Author Archives: Mikael Ståldal

How to run exec-maven-plugin only if a file is not up-to-date

Posted on July 30, 2019 by Mikael Ståldal

In my Maven build, I use exec-maven-plugin to run an external tool for Java code generation. In this case the flatbuffers compiler (flatc). By default, flatc always runs, so you always get a new .java file. This will always trigger … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, maven, programming | Leave a comment

Support fake Android TV devices

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Mikael Ståldal

Android TV is included in some modern Smart TVs, and there are also external set-top-boxes to get Android TV for any TV with HDMI input. However, there are also some set-top-boxes which almost, but not quite, support Android TV. With … Continue reading →

Posted in Android | 3 Comments

Data structures and Domain Driven Design

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Mikael Ståldal

After listening to a presentation about Domain Driven Security, I got some additional insights about what a data structure (as opposed to OOP object) should be able to do. Data structures (I call them struct) should have a subset of … Continue reading →

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Objects vs. data structures

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Mikael Ståldal

Several popular statically typed programming languages, including C++, Java and C#, have a serious design flaw. They make no useful distinction between objects in the OOP sense and plain data structures. A plain data structure should only be a dumb … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, programming | 2 Comments

Typesafe’s Reactive Straw man

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Mikael Ståldal

In their quest to promote Reactive, Typesafe is beating up a straw man by portraying blocking I/O in a particularly stupid way which is rarely (if ever) done in practice. In a recent webinar, I found this slide which suggests … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, Linux, reactive | 1 Comment

Leafpad > gedit

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Mikael Ståldal

I want a simple, fast and lightweight text editor for my Linux desktop. I don’t want to learn a lot of new arcane key bindings, so not Vim or Emacs. I want a real GUI desktop application, not a console … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Ubuntu | 5 Comments

How to fix keyboard layout in Ubuntu 14.04

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Mikael Ståldal

I regularly use Swedish keyboard layout, but I keep the English layout around in case I would like to temporary switch to it. Ubuntu 14.04 sometimes mess this up and I suddenly get English layout when I log in. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Ubuntu | 1 Comment

Custom Preference for Android

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Mikael Ståldal

I need a setting with a numeric value in my Android app. There is no obvious fit among the standard Preferences in Android, so I decided to implement my own Preference subclass. This was a bit more involved than what … Continue reading →

Posted in Android | 1 Comment

Running Adobe Lightroom 4.4 in Ubuntu 14.04

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Mikael Ståldal

I use Adobe Lightroom 4.4 for photo editing. There is one very annoying aspect of this program, it is not available for Linux (only for Windows and Max OS X). In order to run Lightroom on my computer, I had … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Ubuntu, wine | 4 Comments

Create a self-contained .jar file with Maven

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Mikael Ståldal

If you want to create a self-contained .jar file, with all library dependencies included, you can do it with Maven. Include this in your pom.xml: <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.4</version> <configuration> <archive> <manifest> <mainClass>com.yourcompany.youapp.Main</mainClass> </manifest> </archive> <descriptorRefs> <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef> </descriptorRefs> … Continue reading →

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