open source on Andrés Álvarez

Tech and Open Source Chinese Vocabulary

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The following is my personal curated list of Chinese terms (in Traditional Chinese) and vocabulary used in web development, programming, technology and open source. Chinese Word Pinyin Definition 修復 xiū fù Repair, fix (bug) 發版 fā bǎn To release a version 報錯 baò cuò Error report/message 組件 zǔ jiàn Component 版本 bǎn běn Version 更新 gèng xīn To update/upgrade 顯示 xiǎn shì Show, display 表格 biaǒ gé Form, table 按鈕 àn niú Button, to press a button 重新 chóng xīn Retry (verb) 項目 xiàng mù Project 需求 xū qiú Request 代碼 dài mǎ Code 源碼 yuán mǎ Source code 固定 gù dìng Fixed, regular 內容 nèi róng Content 輸入 shū rù Input, to input 屬性 shǔ xìng attribute, property 路由 lù yóu routing 參考 cān kǎo Consult, refer to, reference 標題 biaō tí title, heading 一致 yī zhì consistent, identical 默認 mò rèn default 里程碑 lǐ chéng bēi milestone 圖標 tú biaō icon 接口 jiē koǔ interface, port 操作系統 Cāozuò xìtǒng operating system 支持 zhī chí support 佈局 bù jú layout

Reworking Ace's HAML Syntax Highlighting

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Ace is a great web text editor and the default editor for Cloud 9 IDE. I have been using it for many years without any complaints at all. However I was not very satisfied with the HAML syntax highlighting, which seemed to have some problems caused by indentation when highlighting some tokens. Additionally, it didn't support correct highlighting of some HAML stuff such as HAML comments (which begin with -#) or block comments.

This is how Ace's HAML syntax highlighting issues look like:

I proceeded to study Ace's logic for syntax highlighting. It consists basically on a lexer that reads the input through different regular expressions and proceeds to different stages depending on the regular expression caught. Basically, a state machine. The source where this happens is found in lib/ace/mode/haml_highlight_rules.js

Defining States

A few states have to be defined to represent where the lexer currently “stands” in regards to the code. For example, entering a multi-block comment could represent entering a new state, since everything parsed in this state would belong to this block comment until the block ends, this will also mean another change of state.

In Ace, all syntax highlighting lexers must begin with a start state. From this state we can switch to other defined states. The example below shows how we begin from the start state and can jump to a comment block state when the code matches a regular expression that represents this:

this.$rules = {
    "start": [
        {
            token: "comment.block", // multiline HTML comment
            regex: /^\/$/,
            next: "comment"
        },
        {
            token: "comment.block", // multiline HAML comment
            regex: /^\-#$/,
            next: "comment"
},

/* ... */

Notice that we define 2 different comment types, since HAML supports HAML (not rendered in HTML) and HTML (rendered in HTML) comments. Both of these different regular expressions will make the lexer parse them as comment.block tokens, and will also make the lexer jump to a comment state, denoted by the next keyword.

Getting Started on Contributing to OpenStack

Tue, 14 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I have started to become interested in contributing to the OpenStack project. Starting to contribute to such a massive project can seem like a daunting task, and it is. It is only by arming yourself with the proper tools and knowledge prior to contributing, that you will have a smoother process. I created this blog post to smooth that process.

Picking a Project

OpenStack is composed of many different projects for different purposes (compute, storage, networking, telemetry, etc.). Before you start contributing, you must have an idea of which project you actually want to contribute to. In my case I have decided on the Telemetry part, more specifically on Ceilometer.

After you have picked a project, it is time to start reading its documentation and developer documentation to understand how it works. The Ceilometer developer documentation offers good explanations and diagrams of its architecture and components.

Here is another nice guide on contributing to Ceilometer.