NetKernel News Volume 1 Issue 2

October 30th 2010

What's new this week?

Well this proves the first newsletter wasn't a one hit wonder...

Repository News

(For new readers, we use the newsletter to let you know about updates to the complete NKSE tool set - including libraries that can be installed from the repository. Just got to http://localhost:1060/apposite/admin/ and hit "Sync" then look at "Packages" to see these updates for installation.)

Distribution Updates

nkse-dev-tools - was tweaked to be tolerant of whitespace in the kernel.properties file. So now the Kernel Settings tool will let you change proxy port number and also cope with hand edited files.

lang-dpml - An update was made to preserve argument identifiers when passed to sub-requests. This fixes an issue reported by Huib (sorry we don't know your full name!) where an attempt to simply relay on an argument identifier in a subrequest (in this case to active:httpPut) was instead getting a reference to the internal DPML state space.

A new feature has been added - <declare-tag> has been implemented to support tag macros for extending the DPML syntax. Several people have requested the ability to modify the core DPML syntax to support HTTP query arguments. Well rather than hard code a specific technology into the language, tag macros let you extend the language and will allow us all to create importable extension libraries for domain specific stuff. The DPML documentation explain how to use this new feature.

Repository Updates

lang-clojure - functional languages are an area of active development in the wider Java community. We have started an experimental development effort to provide Clojure (http://clojure.net) as a language runtime on NetKernel.

There are underlying issues with the way clojure is internally implemented that mean it is not really ready for embedding and we are actively contributing to the project to try to make it more friendly. However if you want to experiment there is now a full clojure language runtime for NetKernel: active:clojure. Be aware that the clojure threading model does not shutdown cleanly and so will result in internal clojure memory leaks with long term use of this experimental version.

If you're looking to experiment you need to add the "multiverse" set to your apposite tool. (We put unsupported 3rd party stuff and 1060's pre-production packages in to the repository set called "multiverse").

Go to apposite admin -> http://localhost:1060/apposite/admin/ and in the NetKerne.org repository click "add set". Enter "multiverse" (without quotes). Now test the connection. Sync and look at packages for "uninstalled". There is "lang-clojure" ready for install.

(You'll also find Chris Cormack's nkchart, chart generation library in multiverse too - does this guy never sleep?).

ROC News

Tony has been at it again. This week he's been exploring the notion of scope and how you can choose to use both static and dynamic scoping with the NK address space...

http://durablescope.blogspot.com/

I gave my talk at the Server Side Java Symposium in Prague, slides are still available.

http://www.slideshare.net/javasymposium/peter-rodgers-net-kernel-presenation

One very decent bloke in the audience, Tim Berglund (also a speaker at the conf), twittered this while I was talking: "@pjr1060 showing us the basics of NetKernel, causing me again to think I've been doing it all wrong. "It" being "software." :)" - which shows that I must have got something over or he's a post-modern satirist.

Enterprise Edition Preview Programme

There wasn't opportunity to cut the first preview build just yet - we plan to get that out next week. So if you'd like to get early access to the build please email:

nkee-access-program@1060research.com

Well that concludes episode two. Enjoy the weekend!