Following up on following the instructions

As a follow-up to yesterday's irked post. This post is largely for myself in case I wind up getting these or similar errors again and can't remember what I did.

Context: I'm hoping to use WebKit to try out some research ideas. It builds fine using the build-webkit script provided, but balks when I try to build it in XCode.

If you're getting a pile of errors when building WebKitCore (e.g. following the instructions here) that are all about JavaScriptCore/Platform.h, then the problem is just that you need to build JavaScriptCore first. And make sure that you've got the BuildOutput set to be in WebKit/WebKitBuild for both, or they won't see each other.

Also, this seems like a nice summary of the cleanup steps if you're trying to make sure you're not using any old files.

It's still not building perfectly for me, but I'm not getting 10k errors anymore so clearly I'm getting closer to having this working. ;) Of course, I've also discovered the WebKitTools/Scripts/debug-safari script which runs it in gdb, so I probably don't need to be doing this anymore to have a debugger, but now I figure it's a halfway decent learning experience.

The biggest problem with webkit other than my current build errors is that a full build takes an hour. That's a lot of time to kill while my code's compiling. And I'm so used to working with web code/scripts that I'm not used to optimizing my time while the compiles happen! I've already caught up on my email, folded the laundry, had a shower... and now I'm blogging while I try to let WebCore finish and see if it gets more than the 4 errors it's already got.

Geek Feminism: On feminism and clothes

I'd been trying very hard to avoid answering any of the feminism and clothing questions because they didn't really interest me, but I was personally disappointed with the first post about them, and then got inspired by one of the HL Project books, so I wound up writing two essays about women's clothing, business, and geekery:

Who are you dressing for? re-evaluates a reader question, keeping in mind this quote I got from a 70's feminist business guide:

In business you are not dressing to express personal taste; you are dressing in a costume which should be designed to have an impact on your bosses and teammates

And this spawned another post regarding the question Can you dress well and be taken seriously as a woman in technology? (Which was actually part of the first post originally, but it was too long so I chopped it in half.)

Clothes are a common hot-button topic on another mailing list I frequent, and it's clear that womens' experience in this area varies wildly (which is why I was trying to avoid these questions myself). So unsurprisingly, my answer wasn't satisfying to at least one person (although I don't seem to have the stream of disgust evident on the earlier post that I didn't write, so I feel pretty decent about the whole thing).

Anyhow, what I'm getting at is that Mary sensibly put up a call for guest posts on the subject of appearance and presentation issues, because as she says, we don't really have anyone who's willing or able to write some of the posts that people seem to want. If you can help, we'd love to hear from you!