Michael Schubert

Subtle issue with ~/.ssh/config

2009-11-02T00:00:00-08:00

Subtle issue with ~/.ssh/config

2 Nov 2009 – New York

Ran into a bizarre issue with _{/.ssh/config the other day. Essentially the problem seems to be that when you add an “IdentityFile” entry you need to specify the full path (}/.ssh/some_key will work) and not just the name of the file in the ~/.ssh directory. Now you may think that this is always required but either it does not work on OSX or it only works on Ubuntu. But it definitely work on Ubuntu. I have not had a chance to check it out on a third operating system yet.

Control inversely relates to value?

2009-07-21T00:00:00-07:00

Control inversely relates to value?

21 Jul 2009 – New York

This leads us to the odd conclusion that strict control is something that matters a lot on relatively useless projects and much less on useful projects. It suggests that the more you focus on control, the more likely you’re working on a project that’s striving to deliver something of relatively minor value.

– Tom DeMarco ( source )

Injecting compile time constants into an iPhone project

2009-04-29T00:00:00-07:00

Injecting compile time constants into an iPhone project

29 Apr 2009 – New York

So you have your iPhone project and you need to dynamically set constant string referenced in your code from an environment variable (think: for localization and with stringWithFormat substitution). What to do?

Suppose you had an environment variable FOO_BAR with a value of “Hello”

Project → Edit Project Settings
Add User Defined Setting
User Defined value of “OTHER_CFLAGS” (in non-iphone projects this should already be defined)

Give it a value of:


-DFOO_BAR=@\"$(FOO_BAR)\ World\"

You can now do:


NSString *titleText = NSLocalizedString(@"Title", nil);
titleText = [NSString stringWithFormat: titleText, FOO_BAR];
[title setText:titleText];

And now title (in my case it is a UILabel) will have text of “Hello World”

Why the xcode project does not define an empty OTHER_CFLAGS build setting by default is beyond me but it is not cool.

Creating (and removing) remote Git branches

2009-04-29T00:00:00-07:00

Creating (and removing) remote Git branches

29 Apr 2009 – New York

Creating and removing remote git branches is to put it mildly, less then obvious so incase you were wondering how or keep forgetting…

Here is the original post and source of all of this.

git-create-branch

</code>
#!/bin/sh
# git-create-branch
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
  echo "Usage: ${0} branch_name"
  exit 127
fi
branch_name=$1
current_branch=`git branch -a | grep \*`
if [ "${current_branch}" != "* master" ]; then
  git co master 2>&1 >/dev/null
fi
local_branch=`git branch -a | grep ${branch_name} | head -n1`
remote_branch=`git branch -a | grep remotes/origin/${branch_name} | tail -n1`
if [ "${remote_branch}" != " remotes/origin/${branch_name}" ]; then
  git push origin origin:refs/heads/${branch_name}
  git fetch origin
else
  echo "Remote branch 'remotes/origin/${branch_name}' already exists"
fi

if [ "${local_branch}" != " ${branch_name}" ]; then
  git checkout --track -b ${branch_name} origin/${branch_name}
  git pull
else
  echo "Local branch '${branch_name}' already exists!"
fi

git-remove-branch


#!/bin/sh
# git-remove-branch

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
  echo "Usage: ${0} branch_name"
  exit 127
fi
branch_name=$1
current_branch=`git branch -a | grep \*`
if [ "${current_branch}" != "* master" ]; then
  git co master 2>&1 >/dev/null
fi
local_branch=`git branch -a | grep ${branch_name} | head -n1`
remote_branch=`git branch -a | grep origin/${branch_name} | tail -n1`
if [ "${local_branch}" != " ${branch_name}" ]; then
  echo "No local branch '${branch_name}' found"
else
  git branch -D "${branch_name}"
fi
if [ "${remote_branch}" != " origin/${branch_name}" ]; then
  echo "No remote branch 'origin/${branch_name}' found"
else
  git push origin :"${branch_name}"
fi

Migrating ownership of a git (hub) repo

2009-04-28T00:00:00-07:00

Migrating ownership of a git (hub) repo

28 Apr 2009 – New York

For when you don’t want to fork; you need to change code ownership.


git clone git@github.com:originaluser/originalrepo.git
cd originalrepo
git remote rm origin
git remote add origin git@github.com:newuser/newrepo.git
git push origin master

That was easy. Keep in mind this is just the repo. AFAIK there is no way to migrate the wiki or the tracker.

For all your devs who need to switch over to the new repo it should just be a matter of:


git remote rm origin
git remote add origin git@github.com:newuser/newrepo.git

Remember to take care of your branches as well. I wonder how you do this with hg and bitbucket.

Handy OSX Software - The Unarchiver

2009-04-27T00:00:00-07:00

Handy OSX Software – The Unarchiver

27 Apr 2009 – New York

I can’t remember how I stumbled across this but I can’t believe it took this long (either for this to exist or for me to find it). The Unarchiver is a replacement for the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X.

Crucially it can handle .rar and stuffit (.sit) files (and a lot more). This means one unpacker to rule them all, no more UnRarX and StuffIt Deluxe.

Bad Error Message (In Flex)

2009-03-17T00:00:00-07:00

Bad Error Message (In Flex)

17 Mar 2009 – New York

Had some flex code that generated the following compile-time error:


1061: Call to a possibly undefined method fooBar through a reference with static type mx.controls.VideoDisplay.

Already I have a problem with this. If the message is “possibly undefined” then I would expect it to be a warning that an exception may occur at runtime if indeed the message does not exist (you see the same thing in Obj-C if you don’t declare a method in your header but that is done correctly).

With this confusion in mind I run off to see why this is a compile-time error and found this here

You are calling a method that is not defined.

… … in what sense then is it “possibly” undefined?