Read my latest article: 8 things I look for in a Ruby on Rails app (posted Thu, 06 Jul 2017 16:59:00 GMT)

Git commit-msg for Lighthouse tickets

Posted by Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:51:00 GMT

A quick follow-up to a post from a few months ago on how our team has a naming convention for git branches when we’re working on Lighthouse tickets (read previous post).

I’ve just put together a quick git hook for commit-msg, which will automatically amend the commit message with the current ticket number when you’re following the branch naming conventions described here.

Just toss this gist into .git/hooks/commit-msg.


  #!/bin/sh

  #
  # Will append the current Lighthouse ticket number to the commit message automatically
  # when you use the LH_* branch naming convention.
  #
  # Drop into .git/hooks/commit-msg
  # chmod +x .git/hooks/commit-msg

  exec < /dev/tty

  commit_message=$1
  ref=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD 2> /dev/null) || return
  branch=${ref#refs/heads/}

  if [[ $branch =~ LH_(.*) ]]
  then
  lighthouse_ticket=${BASH_REMATCH[1]}

    echo "What is the state of ticket #${lighthouse_ticket}? " 
    echo "(o)pen " 
    echo "(h)old" 
    echo "(r)esolved" 
    echo "Enter the current state for #${lighthouse_ticket}: (o)" 

    state="open" 

    read state_selection

    case $state_selection in
      "o" )
        state="open" 
        ;;
      "h" )
        state="hold" 
        ;;
      "r" )
        state="resolved" 
        ;;
    esac
  echo >&2 "[#${lighthouse_ticket} state:${state}]" >> "$1" 
    exit 0
  fi

Then a quick example of how this works…


  ➜  bin git:(LH_9912 ♻ ) git ci -m "another test" 
  What is the state of this ticket? 
  (o)pen 
  (h)old
  (r)esolved
  Enter the current state: (o)
  h
  Created commit 1ed2713: another test
   1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

Now to see this in action… (screenshot)

git message hook

Then we’ll check out the git log really quick.


➜  bin git:(LH_9912) git log
commit 1ed271323c4a054fe56e76bddc9ac81d241a1032
Author: Robby Russell <robby@planetargon.com>
Date:   Mon Feb 16 12:06:33 2009 -0800

    another test
    [#9912 state:hold]

Thanks to Andy for helping me figure out how to read user input during a git hook.

On shells

Posted by Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:41:00 GMT

Zsh versus Bash. Fight!

OH in developer channel

...because we need another religious war in the developer community. ;-)

(skitch via Gary)

Show me your and I'll show you mine (terminal prompts with git branches)

Posted by Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:57:00 GMT

I asked on twitter but only got a small handful of responses. So, I’m taking it here.

Show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Your terminal prompt that you’re using. Inspire me with new ideas for my prompt.

Here is mine.

zsh colors

Now… show me yours.

Switch to Passenger (mod_rails) in development on OSX in less than 7 minutes or your money back!

Posted by Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:52:00 GMT

We recently switched our default builds of Rails Boxcar to leverage the benefits of using Passenger (mod_rails) for deployment of your Ruby on Rails applications and it’s been working out great for our customers. Several of our customers and colleagues mentioned that they also began using Passenger in development, which was intriguing.

But… Mongrel has been working great for us for the past few years. Why switch?

It’s true, I’ve been happily using mongrel since it came out as a replacement to webrick back in early 2006, which makes it about 28 in dog years.

Nigel and I
Nigel and I.. 2 1/2 years ago back when Mongrel was just a puppy

But… over the next few weeks, I’m going to evaluate Passenger in my development workflow. There’s no better way to try something then to jump head first. So… here goes.

locke
this guy was a passenger…and I recently started to watch the show

Our team will be evaluating Passenger in our development work flow with a forthcoming blog post but if you want to get your feet wet right away, here are some instructions for setting up Passenger on OSX with PrefPane, which were inspired by Manfred’s posts.

Installing Passenger via RubyGems

To install Passenger on your OSX machine, just run the following with root credentials.

sudo gem install passenger

This will install the passenger gem on your machine. Now we need to go ahead and run a script that is provided with this gem (also with root credentials).

sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

You’ll want to follow the instructions that appear. When you see something similar to the following output from the command, you’ll want to copy/paste that into an apache configuration file. I just created a file at /etc/apache2/other/passenger.conf.

Edit this file with your editor of choice

mate /etc/apache2/other/passenger.conf

Mine looks like:


  #/etc/apache2/other/passenger.conf

  # Passenger modules and configuration
  LoadModule passenger_module /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
  PassengerRoot /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6
  PassengerRuby /opt/local/bin/ruby

  # Set the default environment to development
  RailsEnv development

  # Which directory do you want Apache to be able to look into for projects?
  <Directory "/Users/robbyrussell/Projects/development">
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
  </Directory>

Once you finish running through sudo passenger-install-apache2-module, you’ll need to restart Apache on your workstation. This can be done by simply turning off/on Web Sharing in your Sharing Preference Pane.

Sharing

Alright, we got through the hard part. Now, in order for you to begin using Passenger, we need to setup Apache to point to your individual Ruby on Rails application(s). You can hack on Apache configuration files more, but there is an easier way thanks to the Passenger Preference Pane.

This will manage your VHost files for you!

Setting up Preference Pane

If you followed my post on installing Ruby on Rails via MacPorts, you’re going to need to install Ruby Cocoa, which can be done with the following. If you’re using the Ruby provided from Apple, you can skip this step.

sudo port install rb-cocoa

Once that is done, go ahead and move on and download Passenger Preference Pane. Once downloaded, you can install the preference pane, by double-clicking on the following file.

PassengerPane-1.2

The next part is really simple as well. Just begin to add your various Ruby on Rails projects into the Preference Pane… and when you’re done, you should be able to run your applications over port 80 without any problems.

As you can see, I’ve already setup a handful of projects and we don’t have to start/stop mongrels for each one or worry about port numbers when running multiple projects. (time savings!)

Passenger

Voila. Simple enough. You might need to stop/start Apache, couldn’t remember if I needed to or not.

For each host that you add into this panel, it’ll automatically be added so that you can immediately browse to http://yourhost.local and it should just work. :-)

Things to still figure out…

Debugging. If you’re used to doing --debugger, it appears that you can do something similar with the socket-debugger plugin. Not tried it myself, but worth looking into.

Browser testing via VMWare/Parallels/VirtualBox. Does anybody have any tips on how to best appraoch this? Our designers are curious…

As I mentioned, this is day one of trying it out and managed to motivate our entire design and development team to try it with me so that we can all learn about issues together and find solutions quicker. If you’ve been using this approach for a while, I’d be interested in hearing your story and if there are any issues that we should be aware of.

Planet Argon - new site

Posted by Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:41:00 GMT

We’ll be posting some more updates on the Planet Argon blog in near future, but I wanted to invite you all to check out our new site at http://planetargon.com/. The last site was launched over three years ago.. we thought it was time for a refresh. :-)