ftl-infra

Updating fasterthanli.me for 2022

Nov 15, 2022

57 min #rust · #webdev · #ftl-infra

In 2020, I switched from a static site generator to something homemade.

And, as tradition commands, I did a whole write-up about it.

Since writing articles and making videos is now my full-time occupation, I took some time to upgrade futile, my server software, to the latest and greatest the Rust ecosystem has to offer.

One funny way to bundle assets

Jan 02, 2022

6 min #rust · #ftl-infra

There’s one thing that bothers me. In part 1, why are we using hyper-staticfile? Couldn’t we just use file:/// URLs?

Well, first off: showing off how easy it is to serve some static files, even in a “scary” language like Rust, is just not something I could pass up.

But also: think about distributing salvage as a tool. Will we want to distribute all those HTML/CSS/JS/font files alongside it?

The rest of the fucking owl

Dec 31, 2021

7 min #rust · #avif · #webp · #ftl-infra

NO! No no no.

What?

WE WERE DONE!

Well… yes! But also no. We still shell out to a bunch of tools:

$ rg 'Command::new'
src/commands/mod.rs
126:        let variant = if let Ok(output) = run_command(Command::new("wslpath").arg("-m").arg("/")) {

src/commands/cavif.rs
29:            Command::new("cavif")

src/commands/imagemagick.rs
25:            Command::new(&self.bin)

src/commands/cwebp.rs
25:            Command::new("cwebp")

src/commands/svgo.rs
25:            Command::new("svgo")

Productionizing our poppler build

Dec 31, 2021

19 min #rust · #build-systems · #meson · #ftl-infra

I was a bit anxious about running our poppler meson build in CI, because it’s the real test, you know? “Works on my machine” only goes so far, things have a tendency to break once you try to make them reproducible.

And I was right to worry… but not for the reasons I thought. As I tried to get everything to build in CI, there was a Pypi maintenance that prevented me from installing meson, and then Sourceforge was acting up.

Porting poppler to meson

Dec 31, 2021

11 min #build-systems · #meson · #ftl-infra

It took a hot minute.

Try several weeks.

Well, yeah. I got to contribute to a bunch of open-source projects in the meantime though, so I’m fairly pleased with it!

libffi (for static linking)
cairo (more static linking!)
proxy-libintl (more static linking!)
expat (static linking strikes again)
poppler (for file descriptor stuff not properly gated on Windows, closed in favor of a similar MR)

Building poppler for Windows

Dec 31, 2021

14 min #build-systems · #pkg-config · #cmake · #ftl-infra

I know what you’re thinking: haven’t we strayed from the whole “content pipeline” theme in this series?

Well… fair. But compiling and distributing software is part of software engineering, and unless you’re in specific circles, I see that taught a lot less than the “just write code and stuff happens” part.

Technically it’s release engineering, but who’s keeping track.

A static poppler build: the easy way

Dec 31, 2021

17 min #build-systems · #autotools · #cmake · #pkg-config · #ftl-infra

So! Now our asset processing pipeline is almost complete. But we’ve just traded dependencies against CLI tools, for dependencies against dynamic libraries:

$ ldd ./target/debug/pdftocairo
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffd615be000)
        libpoppler-glib.so.8 => /lib64/libpoppler-glib.so.8 (0x00007f2ba1bb4000)
        libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /lib64/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f2ba1b59000)
        libglib-2.0.so.0 => /lib64/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f2ba1a1e000)
        libcairo.so.2 => /lib64/libcairo.so.2 (0x00007f2ba1902000)
        libcairo-gobject.so.2 => /lib64/libcairo-gobject.so.2 (0x00007f2ba18f6000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f2ba18dc000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00007f2ba17fe000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f2ba15f4000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f2ba216c000)
        libpoppler.so.112 => /lib64/libpoppler.so.112 (0x00007f2ba1288000)
        libfreetype.so.6 => /lib64/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007f2ba11bd000)
        libgio-2.0.so.0 => /lib64/libgio-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f2ba0fe4000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /lib64/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f2ba0dc5000)
        libffi.so.6 => /lib64/libffi.so.6 (0x00007f2ba0db8000)
        libpcre.so.1 => /lib64/libpcre.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0d40000)
        libpixman-1.so.0 => /lib64/libpixman-1.so.0 (0x00007f2ba0c94000)
        libfontconfig.so.1 => /lib64/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0c45000)
        libpng16.so.16 => /lib64/libpng16.so.16 (0x00007f2ba0c0c000)
        libxcb-shm.so.0 => /lib64/libxcb-shm.so.0 (0x00007f2ba0c07000)
        libxcb.so.1 => /lib64/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0bda000)
        libxcb-render.so.0 => /lib64/libxcb-render.so.0 (0x00007f2ba0bca000)
        libXrender.so.1 => /lib64/libXrender.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0bbd000)
        libX11.so.6 => /lib64/libX11.so.6 (0x00007f2ba0a75000)
        libXext.so.6 => /lib64/libXext.so.6 (0x00007f2ba0a60000)
        libz.so.1 => /lib64/libz.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0a46000)
        libjpeg.so.62 => /lib64/libjpeg.so.62 (0x00007f2ba09c2000)
        libopenjp2.so.7 => /lib64/libopenjp2.so.7 (0x00007f2ba0968000)
        liblcms2.so.2 => /lib64/liblcms2.so.2 (0x00007f2ba0903000)
        libtiff.so.5 => /lib64/libtiff.so.5 (0x00007f2ba087c000)
        libsmime3.so => /lib64/libsmime3.so (0x00007f2ba0850000)
        libnss3.so => /lib64/libnss3.so (0x00007f2ba0712000)
        libplc4.so => /lib64/libplc4.so (0x00007f2ba0709000)
        libnspr4.so => /lib64/libnspr4.so (0x00007f2ba06c6000)
        libbz2.so.1 => /lib64/libbz2.so.1 (0x00007f2ba06b3000)
        libharfbuzz.so.0 => /lib64/libharfbuzz.so.0 (0x00007f2ba05dd000)
        libbrotlidec.so.1 => /lib64/libbrotlidec.so.1 (0x00007f2ba05cf000)
        libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /lib64/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f2ba05c8000)
        libmount.so.1 => /lib64/libmount.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0581000)
        libselinux.so.1 => /lib64/libselinux.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0556000)
        libxml2.so.2 => /lib64/libxml2.so.2 (0x00007f2ba03cd000)
        libXau.so.6 => /lib64/libXau.so.6 (0x00007f2ba03c7000)
        libwebp.so.7 => /lib64/libwebp.so.7 (0x00007f2ba0358000)
        libzstd.so.1 => /lib64/libzstd.so.1 (0x00007f2ba0260000)
        libjbig.so.2.1 => /lib64/libjbig.so.2.1 (0x00007f2ba0252000)
        libnssutil3.so => /lib64/libnssutil3.so (0x00007f2ba021f000)
        libplds4.so => /lib64/libplds4.so (0x00007f2ba021a000)
        libgraphite2.so.3 => /lib64/libgraphite2.so.3 (0x00007f2ba01f9000)
        libbrotlicommon.so.1 => /lib64/libbrotlicommon.so.1 (0x00007f2ba01d4000)
        libblkid.so.1 => /lib64/libblkid.so.1 (0x00007f2ba019c000)
        libpcre2-8.so.0 => /lib64/libpcre2-8.so.0 (0x00007f2ba0105000)
        liblzma.so.5 => /lib64/liblzma.so.5 (0x00007f2ba00d9000)

From Inkscape to poppler

Dec 31, 2021

10 min #rust · #ffi · #pdf · #svg · #ftl-infra

What’s next? Well… poppler is the library Inkscape uses to import PDFs.

Cool Bear's hot tip

Yes, the name comes from Futurama.

Turns out, poppler comes with a bunch of CLI tools, including pdftocairo!

Halfway through this article, I realized the “regular weight” on my system was in fact Iosevka SS01 (Andale Mono Style) (see Releases), but the “bold weight” was the default Iosevka.