It turns out this one tiny deviation spawns a surprising amount of friction.

The “Find and Replace” Fatigue

Sure, I could manually search and replace quotes. But doing it repeatedly across files is tedious. Then I tried using Cursor to handle it, but that introduced a whole new set of headaches: large token usage, slow processing, and needing to nudge it every few steps like a stubborn robot assistant.

It was messing with my flow.

Enter Unify (and uv)

I already had uv installed, so bringing in Unify was seamless:

uv tool install --python=python3.10 unify

That --python=python3.10 bit is key—otherwise uv grabs Python 3.13 by default, which causes problems with lib2to3 (yep, still relevant!).

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/abramowi/.local/bin/unify", line 10, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
             ~~~~^^
  File "/Users/abramowi/.local/share/uv/tools/unify/lib/python3.13/site-packages/unify.py", line 230, in main
    return _main(sys.argv,
                 standard_out=sys.stdout,
                 standard_error=sys.stderr)
  File "/Users/abramowi/.local/share/uv/tools/unify/lib/python3.13/site-packages/unify.py", line 210, in _main
    if format_file(name, args=args, standard_out=standard_out):
       ~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/abramowi/.local/share/uv/tools/unify/lib/python3.13/site-packages/unify.py", line 144, in format_file
    encoding = detect_encoding(filename)
  File "/Users/abramowi/.local/share/uv/tools/unify/lib/python3.13/site-packages/unify.py", line 125, in detect_encoding
    from lib2to3.pgen2 import tokenize as lib2to3_tokenize
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'lib2to3'

Unify depends on it, so an older Python version saves the day.

The One-Liner That Fixed Everything

Here’s all it takes to switch to single quotes in-place:

unify --quote "'" --in-place /path/to/file.py

And just like that, no more fiddling. No more token burn. No more nudging AI tools into submission.

Before & After

# Before
print("Hello, world!")

# After
print('Hello, world!')

Takeaway

Sometimes the best fix is a surgical one. Unify didn’t just clean up my code—it let me reclaim time and focus. If you’re stuck in quote-style purgatory, this one-liner might just be your escape route.

abramowi at marcs-mbp-3 in ~
$ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install

info: downloading installer https://install.determinate.systems/nix/tag/v3.8.2/nix-installer-aarch64-darwin
 INFO nix-installer v3.8.2
`nix-installer` needs to run as `root`, attempting to escalate now via `sudo`...
Password:
 INFO nix-installer v3.8.2
 INFO For a more robust Nix installation, use the Determinate package for macOS: https://dtr.mn/determinate-nix

Install Determinate Nix?

Determinate Nix is tested and ready for macOS Tahoe when you are. Selecting ‘no’ will install Nix from NixOS.

Proceed? ([Y]es/[n]o/[e]xplain):
Nix install plan (v3.8.2)
Planner: macos

Configured settings:
* determinate_nix: true

Planned actions:
* Install Determinate Nixd
* Create an encrypted APFS volume `Nix Store` for Nix on `disk3` and add it to `/etc/fstab` mounting on `/nix`
* Extract the bundled Nix (originally from /nix/store/3knq40gvqd48hfi0n4mv57lx2zx09131-nix-binary-tarball-3.8.2/nix-3.8.2-aarch64-darwin.tar.xz) to `/nix/temp-install-dir`
* Create a directory tree in `/nix`
* Synchronize /nix/var ownership
* Move the downloaded Nix into `/nix`
* Synchronize /nix/store ownership
* Create build users (UID 351-382) and group (GID 350)
* Configure Time Machine exclusions
* Setup the default Nix profile
* Place the Nix configuration in `/etc/nix/nix.conf`
* Configure the shell profiles
* Configuring zsh to support using Nix in non-interactive shells
* Create a `launchctl` plist to put Nix into your PATH
* Configure the Determinate Nix daemon
* Remove directory `/nix/temp-install-dir`


Proceed? ([Y]es/[n]o/[e]xplain):
 INFO Step: Install Determinate Nixd
 INFO Step: Create an encrypted APFS volume `Nix Store` for Nix on `disk3` and add it to `/etc/fstab` mounting on `/nix`
 INFO Step: Provision Nix
 INFO Step: Create build users (UID 351-382) and group (GID 350)
 INFO Step: Configure Time Machine exclusions
 INFO Step: Configure Nix
 INFO Step: Configuring zsh to support using Nix in non-interactive shells
 INFO Step: Create a `launchctl` plist to put Nix into your PATH
 INFO Step: Configure the Determinate Nix daemon
 INFO Step: Remove directory `/nix/temp-install-dir`
Nix was installed successfully!
To get started using Nix, open a new shell or run `. /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/etc/profile.d/nix-daemon.sh`

and way we go…

Now what do we have available…?

abramowi at marcs-mbp-3 in ~
$ nix-shell --version
nix-shell (Determinate Nix 3.8.2) 2.30.1


abramowi at marcs-mbp-3 in ~
$ nix-shell
error: no argument specified and no 'shell.nix' or 'default.nix' file found in the working directory

Cool. So I have Nix installed and the next step is to find or create a shell.nix file so that I can play with nix-shell…

Time to get things going again, I think…

vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:~$ sudo -u mongodb mongod --repair --dbpath /var/lib/mongodb

I added the following to $VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_HOOK_DIR/postactivate:

#!/bin/bash
# This hook is run after every virtualenv is activated.

python -V
easy_install --version
pip --version

Here’s how it looks:

$ workon pip
Python 2.7.6
setuptools 3.6
pip 6.0.dev1 from /Users/marca/dev/git-repos/pip (python 2.7)

For more information on customizing with hooks, read the docs.

Here’s how to list non-Apple kernel extensions (kext’s):

kextstat | grep -v apple

Our old MacBook Pro was getting long in the tooth. It was a pre-unibody, 2007 model, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB spinning disk drive, and OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

The new one has a Retina display, 2.8 GHz processor, 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD and it’s running OS X 10.9.4 (Mavericks).

It’s been challenging to migrate files from the old laptop to the new one, as the old one keeps crashing.

Let’s you do stuff like:

$ supervisorctl
cat:0                            RUNNING   pid 57305, uptime 0:00:07
cat:1                            RUNNING   pid 57304, uptime 0:00:07
cat:2                            RUNNING   pid 57307, uptime 0:00:07
cat:3                            RUNNING   pid 57306, uptime 0:00:07
cat:4                            RUNNING   pid 57308, uptime 0:00:07
dog:0                            RUNNING   pid 57300, uptime 0:00:07
dog:1                            RUNNING   pid 57299, uptime 0:00:07
dog:2                            RUNNING   pid 57302, uptime 0:00:07
dog:3                            RUNNING   pid 57301, uptime 0:00:07
dog:4                            RUNNING   pid 57303, uptime 0:00:07
supervisor> help signal
signal <signal name> <name>	      Signal a process
signal <signal name> <gname>:*        Signal all processes in a group
signal <signal name> <name> <name>    Signal multiple processes or groups
supervisor> signal 1 dog:3 dog:4
dog:3: signalled
dog:4: signalled
supervisor> signal HUP dog:3 dog:4
dog:3: signalled
dog:4: signalled
supervisor> signal HUP dog:*
dog:1: signalled
dog:0: signalled
dog:3: signalled
dog:2: signalled
dog:4: signalled
supervisor> signal USR1 dog:1 dog:2
dog:1: signalled
dog:2: signalled

Also, if you can’t wait for supervisor to support this, the mr.laforge package supplies a supervisor plugin that can be used to send signals to processes:

$ supervisorctl kill HUP nginx

That said, it would be nice to have this built into supervisor…

❯ for x in *; do echo $x ; ( cd $x; git status -s ); done
contentsvc
jobsvc
 M supervisor.conf
profilesvc