Unix source commit history from 1970 to present (and links to other shared commercial source)

A single github repo has been shared that combines historical commits for the Unix operating system going all the way back to 1970.

As a software developer I find it fascinating to look at the source of other software that you use and often take for granted. We’re lucky enough to be able to freely browse source of many open source projects, shared on github and other online repos. You can learn a lot from looking through code written by other developers.

There’s also a many interesting and previously commercial systems that have had their source publicly shared. A few examples that I’ve come across:

MacOS: Opening a Terminal from a folder in Finder (plus, taking and annotating screenshots)

In Windows I like that you can Shift-Rightclick in Explorer and select “Open command prompt here”. During development I often want to do the same on my Mac, and this feature is provided too, but not enabled by default. To turn it on, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, select Services on the left, and then check the option “New Terminal at Folder”:

If you want to go in the other direction, you can easily open a Finder at your current folder in Terminal by running ‘open .’

A couple of bonus tips:

  • To take full screen screenshot on the Mac, press Shift-Cmd-3. A file will be saved on your desktop. To take a screenshot of a selection of the screen, press Shift-Cmd-4, then drag to outline your selection.
  • In the Preview app, there’s a neat feature under Tools > Annotate where you can annotate your screenshots with highlighted sections, boxes, arrows, text etc. Just open your screenshot file in Preview, and then you can easily annotate and save the image: