I was discussing the topic of the next Pike conference with Martin Baehr earlier, and we thought that it might be good to share our thoughts and get a discussion going.
Basically, the conversation centered around 2 points: where to have it, and when to have it. On the first point of location, Martin has done some initial legwork. He's located a few potential locations, at least one of which has real potential in my mind. I'll let him talk about them if he feels it appropriate.
The subject of when to have the conference is a little bit more important to me, as I'm starting a new job and need to know when I'm going to be away from work. Ideally, I'd like to be able to attend, and for that to happen, a date range somewhere between the middle of September to the beginning of October would be ideal. I say ideal because it gives us about a year since the previous conference, it's not in a peak vacation period for many people with jobs, and the weather hasn't turned unpleasant for those with travel/holiday plans incorporating the conference.
For those who aren't keeping track, last year's conference ran roughly between the 24th and 28th of September in Paderborn, Germany.
Any thoughts?
Bill
Personally, I would prefer beginning of October. I hope to start a new job as well any time now and I would like to have a full month of work after the vacation period in Sweden (which ends somewhere around end of August). I was unable to participate last year but I hope I will do better this year.. ;)
Please enlighten us on your thoughts for location, I'm curious...
/ Marcus Agehall (Scanian)
Previous text:
2004-05-25 04:30: Subject: conference thoughts
I was discussing the topic of the next Pike conference with Martin Baehr earlier, and we thought that it might be good to share our thoughts and get a discussion going.
Basically, the conversation centered around 2 points: where to have it, and when to have it. On the first point of location, Martin has done some initial legwork. He's located a few potential locations, at least one of which has real potential in my mind. I'll let him talk about them if he feels it appropriate.
The subject of when to have the conference is a little bit more important to me, as I'm starting a new job and need to know when I'm going to be away from work. Ideally, I'd like to be able to attend, and for that to happen, a date range somewhere between the middle of September to the beginning of October would be ideal. I say ideal because it gives us about a year since the previous conference, it's not in a peak vacation period for many people with jobs, and the weather hasn't turned unpleasant for those with travel/holiday plans incorporating the conference.
For those who aren't keeping track, last year's conference ran roughly between the 24th and 28th of September in Paderborn, Germany.
Any thoughts?
Bill
/ Brevbäraren
Having the conference during the first week in October would probably work for me, too. Obviously, we should try to pick a time that's convenient for as many as possible. Any others have opinions? A decision should probably be made within the next month, so that others have time to plan around it.
I think Martin's leading option was somewhere around Essen, Germany. There's apparently an interesting option for space and housing; there would be local publicity if I'm not mistaken, and the additional possibility of involving some local Pike-users at the University in Essen.
I think that the Linkeo folks also expressed interest, though they might be too busy this time around to make that happen. I don't know if Martin cares to elaborate on these or other potential options or not :)
Bill
On Tue, 25 May 2004, Marcus Agehall (Scanian) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:
Personally, I would prefer beginning of October. I hope to start a new job as well any time now and I would like to have a full month of work after the vacation period in Sweden (which ends somewhere around end of August). I was unable to participate last year but I hope I will do better this year.. ;)
Please enlighten us on your thoughts for location, I'm curious...
/ Marcus Agehall (Scanian)
Hi,
Personnaly I don't really see the interest for another Pike conference as long as the issues from the last conference are not fixed that is embedding and documentation of the internals especially the later since I can understand that embedding is lot of work.
Bill Welliver wrote:
Having the conference during the first week in October would probably work for me, too. Obviously, we should try to pick a time that's convenient for as many as possible. Any others have opinions? A decision should probably be made within the next month, so that others have time to plan around it.
I think Martin's leading option was somewhere around Essen, Germany. There's apparently an interesting option for space and housing; there would be local publicity if I'm not mistaken, and the additional possibility of involving some local Pike-users at the University in Essen.
that's a strange way to look at things. the conference is supposed to get the community together and motivate us.
why would that depend on meeting the goals of the previous conference? are you implying that a conference will distract us from meeting our goals? on the contrary i'd say.
sure, it is a nice idea to try to meet the goals before the next conference. but for that we need to have the conference, otherwise we don't know what to aim for.
greetings, martin.
I tend to agree with Martin. Besides, there are a number of items that _will_ have been accomplished, such as a 7.6 release and the possibility of easily built external modules and a potential candidate for a module repository. There's also a good possibility that there will be a Book version of the pike tutorial, which were all goals from the last conference.
As martin mentioned, the whole purpose of a conference is to share ideas and discuss things in ways that aren't possible via electronic means. It lets us spread the word about Pike, and gets us excited about the tasks ahead. It certainly worked for me, I don't know about anyone else.
Bill
that's a strange way to look at things. the conference is supposed to get the community together and motivate us.
why would that depend on meeting the goals of the previous conference? are you implying that a conference will distract us from meeting our goals? on the contrary i'd say.
sure, it is a nice idea to try to meet the goals before the next conference. but for that we need to have the conference, otherwise we don't know what to aim for.
On Tue, 25 May 2004, David Gourdelier wrote:
Hi,
Personnaly I don't really see the interest for another Pike conference as long as the issues from the last conference are not fixed that is embedding and documentation of the internals especially the later since I can understand that embedding is lot of work.
I don't see why unfixed issues from the last conference speak against a new conference/meeting. Instead I'd like to know what happened in the development of pike, talk with developers and users. Yet I personally would vote against Essen. Simply because it's only about 150 km apart from Paderborn, where the last meeting took place. I'd find it more interesting to either have it in Linköping to give the core developers a better chance to participate. (Though this places to workload of the conference planning also on them), or to go to a totally different location far away from Paderborn to allow other pike-user communities to put a focus on their experiences with pike.
--- Ludger
Bill
Welliver wrote:
Having the conference during the first week in October would probably work for me, too. Obviously, we should try to pick a time that's convenient for as many as possible. Any others have opinions? A decision should probably be made within the next month, so that others have time to plan around it.
I think Martin's leading option was somewhere around Essen, Germany. There's apparently an interesting option for space and housing; there would be local publicity if I'm not mistaken, and the additional possibility of involving some local Pike-users at the University in Essen.
essen being so close to paderborn is the main reason why i have held back with that option that long in hope to see if any other alternatives come up.
linköping is not much better however because for many it is to far away and to expensive to get there.
i'd like to get more people from eg hungary involved.
greetings, martin.
Martin Bähr wrote:
essen being so close to paderborn is the main reason why i have held back with that option that long in hope to see if any other alternatives come up.
Another possibility might be Dresden. Uwe Aßmann, who sponsored Pike development at Linköping University, is moving there this summer to start working at Dresden University. (I don't know if he has the time to arrange a conference there so soon after getting there, but it's a possibility.)
linköping is not much better however because for many it is to far away and to expensive to get there.
I doubt it's significantly more expensive getting to Linköping than to any other likely Pike conference location in Europe. (Of course, if you live near Essen, it's probably cheaper to get to Essen, but for everybody else...)
Let's take a quick look at what it costs getting to Linköping from outside of Sweden:
First you take a plane to Stockholm/Skavsta airport. With RyanAir, the ticket costs 6 Euro from London/Stanstead, 10 Euro from Milan, 15 Euro from Brussels/Charleroi or 18 Euro from Frankfurt/Hahn. (Check www.ryanair.com for other places.) Airport fees, "terrorist tax" and some other things will add some 20 Euro to the basic ticket cost. Let's say this comes to about 35 Euro one way, meaning 70 Euro in total, both ways.
Bus from Stockholm/Skavsta airport to Linköping Central Station costs 160 Swedish crowns (about 18 Euro) for a return ticket. The bus ride takes about 90 minutes.
Local bus between Linköping Central Station and the conference site in Linköping (probably Linköping University) is about 1.5 Euro per trip if you pay with a "värdekort", which is a kind of bus-only cash card that you charge with 100 Swedish crowns (about 11 Euro) at a time.
So, something like 70+18+11 = 99 Euro, plus whatever it may cost you to get to an airport where you can go to Stockholm/Skavsta. (Stockholm/Arlanda or Norrköping International are also good airports for continuing to Linköping, but neither RyanAir nor EasyJet appear to have any flights going there, so the plane tickets probably cost more if you pick one of those airports.)
/ Leif Stensson, Lysator
Previous text:
2004-05-25 17:16: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
essen being so close to paderborn is the main reason why i have held back with that option that long in hope to see if any other alternatives come up.
linköping is not much better however because for many it is to far away and to expensive to get there.
i'd like to get more people from eg hungary involved.
greetings, martin.
/ Brevbäraren
fair point, i always forget about these cheap flights because i can never commit long enough in advance to book one of them. i tend to buy tickets on the day i leave...
greetings, martin.
Ryanairs pricing is highly depending on the phase of the moon or something, my ticket for tomorrow from Stanstead to Skavsta is E60.
/ Mirar
Previous text:
2004-05-29 03:48: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
Martin Bähr wrote:
essen being so close to paderborn is the main reason why i have held back with that option that long in hope to see if any other alternatives come up.
Another possibility might be Dresden. Uwe Aßmann, who sponsored Pike development at Linköping University, is moving there this summer to start working at Dresden University. (I don't know if he has the time to arrange a conference there so soon after getting there, but it's a possibility.)
linköping is not much better however because for many it is to far away and to expensive to get there.
I doubt it's significantly more expensive getting to Linköping than to any other likely Pike conference location in Europe. (Of course, if you live near Essen, it's probably cheaper to get to Essen, but for everybody else...)
Let's take a quick look at what it costs getting to Linköping from outside of Sweden:
First you take a plane to Stockholm/Skavsta airport. With RyanAir, the ticket costs 6 Euro from London/Stanstead, 10 Euro from Milan, 15 Euro from Brussels/Charleroi or 18 Euro from Frankfurt/Hahn. (Check www.ryanair.com for other places.) Airport fees, "terrorist tax" and some other things will add some 20 Euro to the basic ticket cost. Let's say this comes to about 35 Euro one way, meaning 70 Euro in total, both ways.
Bus from Stockholm/Skavsta airport to Linköping Central Station costs 160 Swedish crowns (about 18 Euro) for a return ticket. The bus ride takes about 90 minutes.
Local bus between Linköping Central Station and the conference site in Linköping (probably Linköping University) is about 1.5 Euro per trip if you pay with a "värdekort", which is a kind of bus-only cash card that you charge with 100 Swedish crowns (about 11 Euro) at a time.
So, something like 70+18+11 = 99 Euro, plus whatever it may cost you to get to an airport where you can go to Stockholm/Skavsta. (Stockholm/Arlanda or Norrköping International are also good airports for continuing to Linköping, but neither RyanAir nor EasyJet appear to have any flights going there, so the plane tickets probably cost more if you pick one of those airports.)
/ Leif Stensson, Lysator
Is that 60 Euro with or without the taxes and airport fees?
In my experience, it depends most of all on how long in advance you book, and to some extent on exactly when you want to go. It's not usually hard to get the lower prices if you book some weeks in advance and your planning doesn't limit your choice of flights too much.
/ Leif Stensson, Lysator
Previous text:
2004-05-29 15:27: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
Ryanairs pricing is highly depending on the phase of the moon or something, my ticket for tomorrow from Stanstead to Skavsta is E60.
/ Mirar
With taxes (about half, around 25 pounds, which should be static). The price varied a lot when I booked two weeks ago, from this price (19 pounds, iirc) to 179 pounds and back to around your price some weeks later. I *think* that if you want a good price, you need to book a month in advance.
Also, ryanair doesn't support changing planes. I'm trying that today anyway, hoping that nothing goes wrong...
/ Mirar
Previous text:
2004-05-30 00:03: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
Is that 60 Euro with or without the taxes and airport fees?
In my experience, it depends most of all on how long in advance you book, and to some extent on exactly when you want to go. It's not usually hard to get the lower prices if you book some weeks in advance and your planning doesn't limit your choice of flights too much.
/ Leif Stensson, Lysator
Personnaly I don't really see the interest for another Pike conference as long as the issues from the last conference are not fixed that is embedding and documentation of the internals especially the later since I can understand that embedding is lot of work.
Embedding is probably far less work than documentation.
/ Martin Nilsson (räfsfiskal)
Previous text:
2004-05-25 16:42: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
Hi,
Personnaly I don't really see the interest for another Pike conference as long as the issues from the last conference are not fixed that is embedding and documentation of the internals especially the later since I can understand that embedding is lot of work.
Bill Welliver wrote:
Having the conference during the first week in October would probably work for me, too. Obviously, we should try to pick a time that's convenient for as many as possible. Any others have opinions? A decision should probably be made within the next month, so that others have time to plan around it.
I think Martin's leading option was somewhere around Essen, Germany. There's apparently an interesting option for space and housing; there would be local publicity if I'm not mistaken, and the additional possibility of involving some local Pike-users at the University in Essen.
/ Brevbäraren
Embedding sort of stands at finding someone prepared to get some real work done. Afaik none of the oldtime core developers have committed themselves to it, so that leaves someone else that has to learn those parts (it's not that difficult - even I managed it (mostly) ;).
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2004-05-25 16:42: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
Hi,
Personnaly I don't really see the interest for another Pike conference as long as the issues from the last conference are not fixed that is embedding and documentation of the internals especially the later since I can understand that embedding is lot of work.
Bill Welliver wrote:
Having the conference during the first week in October would probably work for me, too. Obviously, we should try to pick a time that's convenient for as many as possible. Any others have opinions? A decision should probably be made within the next month, so that others have time to plan around it.
I think Martin's leading option was somewhere around Essen, Germany. There's apparently an interesting option for space and housing; there would be local publicity if I'm not mistaken, and the additional possibility of involving some local Pike-users at the University in Essen.
/ Brevbäraren
I'd say that documentation of the C sources is even more important because it is necessary for other developers to code in the core. As long as the existing core developers don't document new and old code they will complain about being alone.
The thing to understand is that it was much more easy for them to understand when the language was younger (less complex, less lines codes, optimizations) or even when they worked with the people who created it or for people that don't spend all their work time on Pike sources. Even if you feel it is, it is really not easy for someone coming from outside to understand Pike sources (especially given the number of lenghty macros used).
Even simple things like telling which functions is used from cmod free / allocate memory alone and/or add references or not is not available, you have to check in the sources.
For easy functions, I know sometime it is obvious to know that low_mapping_lookup is for looking a key in the mapping but it would save everyone's time to have an online reference without being forced to check the source to make sure it takes two arguments of type struct mapping *m, struct svalue *key. That it returns 0 is no entry match and that otherwise it return an svalue that contain the value* of the entry.
Now some core things would also be usefull like what is this debug_dmalloc that I see everywhere ? It seems handy, how could I use it in my cmod ? Or another question, how does Pike threading works ? What is THREADS_ALLOW / DISALLOW ? How does the interpreter lock works ? How does the gc works ? How to create Pike callback from a cmod ? hmmm, this function mega_apply looks interesting, how does it works exactly ? How does Pike_intrepreter struct works ? All these are only examples but they would fit perfectly in a tutorial.
Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS @ Pike developers forum wrote:
Embedding sort of stands at finding someone prepared to get some real work done. Afaik none of the oldtime core developers have committed themselves to it, so that leaves someone else that has to learn those parts (it's not that difficult - even I managed it (mostly) ;).
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2004-05-25 16:42: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
Hi,
Personnaly I don't really see the interest for another Pike conference as long as the issues from the last conference are not fixed that is embedding and documentation of the internals especially the later since I can understand that embedding is lot of work.
Bill Welliver wrote:
Having the conference during the first week in October would probably work for me, too. Obviously, we should try to pick a time that's convenient for as many as possible. Any others have opinions? A decision should probably be made within the next month, so that others have time to plan around it.
I think Martin's leading option was somewhere around Essen, Germany. There's apparently an interesting option for space and housing; there would be local publicity if I'm not mistaken, and the additional possibility of involving some local Pike-users at the University in Essen.
/ Brevbäraren
I'd say that documentation of the C sources is even more important because it is necessary for other developers to code in the core. As long as the existing core developers don't document new and old code they will complain about being alone.
You are wrong in much of what you are saying. I coded in C long ago and then almost forgot it. I never coded any C at all at Roxen. Then a year or so ago I decided to give it a go again and try to develop in C. I think I've asked about 5-10 questions in total in this forum and about the same number outside it, so it really isn't that hard, even if you don't know C.
I'm of course not opposed to having documentation, but it is in no way required in order to make a contribution.
/Martin Nilsson
/ Martin Nilsson (räfsfiskal)
Previous text:
2004-05-25 23:21: Subject: Pike internal doc [ was: conference thoughts ]
I'd say that documentation of the C sources is even more important because it is necessary for other developers to code in the core. As long as the existing core developers don't document new and old code they will complain about being alone.
The thing to understand is that it was much more easy for them to understand when the language was younger (less complex, less lines codes, optimizations) or even when they worked with the people who created it or for people that don't spend all their work time on Pike sources. Even if you feel it is, it is really not easy for someone coming from outside to understand Pike sources (especially given the number of lenghty macros used).
Even simple things like telling which functions is used from cmod free / allocate memory alone and/or add references or not is not available, you have to check in the sources.
For easy functions, I know sometime it is obvious to know that low_mapping_lookup is for looking a key in the mapping but it would save everyone's time to have an online reference without being forced to check the source to make sure it takes two arguments of type struct mapping *m, struct svalue *key. That it returns 0 is no entry match and that otherwise it return an svalue that contain the value* of the entry.
Now some core things would also be usefull like what is this debug_dmalloc that I see everywhere ? It seems handy, how could I use it in my cmod ? Or another question, how does Pike threading works ? What is THREADS_ALLOW / DISALLOW ? How does the interpreter lock works ? How does the gc works ? How to create Pike callback from a cmod ? hmmm, this function mega_apply looks interesting, how does it works exactly ? How does Pike_intrepreter struct works ? All these are only examples but they would fit perfectly in a tutorial.
Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS @ Pike developers forum wrote:
Embedding sort of stands at finding someone prepared to get some real work done. Afaik none of the oldtime core developers have committed themselves to it, so that leaves someone else that has to learn those parts (it's not that difficult - even I managed it (mostly) ;).
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2004-05-25 16:42: Subject: Re: conference thoughts
Hi,
Personnaly I don't really see the interest for another Pike conference as long as the issues from the last conference are not fixed that is embedding and documentation of the internals especially the later since I can understand that embedding is lot of work.
Bill Welliver wrote:
Having the conference during the first week in October would probably work for me, too. Obviously, we should try to pick a time that's convenient for as many as possible. Any others have opinions? A decision should probably be made within the next month, so that others have time to plan around it.
I think Martin's leading option was somewhere around Essen, Germany. There's apparently an interesting option for space and housing; there would be local publicity if I'm not mistaken, and the additional possibility of involving some local Pike-users at the University in Essen.
/ Brevbäraren
/ Brevbäraren
I think that the Linkeo folks also expressed interest, though they might be too busy this time around to make that happen.
As far as i know, no Pike hacker from Paris knows a way to get a free/cheap place for us to meet a couple of days.
More, this would be way more expensive in Paris than in Paderborn.
pike-devel@lists.lysator.liu.se
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Bertrand LUPART -
Bill Welliver -
David Gourdelier -
Leif Stensson, Lysator ＠ Pike developers forum -
Ludger Merkens -
Marcus Agehall (Scanian) ＠ Pike (-) developers forum
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Martin Baehr -
Martin Bähr
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Martin Nilsson (r�fsfiskal) ＠ Pike (-) developers forum
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Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS ＠ Pike developers forum
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Mirar ＠ Pike developers forum