johanmynhardt

Setting the stage One of the frustrations for users that had the Git-epiphany is that long after they start to use Git, they will be locked down to environments where Subversion still lurks in the dark shadows, causing trouble, sleepless nights, and crying yourself to sleep. "The tool-set change needs to be taken into consideration" "But we have Subversion" "Why change something that already works?" "Who cares if you don't have connectivity to the repository? I'll sync when it is back up." "But my IDE has local history, why do I need another tool that keeps track of the entire history?" "I don't mind going to have a coffee while operation x-y-z is running on Subversion" Branching? Who needs branching? I don't bother entering commit messages because I like to peeve my colleagues by forcing them to go through commits with diff compares to find some changes. Our team don't have the time to sp...

Hmm. One would say that I don't seem active on my blog. I'll be a liar if I say otherwise. It's just been hectic at the office and you know, it's not a great idea to write any posts when you are not inspired. That changed for today! I feel like writing a blog post again, and I need to do some catching up on what happened in the meantime. My last post was on good development practices and using distributed version control, in the form of Git. It's close to a year now since I started using git, and I got really comfortable using it at the office, although we use a central repository in the form of subversion. Unfortunately I had to switch back to subversion this past week, and I have to say, it's hell, waiting for updates and committing. But I can't really use git like I used to, since the subversion repo is set up wrong in that multiple sub-folders are used for individual projects. Thus, you'll have revision numbers following on each other across di...

Disclaimer: I'm only commenting on migration from subversion to git, as I found the git tool chain to provide you with a paradise of tools to use, once you get to know them, which also happens to make a developer a happy developer. Bazaar is right out there with the rest of the DVCS's but my GPS points to git as a primary weapon. Some time has passed since I tried git for the first time, and since slowly getting the bigger picture, I just have to mention a couple of things. As I recall, it was not a speedy process to learn subversion. It took a couple of months to be exact, the main reason for that being that I did not use and have any knowledge of VCS back then. Subversion can't really be bad-mouthed since it does what it needs to do. Sure, it has pains and issues that one comes across from time to time, but besides that, it's OK for basic usage. The main issues I came across are checksum mismatch, unversioned directory already exists and resolving conflicts. Oh, and t...

So, talking in front of people made me nervous. While it can only be the worst benchmark for me, I'm looking forward to improve my presentation in the future. The presentation covered Maven from creating a project to Continuous Integration using Apache Continuum. My aim is to create an example project that can be used. I have spent a long time getting to the point where I could produce this. It was not easy and there are some features that I would like to fix in due time, but for now, my presentation is looking good enough :) The actual project resources are not available as yet. I did a localhost set up, but for it to be perfect, I need to set it up in a real-world environment. In the meantime, enjoy the presentation! (We were pressed for time, so I tried to keep it as short as possible, giving a basic overview of what is needed. Maven scratch-to-production View more presentations from Johan Mynhardt

So, last time I discussed the use of Maven as a build tool, from A to Z. After finishing that post I realised that I need to think about what I need to write next, as I decided to actually create an n-part "series". There clearly is no particular order that should be followed. I'm just writing as I continue with my own experience to become a better developer. Next on my list is version control . When I started as a junior I did not really know what all the version control hoo-ha was all about, but in good time I had to work with it, never really grasping the importance of using it effectively. Neither does it seem that a lot of developers spend some time to learn the tools properly or grow proper habits. As I went through some material I saw mentions of subversion users that commonly have the bad habit of not providing messages on commit. Well, it would just be the case that at the office this is exactly what happens. For what reason, I don't know. I will probably ju...

I have no doubt that I'm currently on the right track in my career. But as I've noticed the last couple of weeks, it does not mean that everyone will be happy... I'm currently having this itch to get my skills up to what is out there on the Internet. The biggest problem is that there is so much to learn and so little time. One can't possibly master them all. At least I have started somewhere, some time ago. Firstly I have started off to bash my brains out on Apache Maven . At the time I have started learning Maven we were only using (and still do) Apache Ant . Out of habit I don't take any tool for granted, so I started digging around, getting a feel for the play field, read recommendations, hate-messages, guides and manuals. I can't say that using Maven is outright easy. Learning Curve Unfortunately there is no getting away from this. With great power comes great responsibility, or in this case, a heck of a learning curve. Starting out is easy and even simple, ...

I'm sure that every now and then every person has the urge to improve something in his or her life or some part of his or her life. Be it personal matters or matters of personal interest in one's job. It's been a while since I started reading a book, The Pragmatic Programmer , which discuss various aspects/perspectives/attitudes in programming and being a developer. Now this is one of those books that doesn't quite read like a storybook. Read, absorb, absorb some more, read a little, forget about the book, pick it up again and repeat cycle. But during one of these cycles it became clear to me that sometimes it is for the better when you don't make a lot of progress while reading. A lot of the time it simply means that you are not ready for the content which you are about to take in. When you are ready, you will continue and you will most probably see why you were not inspired to read on. Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on a project and many a time ...