Author Archives: Maciej Piechotka
Lock-free collection in libgee: hazard pointer
From version 0.8 libgee have support for lock-free collections. While they can be used as a drop-in replacement for any other there are a few ‘gotchas’ that user needs to be aware of if (s)he wants to use them efficiently, … Continue reading
Libraries in Vala – ABI compatibility – part II
In previous post I’ve described what ABI is. Now the time for potential problems which you can run into with Vala – unfortunately the list might not complete so please threat it as a guideline rather than definite description. For … Continue reading
Hello Planet Gnome
The blog have been added today to GNOME Planet. My name is Maciej Piechotka and I’m a libgee maintainer, but currently I’m shifting my focus a bit towards core Vala, especially with regard to performance optimization. In addition I intend … Continue reading
Pre-announcing VaLLVM
Curently Vala simply generates C code and let the C compiler do its job. While in many cases it produces good code there are some cases which where compiler stack could use more domain-specific knowledge. The problem is that C … Continue reading
Libraries in Vala – ABI compatibility – part I
As described before Vala have quite interesting mix of high and low-level features. One of elements one need to be aware in Vala is that there is an ABI, when the “ABI compatibility” is needed and how to keep it. … Continue reading
Futures and promises in libgee
In recent unstable releases of libgee contains Futures and Promises (please note that API is still not frozen so the exact details may change). Future in a simples case is a value which might not be currently available. From the … Continue reading
Vala ABI and branch prediction
Maintaining Libgee for some time I run into interesting phenomena – performance did not behave in a way most people would expect. When the highier-order functions were planned it was pointed out that Vala doesn’t have complex inlining required for … Continue reading
Don’t write your own build system
The title might be a bit controversial but at least it is catchy one. Recently I’ve seen a few posts about Shake, a make replacement with several improvements (such as more flexible dependency specification). There are also examples how to … Continue reading
Statically typed red-black trees
I have met with claims that the static typing is useless as it is not mathematical proof (OK – for those knowing the discussion – I exaggerated a lot). However to large extend the static typing is prove of some … Continue reading
(Rant) Difference between good and useful slides
Fortunately or unfortunately the presentations tend to be more and more popular sources of information. Be it a new library, language or future direction of a project the only possible way is either attend some presentation or watch it later.
