Chris Wellons
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I have officially retired from Emacs
This past Tuesday I typed C-x C-c in Emacs for the last time after 20 years of daily use. Though nearly half that time was gradually retiring it, switching to modal editing, then to Vim. Emacs is a platform, and I’d grown accustomed to its applications, especially those I built myself. There was no particular…
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My brave new code-signing world
The new w64devkit release two weeks ago is the first to be code-signed with my identity, verified by Microsoft’s certificate chain. Currently only the release packaging is signed — the self-extracting archive and its payload — but I will soon code-sign individual EXEs and DLLs within the distribution…
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dcmake: a new CMake debugger UI
CMake has a --debugger mode since 3.27 (July 2023), allowing software to manipulate it interactively through the Debugger Adaptor Protocol (DAP), an HTTP-like protocol passing JSON messages. Debugger front-ends can start, stop, step, breakpoint, query variables, etc. a live CMake. When I came across…
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2026 has been the most pivotal year in my career… and it's only March
In February I left my employer after nearly two decades of service. In the moment I was optimistic, yet unsure I made the right choice. Dust settled, I’m now absolutely sure I chose correctly. I’m happier and better for it. There were multiple factors, but it’s not mere chance it coincides with these…
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Frankenwine: Multiple personas in a Wine process
I came across a recent article on making Linux system calls from a Wine process. Windows programs running under Wine are still normal Linux processes and may interact with the Linux kernel like any other process. None of this was surprising, and the demonstration works just as I expect. Still, it got…
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WebAssembly as a Python extension platform
Software above some complexity level tends to sport an extension language, becoming a kind of software platform itself. Lua fills this role well, and of course there’s JavaScript for web technologies. WebAssembly generalizes this, and any Wasm-targeting programming language can extend a Wasm-hosting…
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Freestyle linked lists tricks
Linked lists are a data structure basic building block, with especially flexible allocation behavior. They’re not just a useful starting point, but sometimes a sound foundation for future growth. I’m going to start with the beginner stuff, then without disrupting the original linked list, enhance it…
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Unix "find" expressions compiled to bytecode
In preparation for a future project, I was thinking about at the unix find utility. It operates a file system hierarchies, with basic operations selected and filtered using a specialized expression language. Users compose operations using unary and binary operators, grouping with parentheses for precedence…
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