fixes.
Our committers have made efforts toward spreading the load around more – with commitfest – meaning a greater support of code review, with Tom’s recent presentations about the planner, with our wiki-fied Todo list. And there are many more examples of our committers putting real effort into mentoring, tutoring and finding ways of bringing more people in.
The thing that’s missing from all of those efforts, however, is urgency. That’s what bug-fixing is great for. That’s why we have people who remain in operations work even if they hate being woken up at 3am. Urgent work is worthwhile work (mostly).
I’m sure there are other particular areas where we could do things worse, and thus invite more people to contribute. I’ll be thinking about this more in regard to our project event planning, as I think there’s a bit of a disconnect there, and a huge opportunity to involve more people.
I’m reminded again of David Eaves’ talks about how community management is the core competency of open source, not technology. I struggle with that thought every day, but it rings truer the more I try to work on the significant problems facing any particular open source project.