[colug-432] February COLUG Meeting Announcement

[Rob Funk]

On Tuesday, February 21, 2012 09:49:06 AM Scott McCarty wrote:
> As a final comment on code compilation, I would say I am most intrigued by
> the Java world, where I have the least experience. I hear about all of
> these build tools. I think it would be quite interesting to see a side by
> side comparison of:
> 
> C
> Java
> Python
> Ruby

A comparison as languages, or as programming tool environments?

> Along with all of the build tools that are associated and their
> equivalents. I am quite familiar with C build tools as I think most Unix
> guys are (probably many on this list), but I am much less knowledgeable
> when it comes to the Java/Python/Ruby worlds, yet there is an endless sea
> of blog posts about RVM, VirtualEnv, Maven, Jenkins, etc.

Hm, the things you list do different things.
RVM switches between Ruby interpreters/environments. I'm not that familiar 
with the Python world but I get the impression that VirtualEnv does something 
similar there.
Maven is sort of an uber-make, optimized for Javaland but usable beyond that.
Jenkins is a build server, useful for running builds of projects for 
continuous integration testing or deployment; it calls other build tools 
(make, ant, maven, rake, whatever) to do the actual work.

> This level of
> "compiling open source", I believe, is extremely applicable to the modern
> professional Linux person and I would love to see a talk expanded into
> this are of compilation/building free software.

I might be able to contribute to something like this, with my experience in C, 
Ruby, and a little Java. (Though these days I'm doing Javascript and PHP, and 
my Ruby is a few years out of date.)