I was looking for a way to deploy our website to different servers and this snippet did it very well.

The idea is very simple: in config/deploy.rb create a couple of new tasks to set the deployment variables:

task :production do
  role :web, "production.server.com"
  role :app, "production.server.com"
  role :db,  "production.server.com", :primary=>true
end

task :staging do
  role :web, "staging.server.com"
  role :app, "staging.server.com"
  role :db,  "staging.server.com", :primary=>true
end

After these tasks were added you can deploy using cap staging deploy or cap production deploy.

Today I converted our last subversion repository to git.

I do not want to repeat all the praise given to git and tell how smaller, faster and more powerful it is, you can google it yourself.

Linux Torvalds gives a great video introduction and Peepcode screencast will get you up and running on git in no time.

Here is a few simple repository conversion steps:

1. clone the svn repository

git-svn clone svn+ssh://username@servername.com/var/svn/Project

2. make it bare

git clone --bare Project Project.git

3. setup Git user on server

useradd git --create-home --shell /usr/bin/git-shell

su -s /bin/bash git

cd; mkdir .ssh; chmod og-rwx .ssh

vi .ssh/authorized_keys

Paste developer public keys and save...

chmod og-rwx .ssh/authorized_keys; exit

Add developer public keys to /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys

4. upload the repository to server

upload to /home/git/Project.git

5. start using the new repository

git clone git@servername.com:Project.git

Goodbye, subversion and thanks.

Providing customer support for your products can be a lot of fun and a great source of motivation for every developer. Unfortunately it can also be a lot of pain and it appears that pain is killing one of my favourite Mac applications - [QuickSilver](http://www.blacktree.com/). In his [recent interview with Lifehacker](http://www.tuaw.com/2007/12/06/lifehacker-interview-on-the-future-of-quicksilver/), Nicholas Jitkoff mentions that >**Jitkoff**: I'm inclined to encourage users to move over to the more stable and well supported alternatives like [LaunchBar](http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/). Right now QS 54 (ed: the current build) accomplishes everything that I really need, the problem is stability, which for some reason most people seem to be ignoring. The conversation continues... >**Lifehacker**: Right. I guess from my standpoint, the fact that Quicksilver is free (as well as open source, now) is a major part of why it's so beloved. >**Jitkoff**: But also why it is so poorly supported. I have to do any work in off-time. It is very sad that with so many loyal users willing to pay for support and future development this project is going to slowly die. I am not sure if [making it open source](http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/) will help.

It appears that libIDL is packaged with old config.guess file and when you try to build it on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) you will end up with this error:

configure: error: can not guess host type; you must specify one

An easy fix is to replace the config.guess and config.sub files before running ./configure:

cp /usr/share/automake-1.10/config.* ./