Articles

ignoring files

We don’t need Git to version everything in our projects, be it compiled source, files with passwords, or temporary files that editors love to create. Usually keeping stuff out of your VCS’ hands is a task that is hard to manage and annoying to set up. Not with Git! Using the .gitignore file along with some other options, we’re going to learn how to set up per-project and per-user ignores.

Is [my show] on yet?

Not long after I first deployed isLOSTonyet, seaofclouds sent me a github message about his own LOST countdown site. I explained my grand vision for my site, and suggested we join forces. Luckily, he too liked the idea of tracking fellow LOST geeks on Twitter, and was able come up with a beautiful design for the new site.

is lost on yet? screenshot

Runaway ruby process uses 100% cpu

I’ve noticed over the last year or so that occasionally Ruby would start using 100% and I would have to kill -9 it.

I figured that I was the only one with this problem, and for some reason assumed that it was cucumber, since it usually happened after running features.

However, it looks like it happens when I close an iterm window with an open ruby console without quitting the console first.

the staging area

One of the most essential concepts to Git is that of the staging area. Its use can fundamentally change how you work, for the better! Let’s go over how exactly it works and what you’ll need to know to use it.

With most other version control systems, there’s 2 places to store data: your working copy (the folders/files that you’re currently using) and the datastore (where the version control decides how to pack and store your changes). In Git there’s a third option: the staging area (or index). It’s basically a loading dock where you get to determine what changes get shipped away.

restoring lost commits

So, you just did a git reset --hard HEAD^ and threw out your last commit. Well, it turns out you really did need those changes. You’ll never be able to implement that algorithm that perfectly twice, so you need it back. Don’t fear, git should still have your commit. When you do a reset, the commit you threw out goes to a “dangling” state. It’s still in git’s datastore, waiting for the next garbage collection to clean it up. So unless you’ve ran a git gc since you tossed it, you should be in the clear to restore it.

Open sourcing our twime tracker

Oh my god, I just came up with a new phrase. Twime tracker. Shoot me now, please.

Anyway, about a year ago we started writing a “twitter meets time tracking” application, XTT, over at ENTP to track our time. It was more than that, really.. more like 37signals’ In/Out (which they hadn’t released yet), but also like a closed-group twitter-style status update, the difference being we track the times for each status.

Using decision trees to predict paying users in Ruby

Over at Ilya Grigorik’s blog, there’s a great post on using decision trees to figure out what attributes matter in a decision

I had some hiccups trying to implement this in a project, so this is a quick post on how you might actually use his decisiontree gem in your app.

Moonshine: Configuration Management and Deployment

On Wednesday, at the January 14th 2009 meeting of the Atlanta Ruby Users Group, Jesse Newland presented a talk on our latest project: Moonshine. Moonshine is an opensource configuration management and deployment system being released later this month.

Windows 7 - The Bleeding Edge

Well I finally bit the bullet. While I had tried vista on my work laptop, and after sweeting it for 3 months, went back to xp.
Microsoft Windows 7 seemed to be the answer to what I was looking for.

So I finally decided to use the Beta on my main gaming machine. My main work machine is a MAC.

First, Lets see how well the beta behaves. So I created a new VM on my Mac, and did the install from the ISO.
Wow, it went smooth and easy. Very fast install compared to XP. And so much better than Vista.

cleaning up untracked files

Our first reader submitted tip comes from Dav Glass, and it elaborates on a command used to keep your repository nice and tidy. Have a tip you’d like to share? Submit it!

Files and directories may pile up in your working directory that are left over from merges, generated, or perhaps got mistakenly put there. Whatever the case, you don’t need to ignore them in your .gitignore, you just need to remove them. Running

git clean -n -d

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