Recent content on J. Ryan Stinnett
Much of today’s software limits user extensibility. This article explores one potential route forward using capabilities, effects, and extension-time type checking to provide a more predictable extension path.
I used to naively assume that Clang always handed off the same IR to the LLVM optimisation pipeline regardless of optimisation level. In an attempt to gain a bit more understanding into exactly what kinds of decisions depend on optimisation level in Clang, I surveyed the IR emission code paths.
In this talk, we propose some new metrics, computable by our tools, which could serve as motivation for language implementations to improve debugging quality.
I recently started exploring link-time optimisation (LTO), which I used to think was just a single boolean choice in the compilation and linking workflow, and perhaps it was like that a while ago… I’ve learned that these days, there are many different dimensions of LTO across compilers and linkers today and more variations are being proposed all the time. In this “living…
In this preliminary work, we symbolically execute unoptimised and optimised versions of a program which are then checked for debug info consistency. We expect this to allow testing correctness of debug info generation across a much larger portion of the compiler.
We examine one approach to collaborative, open software by building on Matrix, a secure, decentralised, real-time communication protocol with generic database capabilities hiding beneath its current focus on chat.
Background As part of my work on the Stylo / Quantum CSS team at Mozilla, I needed to be able to test changes to Firefox that only affect Linux 32-bit builds. These days, I believe you essentially have to use a 64-bit host to build Firefox to avoid OOM issues during linking and potentially other steps, so this means some form of cross-compiling from a Linux 64-bit host to a Linux 32-bit target.
I am excited to announce that we’re now shipping WiFi debugging for Firefox for Android! It’s available in Firefox for Android 42 with Firefox Nightly on desktop. The rest of this post will sound quite similar to the previous announcement for Firefox OS support. WiFi debugging allows WebIDE to connect to Firefox for Android via your local WiFi network instead of a USB cable. The…
I am excited to announce that we’re now shipping WiFi debugging for Firefox OS! It’s available in Firefox OS 3.0 / master with Firefox Nightly on desktop. WiFi debugging allows WebIDE to connect to your Firefox OS device via your local WiFi network instead of a USB cable. The connection experience is generally more straightforward (especially after connecting to a device the first…
For quite a while, it has been possible to debug tabs on Firefox for Android devices, but there were many steps involved, including manual port forwarding from the terminal. As I hinted a few weeks ago, WebIDE would soon support connecting to Firefox for Android via ADB Helper support, and that time is now! How to Use You’ll need to assemble the following bits and bobs: Firefox 36…
We’ve had various tools for inspecting apps on remote devices for some time now, but for a long time we’ve not had the same support for remote browser tabs. To remedy this, WebIDE now supports inspecting browser tabs running on Firefox OS devices. A few weeks back, WebIDE gained support for inspecting tabs on the remote device, but many of the likely suspects to connect to…
I am excited to announce that WebIDE is now enabled by default in Nightly (Firefox 34)! Everyone on the App Tools team has been working hard to polish this new tool that we originally announced back in June. Features While the previous App Manager tool was great, that tool’s UX held us back when trying support more complex workflows. With the redesign into WebIDE, we’ve already been…
In my last post (back in February…), I mentioned I was spending a lot of time on the side working on the developer tools in web browsers, particularly Firefox. I find that Mozilla’s values, which truly put the user first, are something I agree with wholeheartedly. Mozilla is in a unique position in this way, since all the other browsers are made by companies that, at the end of day,…
I’m excited to start to focusing what time I do have on the side towards open source projects. I’m always on the lookout for good projects to help out with, but these days I always seem to come back to web browsers. In particular, I really enjoy working on tools that improve the lives of other every day. In that vein, I’d like to focus on improvements to the developer tools in…
Overview For this assignment, we learned how to apply materials to the objects we’ve been creating. There are many, many different ways to construct a material that you apply to 3D object. They can be procedurally generated, they can pull from textures (or maps) you create, and you can manually tune many parameters as well. Maps are a great way to control the appearance of an object because…
Overview For this assignment, we learned a few new techniques, namely how to make use of 2D shapes to give more detail to our models. Beyond simple shapes like circles and squares is the very flexible spline, which gives you a lot of control over how a line is drawn, while still be purely analytical. Shapes and Splines For part of the homework, we added some shapes and splines to our existing…
Overview For this week’s assignment, we jumped out of the normal curriculum and went straight to using a game engine with our models from last time. We added a few common elements, like terrain and fog. Unity Unity is a lot of fun to work with! It’s quite easy to assemble something pretty cool, and yet it is also has a lot of depth to allow you to refine details. I can definitely see…
Overview For our first assignment, we had to build a robot and an environment for the it to inhabit. Robot The robot had to use exactly 1000 polygons. I chose to create a kind of transport robot with a cute appearance. I used an elongated egg shape, and gave it two propellers to maneuver. The robot is shown at an angle to suggest movement. The propellers were fun to construct, especially with the…
I’ve started taking classes at ACC to learn some visual design skills and generally extend my knowledge of how games and other media are built. The first one is this 3D modeling class, and I’ll be maintaining a portfolio of my work as this class goes on. I’m excited to see what I can come up with! Undoubtedly my work won’t win too many awards, but hopefully I can pick up…
…to replace what exactly? My LiveJournal from college…? I’ve never been great at maintaining any kind of journal / blog / whatever, but Octopress just looks like so much fun, so I had to give it a shot. Tonight I finally ripped the default theme up a bit to create a more minimalist look, which I think turned out quite well. I’m hoping to start talking about all the crazy…