Questions for this episode of the live show are here: http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/20_years_of_java_mvc
Mounting Linux ext partitions on OS X
I wanted to check some files on an SD Card formatted in ext that I had used on my Pi and wanted to check if I had left some files in the home dir before I reimaged it. OS X doesn’t support ext formatted drives by default, but you add support using OSXFuse.
- Install Fuse for OS X
- Install the ext plugin for Fuse
- Find the partition you want to mount with: diskutil list
- Make a mount point – not sure on Mac OS X where is the best place, but I added /mnt/sdcard
- Mount with:
[code]sudo fuse-ext2 /dev/disk1s2 /mnt/sdcard[/code]
- (replace with the /dev/ to your device)
I’m not sure if it’s best practice on the Mac to mount with sudo, but this worked for me for what I needed to do. Fuse mounts on ext are r/o by default, but there is experimental r/w support that can be enabled, check the docs.
Done!
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best solutions
How many times have you seen or written code like this (in any language):
[code]
if(someFlag){
someFlag = false;
}
else{
someFlag = true;
}
[/code]
I’ve written code myself like this many times, and seen it in many places too. Usually for toggling display of some content: “if it’s hidden, show it; otherwise, hide it”.
Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time learning and coding an app using AngularJS and I keep seeing this pattern repeatedly in many code examples:
[code]
someFlag = !someFlag;
[/code]
When I first saw a statement like this it took me a couple of seconds to understand the purpose, but then when it clicked I laughed out loud in one of those ‘ahah!’ moments, as the outcome of this code is exactly the same as the code above.
When we translate design to code, sometimes thinking in logical, procedural steps hurts the ability to translate to code that best uses the features of the language or platform that you are running on. Sometimes the simplest solutions really are the best solutions, although maybe it takes a different thought process to get there.
Choosing an Issue Tracker for an Online Service
I’ve been working on an application that I’m getting close to publicly launching, and while the site is mostly functional with most of the development done (I’ve been working on it in my ‘spare time’ for almost a year), there’s some non-development tasks I need to complete before launching, including:
- adding Google AdSense and Analytics
- completing online documentation
- setting up an online issue tracker
The options for an issue tracker has taken me by surprise as there are so many options, ranging from free to varying monthly fee options. I’m somewhat familiar with some of the older free development project focused options, like Bugzilla, Trac, Redmine, and commercial options like Atlassian’s Jira. Part of my app is open source on GitHub and so to use the GitHub issue tracker for that part is an easy choice. I’d also like to make sure whichever issue tracker I chose is easy to use from the point of view of my end users, the majority of which are unlikely to have existing GitHub accounts, or accounts on other online tracker sites, and I want to make sure it’s as easy as possible for them to log issues and enhancement requests.
(This article here has a good list of a number of issue trackers.)
Ranging from simplest to use, Trello is a stand-out from the crowd. Although it’s not a dedicated issue tracker, the approach of managing lists of items and moving items (cards) from one list (e.g. open items) to another (e.g.closed items) is trivial.
Categorized in interesting-but-with-high-technical-requirements is YouTrack from JetBrains, and free for upto 10 users … but requiring 1GB heap to run, this would cost me some monthly runtime costs for medium gear on OpenShift, so I’m not sure if this is worth the investment at this point.
Next up in the looks-interesting category is Asana – I’m not familiar with this service, it looks like it offers much more than I would need, but could be worth investigating.
I’ve some decisions to make here, and right now I’m thinking either using GitHub’s issue tracker or Trello. What would you recommend – leave me a comment!