void doDownload(IProgressMonitor monitor)
{
  monitor.beginTask("Downloading project...");
  try {
    // do the actual download here...
  }
  finally {
    monitor.done();
  }
}

Easy, nope? Now imagine that you call this function inside monitor.

public void doDownload(IProgressMonitor monitor)
{
  synchornized(lock) {
    doDownload(monitor);
  }
}

Ok, now you want to ask me what's wrong? The deal is that I'm using some other thread to do the actual download processing. This other thread executes some events to the listeners, and some of those listeners are running in UI thread updating some controls. So they use Display.asyncExec(...) function to run code in UI thread. Ok, so where is the problem? The problem is that some Eclipse progress displaying services are acquiring some other locks, and are executing some code with other locks they shouldn't. I explain this later.

The actual lock progress service use is RunnableLock. In comments of this class is that this is used that async and sync runnables do not interfere. They wait in asyncExec (in class Synchronizer) like this:

void asyncExec(Runnable runnable) {
  // Some code ...
  RunnableLock lock = new RunnableLock(runnable);
  synchronized(lock) {
    addToQueue(lock);
    while(lock.finished() == false)
     lock.wait();
}

And they are running the queue:

boolean runAsyncMessages(boolean all) {
  synchronized(lock) {
    lock.runnable.run();
    lock.setFinished(true);
  }
} 

So let's summarize it. The background thread acquires our lock, then progress monitor beast acquires runnable lock, and waits. The UI thread acquires RunnableLock at first, and then it happens. There are apparently some UI event loop executed by these listeners which runs our event listeners that want to acquire our background thread lock.  And the deadlock is here. This deadlock happened twice today, and it's hard to reproduce, so I cannot give you any stack trace... [-;

The bug on eclipse for has been filled here. So please feel free to add some comments.

Morale of this story? Be carefull. [-; When dealing with threads, there are not only your locks.

Solution - I use my own version of AccumulatingProgressMonitor in all entries which are called by some progress services. In this class I just have replaced all syncExec()s with asyncExec()s.

The packaged addin is here .

To run this addin copy the jar file to addins folder under your Tornado installation directory, and add "puakma.addin.log.LogAddin" to AddIns in puakma.config file, and reload server. I have done also testing addin: puakma.addin.log.TestLogAddin which is periodically sending some java logging events, so you might have a look how to use it.

Future - I want to make it better [-; I want to add some better configuration handling, and better formating since this is just hard coded stuff. Also maybe I will add support for Apache log4j library. But this is just the beginning.

I also have some links about java logging you might have a look at:

• An Introduction to Java Logging API at onjava.com
• Java Logging Overview at sun.com
• Java logging in J2SE at Oracle
  

So you might tell me that my measurement is biased. Maybe true. A little bit. HSQLDB doesn't contain much applications, and my Mysql system database contains a lot. This might slow down hsqldb on the same data, but I think that what makes the difference is that Mysql connects to the external data source via TCP/IP network connection, and doesn't transfer data in memory like HSQLDB does. Also it might be different on other OS/configuration. My system is Apple Powerbook, CPU PowerPC G4 1.5, 2GB RAM, MacOSX 10.4.8, Apple JDK 1.5.

I was also trying to optimize soapdesigner application structure load time, but unsuccessfully. So what is the conclusion from my measuring here? Using DOM for generating xml doesn't affect performance that much in comparison to using just StringBuffer to generate xml. Maybe on bigger data I might be wrong, or even on higher load I might be wrong, but this is what I have seen. But apparently there is smaller memory usage since I don't create objects for every new xml node. Also executing more SQL selects when trying to save some time transferring less data is not always helping. It's the same to make one select for the whole application with the design object's source and data than to select application, and than to select only design object data, and source to get class and package name. Maybe for bigger databases I would see some difference, but not here. Sorry 1MB application is not apparently enough, and I doubt that anybody would make that much bigger application.

So that was the tip from today. Now it is the time for traditional Spanish christmas dinner which shows us our Erasmus coordinator Gustavo Taberner. And we will continue with fiesta somewhere in the center of Madrid. I will tell you what is traditional Spanish Christmas dinner later (Even I don't know what is tradition here). [-;

Rename action menu 

At first how to get to the dialog. This nicely illustrates the next image:

Next are some samples how the editing looks like. 

editing schedule which is supposed to be executed every year on the 1. of july at 0:00

editing schedule which executes every 20 minutes every day in the week from 4:00 to 6:00 

What is the main message of the version 1.1? Webdesigner application is obsolete. [-; Well, not quite right, for small, last time fixes it's still great tool. But in version 1.1 there is nothing you could do in webdesigner, and not in Vortex. What was added from missing webddesigner features are:

• database schema designer
• sql query editor
• scheduled action scheduling
• action renaming
  

We have also added lot of things to make developer's life easier, and more productive. The major improvements are namely these:

• javadoc context help for puakma.jar
• blackbook integration in help system
• new version of Eclipse IDE 3.2, which is itself huge step forward at least on Mac
• improved html editor, new css, and javascript editors
  
• enhanced uploader
• new Tornado server command console view
  
• and of course many speed improvements, consistency, and bug fixes

The second trick allows you to magnify part of the screen under your cursor. It is a new feature of 10.4.8. This was also very handy during the development of the new Vortex database editor. Just press ctrl, and scroll you mouse wheel. Screen smoothly zooms in and out.

Anyway, I should explain what I'm gonna to do here. I'm here to spend a year here studying at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid at Facultad de informática. I will stay here as student of European-wide university exchange program Erasmus with about other 40 foreign students at the faculty. Madrid seems to be nice place to spend year, and I'm really looking forward to see the life in Spain closer. I also would like to learn Spanish better, and make some new contacts among the people I meet here.

I also plan to make some site only about my stay here, and I have some more content to put on this site too, so stay tuned.

You can find site about Vortex at the address http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/Web_Links-index-req-viewlink-cid-675.html. So check it out, and please, vote for it.

So what will this new editor know? It will know how to syntax highlight Tornado tags, HTML, but also JavaScript code and CSS inside your pages. Another new thing is hooking outline, so you will see structure of the file. You can see the outline on the left side on the top. Also new will be snippets which will contain some very useful pieces of code. Also there will be available editor of properties of every tag. Content assistance for Tornado tags, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

There is also terrible weather. On friday there was about 38 degrees which must be record here. And really, we are not used to it. Usually we have below 30 degrees during the summer, and we don't suffer from hot weather so much (but we suffer from rains, and cold more). But this is a problem in the whole Europe at the moment.

This hot weather brings also storms. I actually experienced one yesterday at the music festival Hrachovka. This festival had to be canceled after afternoon storm. We hide ourself in ambulance tent, but information tent on the right side flattened down, and also sound guy's tent flattened down, and it rained into his electronics. After while came firemen to remove ruins. Few minutes later something broke down on the main stage construction, and also beer tent felt down, and injured few people. After the storm they had to dismount two stages, and while after village mayor canceled festival because it was not safe to have 10000 on the place. So this was really bad luck. One sunny day more, and it could be phenomenal success. But we had to spend whole saturday in the pub, and we have seen only two band - the Exploited, and Slonovski Bal - Balkan orchestra on friday night.

But summer festivals do not end. In CZ we have at least two or three big music festivals every weekend. So there is lot of music, concerts, and theater for everyone. Next week I go with lot of people from Olomouc to every year's favorite Beseda u bigbítu. And I can't wait for it!

However it is not obvious how to make really nice disk image which opens Finder window of certain size, and with certain background. I have seached internet, but all tutorials tell only partially or not mention how to include creation of dmg image to your build system. So there is sumary how do we did it.

There are two basic steps - the first one you create only once, and then with every build you repeat the second in your build script. So the strategy is to create and setup dmg image, and then you copy files to image, and pack image with every build.

Create and setup empty dmg image

I created a new sparse disk image in disk utility application. This disk image is read/write, and sparse images can grow their size when needed (up to the limit from disk utility). So I saved the newly created image as "Puakma Vortex.sparseimage". I set size to 100MB, but it doesn't matter since we shrink dmg file at the end.

So the next step is to setup this sparseimage file. Open sparseimage in Finder. The image will mount to the /Volume directory under name of sparseimage (or dmg) file. Resize the window as you want. Copy the background file to some directory in the image. Now set the window background. Press cmd+J to open view settings dialog, and set background there.

Now we will hide this directory from finder. You can use two ways - the first one is to rename directory name to start with dot, so this will be UNIX hidden file, or use SetFile utility from Apple's developer tools. I used SetFile utility from terminal which hided directory on the mounted disk image. Also note quotes around the file.

/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V "/Volumes/Puakma Vortex/background"

At the end you will need to create link to the /Application directory. You also might want to setup position of icons in the folder. Just drag icon at some place, and that's it.

Copy your application to image 

For this part you might want to use some script because this will be repeated task mostly included in your build system. So there is what I have to setup Vortex:

# mount image
hdiutil attach "Puakma Vortex.sparseimage"
# remove all directorues and files from Puakma Vortex directory from that image
rm -Rf "/Volumes/Puakma Vortex/Puakma Vortex/*"
 # copy all needed files - you can use rsync instead of this command, 
# and the previous one, but Vortex has setup consisting from more parts
cp -R what "/Volumes/Puakma Vortex/Puakma Vortex/"
# and unmount image at the end
hdiutil detach "/Volumes/Puakma Vortex"

Shrink the image

The last step which should be done also in your build script is to shrink the file to the size which is necessary, and create dmg file.

hdiutil compact  "Puakma Vortex.sparseimage"
rm -f "Puakma Vortex.dmg"
hdiutil convert -format UDZO -o "Puakma Vortex.dmg" "Puakma Vortex.sparseimage"

So that's all, hope you enjoy new installation procedure for Mac.

My name is Martin Novák. I live in Prague in Czech Republic, and I study there computer science at Czech Technical University . Prague is one of the most beautiful cities around the world which is need to visit, and spend few days. I love Prague, however I have never considered Prague being my real home. I study there, and live there, but my hometown has always been Olomouc which is in Haná region in Morava - it's in the eastern part of Czech Republic about 300 km on the east of Prague. Olomouc is beautiful historical town which is small enough to live without stress, and big enough to have lot of fun there. Olomouc has the second largest historical town in country after Prague, but it's really peacuful.

I work for webWise Network Consultants, small Aussie company from Sydney doing wonderful things around Puakma technologies , and some other computing stuff. I develop Puakma Vortex which is plugin for Eclipse helping people to develop applications for Puakma Tornado server.

I would like to write about technology, specially about Puakma, Eclipse, Java, and MacOSX. And sometimes you will hear from me some other comments about various interesting things. I hope you will enjoy reading!