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something from which I have spared you all

2006-07-19T07:09:58Z

something from which I have spared you all

19 Jul 2006, 02:56 »

plugins, rails, writing, version control, subversion, harry potter

(recently removed from a work in progress)

To illustrate, lets consider the story of Harry Coder, who has been working the next great web application �?? Incantr Beta, a social tagging folksonomic Web 3.0 mash-up targeted at young magicians (naturally).

Harry Coder and the Order of the Commits

Harry decides to bring his good friend Hermione on board as a developer, since he tends to spend most of his time running around getting into trouble rather than doing any work. Since Hermione likes to work in the library, whereas Harry prefers to develop in a shed on the edge of a forest, they agree to work on the code on their laptops, and then save it back to a central shared directory on Ron's fileserver every night, so they can each see any changes the other might have made.

As term progresses Harry's dedication to the project wanes, as is so typical for him, replaced by some self-important notion that the world not only revolves around him, but is also conspiring to plot his ultimate demise. In fact, the last time he touched the code was in September. Hermione does her best to entertain these ideas, but continues working steadily on Incantr all the way through to spring, undeterred.

Then, one sunny day after examinations, Harry decides to finally save those changes he made last year back to the shared folder on Ron's server. Without a care in the world, Harry drops his old, out of date version of Incantr into the folder, completely wiping out all of the work that Hermione had done for the entire year! What's more, there's no way to get it back, short of a Time Turner!

Oh dear, Harry. Thought you had problems before?

Harry Coder and the Half-baked Product

Let us imagine that our protagonists start again the next year, with the explicit understanding that Harry is going to be a bit more careful about overwriting newer files. With the announced public release only a few days away, Harry realizes (in an uncharacteristic moment of hard-working clarity) that a change to the code made last month has broken one of the key features!

Can he recall the exact set of changes made on that fateful afternoon? Even if he's reasonably sure he can remember what changed, will he be able to undo that change without wreaking more havoc with the code base? Does he even have a copy of the code as it was back then?

It is a truly chilling tale. Will Harry and his friends have to use the Dark Arts to solve their integration issues?

OK. Harry Potter. We get it. Stop now please.

Really?

Yes.

Oh... OK. Where was I? Ah yes. Version control.

(Relatively) Hassle-Free Rails DB Configuration

2006-07-05T03:00:27Z

(Relatively) Hassle-Free Rails DB Configuration

05 Jul 2006, 02:52 »

rails database yaml erb

(While this has been covered elsewhere fairly recently, I'm posting this here so I don't forget it. The principle is basically the same as JDD's, except neatened up slightly)

With all the different systems that I potter around with Rails on, it can be a pain having to tweak database.yml each time you check your app out onto a different development system. It's time to be a proper programmer, end the drudgery¹ and solve this issue:

common: &common
  adapter: mysql
  username: root
  password:
<% socket =  ['/opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock', # darwinports
              '/opt/local/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock', # darwinports, again
              '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock',           # ubuntu/debian
              '/tmp/mysql.sock'
             ].select { |socket_location|
                File.exist? socket_location
             }[0] 
   if !socket.nil? %>
  socket: <%= socket %>
<% end %>

development:
  <<: *common
  database: engines_development

test:
  <<: *common
  database: engines_test

Some notes:

On your production database, your login details better not be root/empty_password. Common sense, really.
I've tried to cover the socket locations that I bump into normally, but you might have a different one. Obviously, just add that to the list.
I wonder if there's some way to transparently hack the app generator to use this...

1: Yes, I'll admit it. Most of my programming stems from the fact that I'm lazy and don't want to repeat things. Computers are our slaves! Huzzah!

RailsConf Day 1: Dave Thomas Keynote

2006-06-23T13:21:03Z

RailsConf Day 1: Dave Thomas Keynote

23 Jun 2006, 12:42 »

railsconf, keynote

Dave Thomas gave the opening keynote at RailsConf 2006 in Chicago this morning, and decided to add a bit of gravitas by invoking Hilbert's mathematical program.

Dave proposed that there are three key areas which the Rails community needs to focus on to strengthen it's position in the computing world.

Firstly, he suggests that Rails needs to respect constraints that exist in the database: foreign keys, composite primary keys, and probably most immediately-usefully, automatically enforcing validation constraints based on information already in the DB schema.

Next, Dave talked about enhancing the scaffolding. It sounded like he'd basically like the scaffolding to emulate administration interfaces. He also suggested that corporate types might want skinnability. This whole thing I'm not too sure about; the cool kids are starting to distance themselves from scaffolding (there are even talks here about that), and in particular the skinnability sounds like... well, a nightmare.

Finally, he spoke about some problems he felt existed for the deployment of Rails applications. 'Capistrano is great, but server login information shouldn't be in the application', in a nutshell. His proposals for deploying to some kind of capistrano URL sound great, but with no implementation behind it, we'll have to see how it might turn out.

more beat poetry

2006-06-23T13:19:20Z

more beat poetry

22 Jun 2006, 11:52 »

chicago, railsconf, beatpoetry

Hy-att

      I'd quite like 
  to 

      Try-att.

   why-are-you-so

              Qui-att?

when
  will
    you
      bring
        my
          EGGS?

Fry-att.

I really will stop now. Amy seems unamused.

Anyway, we're all sat in the Wyndham foyer hacking away at things (blogs, testing Rails' caching, playing Nintendo DS's, writing presentations), and the air conditioning and wifi seem to be coping admirably for the greater part. This seems to be the general plan for today - sit on our arses with laptops and see what comes of it.

railsconf t-1

2006-06-23T13:19:20Z

railsconf t-1

21 Jun 2006, 22:56 »

railsconf, chicago, beatpoetry

Tom and I decamped from our Youth Hostel in downtown Chicago to the Hyatt Rosemont (no, not the Hyatt Regency O'Hare, that being the big Hyatt so obviously visible from the Rosemont station on the CTA blue line), in preparation for RailsConf at the Wyndham, a mere 25 minutes down the road.

... Or at least I'm sure it would be 25 minutes, if there was any simple pedestrian route between the two. Instead, we were forced to 'Jay Walk' countless times, dodging traffic and receiving much-needed advise from US Postal workers:

Postal dude: Hey, be careful!

Us Yeah, we're just trying to cross the road!

Postal dude: You need to find the button to press to turn it to 'Walk'

Us: Where's the button?

Postal dude: That's _your_ problem. You English?

Us: ... yes? (Tom answering there)

Postal dude: You're doing well in the soccer!

Us: (Tom again) Sure, except for the second half...

Postal dude: Oh, you lost right?

Tom: No.

Eventually we did make our way to the Wyndham, only to swiftly return back to Rosemont CTA station, and then Jackson bby way of the Blue Line - exactly where we started out from earlier in the day! A 10pm dinner isn't what I was planning on, but it was good fun having dinner with Steve, David, and Cory.

As Tom and I were walking back to the Hotel (again, dodging traffic), I coined this little beat poem.

  Hy-att

   Why is
     your
  'A'
             so big?

  Why-att?

I think I'll leave it there.

Plugins++ (engines lite)

2006-06-23T13:19:20Z

Plugins++ (engines lite)

12 Jun 2006, 03:24 »

caboo.se, rails, plugins, engines

Ezra Zygmuntowicz has spilled forth and excellent bit of Plugin-fu over at caboo.se earlier in the day.

Essentially, with a few lines in init.rb, you can store controllers, models, and helpers in an app-like structure within your plugin. An extra addition to each controller can hook up views within your plugins.

The improvements in Rails 1.1 have made creating powerful plugins like this really easy - it's come a long way since I had to delve deep into the core frameworks to create the first versions of the engines plugin.

While Ezra's technique doesn't have all the bells and whistles that the engines plugin might endow, it's a significant part of the core functionality. I wait unti I have time to refactor the rest of the additions that engine developers might need into something similarly bite-sized and easy to digest :)

lazyatom reborn.

2006-06-23T13:19:20Z

lazyatom reborn.

04 Jun 2006, 18:50 »

site, blog, ruby, lazyatom

So, finally, I have summoned the mental energy to sit down and resurrect my blog.

And by resurrect, I mean totally rebuild. Running a completely-bespoke 'blog engine' (ha!), it's all singing, all dancing, all blogging!

No comments
No RSS
No editor interface
No validation
No fancy buttons
... so l33t!

I will of course be adding these features as time permits. Until then, my friends...

w00t.

2006-06-23T13:19:20Z

w00t.

04 Jun 2006, 18:45 »

tagless.

First post. Finally.