Doxygen for Perl

A few weeks ago, on December 22, 2011 actually, I released a new filter for adding Perl support to Doxygen.  This filter supports Doxygen style comments, POD style comments, and can perform some basic analysis of a Perl module and is called Doxygen::Filter::Perl.  You can download this filter from CPAN or from Sourceforge at: http://perldoxygen.sourceforge.net/.  For windows users or first time Doxygen users, please see the discussion thread on the Sourceforge project page.  For those familiar with Doxygen, the documentation on CPAN should suffice.

How do I su to root on OSX

So you are tired of typing sudo before ever command and you would like root shell running bash.  In OSX like Ubuntu the password for root is locked and you can not “su” or “sux” to root.  The way you get around this is to first “sudo bash” to get a root bash shell and then “passwd” to set the root password.  Make sure you set a really strong password for root if you are going to go this route.  And if you allow inbound SSH, you should probably change the sshd_config to not allow root to SSH in.  Make users SSH as a non-privileged user first and then su to root. 

Once you have this done you will probably want to set the shell that root uses by default.  Unfortunately you can not just edit /etc/passwd like in Linux.  OSX uses OpenDirectory to store all of this.  What I had to do is reboot/logout and then log back in as root.  You can then use the actual GUI tools (System Preferences ->  Users and Groups -> Control-Click the root user in the list and select advanced options) to change the shell for the root user.   

Taking a screen shot with Mac OSX

With OSX Lion, screens shots can be done a few ways:

Take screen shot of complete desktop and save to desktop

• Command-Shift-3: Save to desktop
• Command-Control-Shift-3: Save to clipboard

Take screen shot of a specific window or selection. With this option, if you press space after the key combo below instead of dragging your mouse while pressing the mouse button, it will select the entire window/object that the mouse is currently over. After selecting the entire window with the space bar, you will still need to press the mouse button/left mouse button to take the picture.

• Command-Shift-4: Save to desktop
• Command-Control-Shift-4: Save to clipboard

How to make the Mac terminal less painful

So coming from the Linux world, I love my terminal/shell and find it so much easier and faster to do so many things. The problem is, the Mac OSX default settings are really quite painful if you are used to a GNOME or KDE terminal. Here is some pointers to help you out. In the Terminal -> Preferences you can change all of the color and window size settings. You can also specify which terminal theme is to be used by default. One setting that I high recommend you set is the "Use option as meta key" in the Keyboard sub-menu of the Preferences. This will make the Apple Option key work like you would expect.

Another thing I like to do is add/edit the ~/.bash_profile file. This is my .bashrc file from Linux that I have changed to work on OSX.

# ----------------------------------------
# Prompt
# ----------------------------------------
#     \[     Start a sequence of non-printing characters
#     \]     Ends the non-printing characters sequence
#     \e     An ASCII escape character, older systems use \033 (octal)
#     ]0;    xterm new icon name and title (icon name is for AfterStep 
#            Window Maker)
#     ]1;    xterm new icon name only
#     ]2;    xterm escape sequence for the title
#     \a     End xterm escape sequence

#     \h     Hostname
#     \w     Current directory
#     \u     Username

# Foreground Colors
#   Black = 30, Red = 31, Green = 32, Yellow\Orange = 33, Blue = 34
#   Magenta = 35, Cyan = 36, Light Gray\Black = 37, Default = 39
# Background Colors
#   Black = 40, Red = 41, Green = 42, Yellow\Orange = 43, Blue = 44
#   Magenta = 45, Cyan = 46, Light Gray\Black = 47, Default = 49

TIME_COLOR="\[\e[0;34m\]"
USERNAME_COLOR="$COLOR_DEFAULT"
COLOR_END="\[\e[m\]"


# ----------------------------------------
# Check to see if we are root.  If so
# change background color to red
# ----------------------------------------
if [ $UID == 0 ]; then
    USERNAME_COLOR="\[\e[0;37;41m\]"
fi

# ----------------------------------------
# Check to see if we have a fancy Xterm if
# not do not display title and window bar
# changes.
# ----------------------------------------
case "$TERM" in
xterm*)
    PS1="\[\e]2;\u@\h:\w\a\]\n[$TIME_COLOR\t$COLOR_END] \h\n[$USERNAME_COLORu$COLOR_END]:\w-> "
    ;;
dumb*)
    PS1='\h[\u]:\w-> '
    ;;
*)
    PS1="\n[$TIME_COLOR\t$COLOR_END] \h\n[$USERNAME_COLOR\u$COLOR_END]:\w-> "
    ;;
esac

export PS1


# enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases
if [ "$TERM" != "dumb" ]; then
alias ls='ls -G'
alias ll='ls -l -a'
#    export CLICOLOR=1
#    export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad
fi

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH