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July 30, 2007

Build numbers in a Git-based development cycle

Back when I exclusively used Subversion as my version control system of choice I used the Subversion "revision number" as a basis for my build number. This was possible and desirable because Subversion revision numbers have a number of useful...

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Posted by wincent at 2:19 PM

July 25, 2007

The view from the crow's nest

Over the last year I've tried to make my development process more and more transparent and open, and I plan on continuing that trend. But I think that sometimes the zoomed-in view on all the details -- the commit logs,...

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Posted by wincent at 7:36 PM

Upgrading MovableType with the help of Git

Just got this query via email and thought I'd post my answer here for others to see: I've recently switched from using svn to git, and I'm about to switch from using WordPress to MovableType too. I've read your previous...

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Posted by wincent at 11:51 AM

July 24, 2007

Rails usability improvement

This is a nice example of a minor usability enhancement for Rails. But an otherwise nice change is marred by a useless comment which clutters the source and impedes readability:...

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Posted by wincent at 3:21 PM

July 21, 2007

New backup regimen

I've escaped from yesterday's sudden hard disk failure remarkably lightly, losing very little data and some time; it's taken me just over 24 hours to restore and get everything back into working order. Another reminder that ZFS can't come soon...

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Posted by wincent at 4:10 PM

July 20, 2007

Git traction

The barometer is on the move and it indicates a groundswell of interest in Git. At first I wondered if this was just because I have become interested in Git lately (here's my most recent post) and so have been...

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Posted by wincent at 10:09 PM

Involuntary Reboot Log #12

Hot on the heels of the last involuntary reboot we have an absolute whopper today. At about 3 PM today my machine started to get suspiciously slow after having been up for only a couple of hours. Within a few...

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Posted by wincent at 9:01 PM

July 18, 2007

Git hooks

Earlier this month I wrote: It seems inevitable that I'll move, sooner or later, to Git. There are still a couple of gaps that would need to be filled in, but 90% of what I need is there. Yesterday I...

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Posted by wincent at 11:19 PM

July 16, 2007

Best commit messages of all time

Well, not really: Cleanup we're all fine here now I like to commit consistency pre-rename commit green bar testing Attempt to commit funky working copy Bleary eyed checkin Tickle working copy to force 1.4.0 working copy format upgrade...

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Posted by wincent at 3:07 PM

Git notes

You may have seen that I've made some Git-related posts lately (1, 2, 3) and if you've been watching you'll have already noticed that I've been adding lots of Git content to the Knowledge Base. I've now done a shallow...

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Posted by wincent at 11:29 AM

July 15, 2007

A look back: Bram Cohen vs Linus Torvalds

I just stumbled across a fascinating mailing list thread in which there's a fairly nasty exchange between two open source poster children, Bram Cohen (of BitTorrent fame, but in this case writing in his capacity as Codeville developer) and Linus...

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Posted by wincent at 2:20 AM

July 13, 2007

Involuntary Reboot Log #11

You gotta love this. Actually, you gotta hate it. I just committed the sacrilege of daring to open Parallels and as my just comeuppance my machine immediately slowed to treacle speeds ultimately becoming unusable. In the end even the clock...

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Posted by wincent at 3:28 PM

July 10, 2007

Git changes

I've started adding more Git content to the wiki, and the more I explore, the more impressed I am. Meanwhile, using Git becomes more and more palatable. My sense of aesthetics makes me feel queasy about typing commands like these:...

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Posted by wincent at 6:21 PM

July 6, 2007

Another branching lesson

In the migration from Tiger to Leopard I learnt another, painfully obvious lesson about branching and merging. Even though SVK cures the pain of trying to do merging with Subversion, there will always be some types of branch for which...

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Posted by wincent at 3:58 PM

Musings on Subversion, SVK and Git

So lately the Subversion log has been quiet, because I've been doing a lot of development work in a private (local-only) SVK sandbox. This is great for trying things out but it also means that regular progress updates aren't instantly...

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Posted by wincent at 11:58 AM

July 5, 2007

Parsing/transforming nested lists from wiki markup to HTML

In working on my wikitext-to-HTML transformer I saved the ugliest bit for last: parsing/transforming nested lists. I started off with parsing simple span-level elements like em and strong tags, then moved on to block level items like paragraphs and pre...

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Posted by wincent at 5:37 PM

July 4, 2007

Unit testing

I'm a big fan of unit testing, and every now and again something happens which confirms my preference. At the moment I am working on a transformer that uses a third-party library and that library expects UCS-2 input (ugh). So...

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Posted by wincent at 2:49 PM