Recent Posts

276

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on June 05, 2011, 10:54 PM »

Yes 2 great references.  

I put a list of references a while ago but haven't got the time to really "finalize" it or anything
Since we've been into references lately, here is some of it (there are a few already mentioned... I'll update the list with other entries -- if necessary -- when I'll have more time).

I got many links through this site : A central reference

If one is just trying Git and wants to use the basic Git GUI (which is perfectly functional IMO), this is a good "how to" to just learn the basics + a couple more tricks : An Illustrated Guide to Git on Windows (Start using Git with msysgit)

And then here are my personal favorites :

Pro Git

Git Reference (already mentioned by wraith808)

Git Ready

Git Magic


And then a lot of other useful stuff :

The official tutorial

The official manual

--

Everyday commands

Cheat Sheet

Git FAQ

Git for Computer Scientists

Git from the bottom up


Lots of screencasts/videos… Here are some interesting URLs with a few fun tricks :

http://tekpub.com/productions/git
http://blip.tv/file/4213359/
http://blip.tv/file/4094727


And... Good  Comparisons with Mercurial

Git and Mercurial - Compare and Contrast

Mercurial and Git: a technical comparison


P.S. : BTW, I'm using SmartGit a lot these days and I like it more and more.
I'm still used to the "one pane" diff viewer of the basic git GUI though... for some (strange?) reasons I kinda like it. Anybody else?

277

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on June 01, 2011, 08:34 AM »

This "comment" is one of the best for git/mercurial comparisons. Read it several times a couple months ago when I was trying to figure out where  I wanted to invest my energy. 

278

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 31, 2011, 10:28 AM »

Woa... Gource is weird. I don't really see the point, but... why not. Maybe I'm just lacking imagination today.

...and give the gource developer more practice with OpenGL may be..

-ewemoa (May 31, 2011, 05:34 AM)

Most likely.

279

Post New Requests Here / Re: Restore programs that were running at system shutdown (with selection)

« Last post by Armando on May 28, 2011, 12:12 AM »

I thought everybody used hibernate/sleep...  Except,maybe, Linux aficionados. Although... even Linux distros hibernate pretty well these days.

It's not really about hitting/not hitting save, but more about 1- not loosing time reopening every single app and document you were working on (that is, if you have several opened windows, etc.), 2- easily keep track of you were doing before "shutting down" your computer.

(BTW : I rarely hibernate/sleep without saving my work first.)

Like Tom, I might have had a few problems here and there, but overall, Hibernate, sleep etc. have been real saviors (owned three different laptops over the last 9-10 years, each running windows XP -- well... 2000 first). It's so important to me that I would probably consider switching to Apple if hibernate/sleep/standby weren't there... But maybe that's because I also have a lot of stuff in my startup folder and I usually have about 12-20 windows opened, etc. When I shutdown/restart, it takes so loooong before I can actually do something. I hate restarts.

280

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 27, 2011, 03:00 PM »

Thanks for the guilt and Stacked Git links. I'll have a look at those during the weekend.  

Yes, I think I read "everything" Losh wrote (when available...) about Mercurial and Git. This article is actually what pushed me to experiment with MQ "at the time". I actually mention therethat I liked MQ.

There are many good articles on MQ (like Mercurial queues just clicked )

And there's this great blog article (also fairly recent -- recommended) :  Mercurial and Git: a technical comparison. Probably nothing you wouldn't learn by reading a few books on Git or Mercurial... but that's exactly the point. A few books is sometimes too much.

In the comments, the author intelligently compares MQ to the Git index/staging area :

Thanks for the comments, and for the link to Mercurial Queues. It's true that queues are something that Git doesn't have; but then again, they're not needed in Git because it has (cheap) branches and you can reorder the commits afterwards.

However, using Mercurial Queues is definitely not the same as using the Git index, nor should it be confused as such. Yes, using Queues can enable you to do (local) feature branching (which is good) but Git's index is the set of things you are *about* to commit.

A case in point: I was merging the old Mac ZFS code and the onnv_72 code, which involved a significant merge set (see https://github.com/a...commit/6d20fbb74f11a). Putting the changeset into perspective: "Showing 604 changed files with 422,503 additions and 1,496 deletions" is the message that GitHub shows.

There is no way I would have been able to commit that with Mercurial Queues. For a start, 100-200 files were in conflict, which would mean either (a) putting some changes in with the conflict markers in place, or (b) backing out the merge node and applying changes incrementally, i.e. doing a manual merge.

However, using the Git index, I was able to solve one conflicted file at a time, and add it into the git index when I had de-conflicted that file. The git status was then able to tell me those files which were different from the index (i.e. those ones which I hadn't de-conflicted yet) and as such, give me a progress report on how far down the de-confliction line was. Once I had all conflicts addressed, and added into the git index, I was able to commit the merge node separately.

So don't get me wrong; I think if you have to use Hg then an extension like Queues (and histedit etc.) are absolutely necessary tools to have at your disposal. But they just replace built in functions of the git tree structure and in no way are able to replace the index.

281

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: CZB Pack - Timer plugin error

« Last post by Armando on May 25, 2011, 01:02 PM »

Hey, so I wasn't the only one! Thanks splitDiff.

This exactly what I did/do too (and sometimes still have to do... Not sure what is causing the JSON problems -- a bug in the parser ?)... but didn't post about it as nobody seemed to care at the time. 

The only problem is loosing all settings and needing to re-enter all presets etc.

282

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 24, 2011, 11:34 PM »

Thanks for the detailed report ! Interesting.

This is actually different than what I was referring to. And these caret moves don't seem to annoy me as I didn't even notice them!

I was actually referring to something more basic : the focus moving in the "Files" section.



However, I was just able to get it to work  pretty much the way I want by playing with the sorting!  I.e. : files don't move around in the "files" section after staging changes.

I'm embarrassed...   I'm not sure why I didn't get it before. I did play with the various column sorting before, but I did miss a couple aspects about the sorting mechanism (i.e.: ctrl+click can activate/deactivate the sorting for a column).

283

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 24, 2011, 01:41 PM »

Thanks for your attention to these details.

I wonder if I'm the only one finding that the "moving focus" (when staging files) is a problem. What did you think of it ewemoa?
 

284

General Software Discussion / Re: Deduplication, encryption, security and... Dropbox

« Last post by Armando on May 23, 2011, 01:18 PM »

I installed it 2 weeks ago and it feels unfinished. Did you try it ?
I don't think I was offered to chose the location of the "SecretSync" folder (in Windows XP, the default (only?) location is in C:\Documents and Settings\). Are/were you able to select the location of the SecretSync Folder?

285

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 20, 2011, 02:18 PM »

Since I'm running out of time, I'll have to be brief but might be able to expand during the weekend.

It does miss some other important ones though, like “blame”, “stash”, “clone –bare” (last one : surprising, to say the least… Unless I missed something [I did miss the "stash" command which was very obvious   ] ).

-Armando (March 15, 2011, 12:26 AM)

"blame" is on our todo-list. Could you please explain the use-case behind "clone --bare"? Isn't a bare repository usually located on a server without GUI?

-syntevo (May 19, 2011, 01:26 PM)

Nice to know blame is on the todo list.
As for the "clone --bare" use-case... If I remember correctly, I think I was toying with the idea of using Dropbox as a Git repository/server and wanted to clone my current working directory to the Dropbox folder. I don't remember all the details at the moment. I'll see if I can find more details later.

I did encounter a few problems and solving these problems meant dropping to the command line. E.g. : how do you "correct" a rebase that’s stalled… and won't abort nor continue ? hmmmm...  

-Armando (March 15, 2011, 12:26 AM)

Do you mean, that SmartGit sometimes hangs during a rebase? This bug has been fixed in version "2.1 early-access build 5". This was caused by Git trying to open an editor and waiting for it to exit.

-syntevo (May 19, 2011, 01:26 PM)

That must be it. I will Download the latest version. Thanks for the heads up.
I think I also had another problem with rebase -- not sure. I'll have to checkout my notes and maybe try to reproduce the problem later... that is, if there was a problem.

The manual is ok, but not as clear as Tortoise’s, IMHO. Very dry, almost no graphs… and so it remains slightly abstract. I’d almost rather read Git’s man pages (not bad at all btw).

-Armando (March 15, 2011, 12:26 AM)

You are right, our manual is a weak spot.

-syntevo (May 19, 2011, 01:26 PM)

SmartGit is pretty feature rich. It would greatly benefit from a better manual where all features are clearly documented. A few interface images would be good too...

Wow, nope, I didn't know about the search as you type feature.
Thanks for sharing all this!
Yes, the arrows do feel a bit odd, but I'll get use to it.

-Armando (May 19, 2011, 09:00 AM)

What shortcut did you expect? What we can do to make the "search-as-you-type" feature more noticeable?

-syntevo (May 19, 2011, 01:26 PM)

As you probably know, a lot of Windows applications (text editors, IDEs) use F3 and Shift/ctrl+F3 to move to next/previous occurrence (can't talk about Linux or Mac as I haven't really worked with those in the last couple years and I forgot...). I couldn't say for sure what the standard is, but F3 is what I'm used to... Hence the "awkward" feel.

That said, it's probably not a big deal if everything is documented properly or easily discovered (tooltips or whatever). Arrows are perfectly fine if one knows what they're supposed to do. Documentation is key here.


Other small points I can think of:

- Some other shortcuts feel a bit weird. E.g.: Ctrl+T for staging. I immediately changed it for Alt+Enter, and Ctrl+Alt+Enter for editing the index, which seems much more natural when reviewing changes using Alt+Arrows. This is personal of course... but just saying.

- After staging some content, the focus always moves to the newly staged file, which interrupts the "files modifications reviewing". There might be a way to prevent that but I haven't found it. Question: Could the focus remain at the top of the list and not move? When reviewing files before committing , it's inconvenient to always have to move back to the top of the file list or where the other file to review is located. But like I said, I'm aware that I might be missing something.

And last one for today (something  super minor that occurred to me while using SmartGit this morning):

- Some tooltips seem too verbose.
E.g., in the files section/table : "if selected,  unchanged files will be shown".
Why not simply : "Show unchanged files" ? It's more "to the point" IMO.

Like I said, it's minor, but... the devil is in the details!

Thanks for your attention.

286

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 19, 2011, 01:41 PM »

Thanks a lot for stopping by! You have a great product, that's for sure.  
I'll take the time to read everything tonight or tomorrow and give you well deserved feedback.
Thanks.

287

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 19, 2011, 11:43 AM »

oops... And I forgot to share that new link. A few good things in it.

Exit SVN, Enter Git

288

Living Room / Re: Easiest laptop (brand) to take apart ?

« Last post by Armando on May 19, 2011, 11:23 AM »

Thanks for sharing ! Yes, this is a really nice design and... you're right : it doesn't look like it could get much easier or better than that! I really like it. This is certainly one to keep in mind
 

[Edit : oh... and good luck with your research!  I hope you didn't loose any data when your Acer died..,]

289

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 19, 2011, 09:00 AM »

Looking forward to any observations

-ewemoa (May 18, 2011, 10:35 PM)

I had to keep my old routine for now as I had to get things done... But I still plan to use SmartGit more. Will keep you posted.

BTW, I wanted to search the history of a project via the log window and was stumped initially.  I learned that "search as you type" (they call this speed-search apparently) seems to work.  Was this obvious to you?  I didn't find this in the docs...it was again via a posting to that support list.

Then I spent a while trying to figure out how to search for subsequent occurrences -- finally after trying a variety of combinations, I hit on using the down (for next) and up (for previous) arrow keys...feels odd but at least something works.

-ewemoa (May 18, 2011, 10:35 PM)

Wow, nope, I didn't know about the search as you type feature.
Thanks for sharing all this!
Yes, the arrows do feel a bit odd, but I'll get use to it.

On a related note, I've started to investigate gitk and am noticing that it seems to produce more search results than SmartGit for the same search terms in some cases.  It appears that SmartGit doesn't load all commits [1] by default and the searching only seems to take place over what's loaded -- once sufficiently more commits are loaded, additional search results seem to come up...


[1] Found a "Load all commits" menu item via the Query menu.

-ewemoa (May 18, 2011, 10:35 PM)

Again, nice find. 

290

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 18, 2011, 09:26 AM »

Thanks ! Cool. Yes, this is certainly better than nothing (in Git Extensions, all commands are apparent so it is very transparent)... and I should've looked for a log file. Bad me.

From your post, this says it all :

It would be awesome if they were displayed in the status bar or a console popup.

This is a bit too well hidden IMO (even the mention of that log in the online docs!).
My log file is in not in the .setting directory but in \Application Data\syntevo\SmartGit\2.


Anyway... considering all that, SmartGit is probably what I'll try to use more in the next week.

291

General Software Discussion / Re: SpiderOak - very nice people =)

« Last post by Armando on May 17, 2011, 08:23 AM »

Thanks Jibz.

and after that it was stuck on "finalizing" the upload for 50 minutes -- I guess the servers were not responding.

Exactly my experience.

And... we all know that it's always when one needs access to one's data now that everything slows down... 

Btw, totally offtopic, anyone tried Wuala?

I was actually considering wuala too -- looks like another nice alternative. Unfortunately, not enough time to test this one -- at least not for the next 2 weeks.

292

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 17, 2011, 07:54 AM »

You're right! I actually discovered the stashing capabilities after writing what I wrote and forgot to edit it. I'll do that now. Thanks ewemoa.

293

General Software Discussion / Re: SpiderOak - very nice people =)

« Last post by Armando on May 16, 2011, 12:37 PM »

I mainly use spideroak/dropbox to
1- Access/retrieve  files from any internet-connected device.
2- Share folders
3- Preserve historical versions & deleted files
I don't really care too much about the syncing between computers at this point.

While it generally works well, except for some encryption formats (see other comments earlier) Spideroak is slower than Dropbox. (And, yes, it's probably not entirely fair to compare all options both offer... But in this case I think it is : I use Spideroak for what it should do best and I compare it to what Dropbox does very well too -- in terms of functionality, not security, of course.)

I don't want to stick with a company that doesn't tell the truth (i.e. : Dropbox), but... I can't fully switch to Spideroak yet if uploading a 20k file and being able to access it through my handheld sometimes takes more than 5 min (between the time the file is changed and the time it's finally accessible on my handheld).

Anybody else is seeing that kind of slowness ? With Dropbox, it's almost instantaneous.

294

General Software Discussion / Re: Deduplication, encryption, security and... Dropbox

« Last post by Armando on May 16, 2011, 10:41 AM »

Wonder what DropBox is going to do now. There might be lawsuits coming.

295

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 15, 2011, 01:41 PM »

I haven't forgotten this discussion... 

I'm just lacking time these days !...  But I plan to continue to contribute to this thread with reflections about Git and Mercurial's various aspects -- although I'm more focused on Git, since this is the tool I chose. (Did I mention earlier that I not only decided to use Git because I like it but also because is my various tests it was easier to convert a Git repo to Mercurial than the reverse ?  )

=====

Perhaps I'll try out gitsum for Emacs in the mean time:

  http://chneukirchen....roducing-gitsum.html

Cool stuff. I'll have to check that out.

BTW, any thoughts on the likes of:

  http://nvie.com/post...git-branching-model/

Branching is an interesting topic. It's good to see the different strategies used among developers. I saw the article you're referring to a few weeks ago.

The problem is that in my own current project, I don't really need to "branch" that much. It's just not worth it. So I haven't explored that area a whole lot. I've read about it though.

296

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 10, 2011, 10:01 AM »

Thanks ewemoa  .
the Record and Crecord Mercurial extensions definitely allow a similar workflow.
There's also the MQ extension (Mercurial Queue). I remember liking MQ a lot.

I don't have the time to discuss that in depth, but I also remember that I found it easier to work with the "index" like features in Git using the GUI (Git GUI), than with Mercurial (Tortoise Hg). Things are changing fast though and I'll revisit tortoise Hg in a while to see how it does this whole "partial commit" thing.

297

Living Room / Re: Easiest laptop (brand) to take apart ?

« Last post by Armando on May 09, 2011, 02:19 PM »

Thanks for you thoughts. 
Yes, it boils down to what are your priorities. If one is swapping hard drives frequently, then a simple "slide out/in" design is better. My Dell Vostro is like that, and my Inspiron was like that too.

(That said, in my specific case, I'd still go for the extra screws and a better overall accessibility of all components, than an easy to swap hard drive mechanism. We're only speakin about maybe 1 (2?) extra minute to remove 7 screws. However, in those models where plastic parts need to be popped out/in, plugs to be unplugged, etc. we're easily talking about an extra 25-30min when access to other parts like the CPU is needed, and then another 30 min to put back pieces together -- my Vostro or Inspiron take/took that long.)

298

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 09, 2011, 11:48 AM »

Cool then! I just wish I had more time to play with Git myself these days. I use it minimally, but I did a few merges etc. successfully. I mainly use git's GUI (the one that comes with Git by default) and tortoise Git these days.

=====

C-   Some Detail about Git’s Index and "Content based" structure

(This is approximately where I left imy thoughts last time, when I answered Shades' question... So I might as well continue from there.)


so... What's the Git index?


Scott Chacon in Pro Git (an excellent manual, which can be read online) explains :

The staging area is a simple file, generally contained in your Git directory, that stores information about what will go into your next commit. It’s sometimes referred to as the index, but it’s becoming standard to refer to it as the staging area.

John Wiegley, in "Git From the bottom Up", writes :

Unlike other, similar tools you may have used, Git does not commit  changes directly from the working tree into the repository.  Instead, changes are first registered in something called the index.  Think of it as a way of “confirming” your changes, one by one, before doing a commit (which records all your approved changes at once).  Some find it helpful to call it instead as the “staging area”, instead of the index.

While I personally love the concept of staging area and the way Git uses it (I'll tell you why after), not everybody does. Steve Losh Writes :

One of the features that git users talk about often is git’s index. Mercurial has the record extension, but it’s not really the same thing.

I personally don’t like the index. I feel that git encourages people to check in changesets that contain code which they’ve never tested (or even built) because the index is such a prominent part of git’s workflow.

Yes, one can argue that you don’t actually push changes until you’ve got a working state. The problem is that when you then try to run git bisect later to find a bug you’ll have to waste time skipping over changesets that don’t build. You could use git rebase --interactive to fold partial changesets into one big one, but again, my gut feeling is that few people actually bother testing the results.

-http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/01/the-real-difference-between-mercurial-and-git/

I'm not an experienced programmer, but  I think that the staging area (index) is very useful. I use it all the time as it's very convenient when you need to group similar changes together. I.e. : if you worked a while without committing anything, you can decide to commit your work in parts using the staging area. Of course you run the risk of having a few commits that won't compile, but then, as M. Losh says, you can just do a "git rebase --interactive to fold partial changesets".

What's telling is what Losh says afterward:

With all that said, I’ve considered creating a Mercurial extension that adds git’s index functionality to Mercurial, because I think it would make the transition to Mercurial easier for git users. I’ve had enough experience with Mercurial’s internals to know that such a thing is possible, but I simply don’t have the time to do it all myself. If you’re interested in helping out please let me know!

-http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/01/the-real-difference-between-mercurial-and-git/

...  So maybe this index isn't that useless after all.

Not all GUIs out there allow to granularly add parts of file changes to the index. The “vanilla” Git GUI allows it very easily (select part of the code you want to “stage” and add them to the index; when you’re finished, commit the whole thing).

While I now realise it's probably not as related as I first thought it was, Git's use of an index is still coherent with the way it keeps track of files changes by storing content, not files.

In "Git Internals", Scott Chacon writes :

It is important to note that it is the contents that are stored, not the files. The names and modes of the files are not stored with the blob, just the contents.

This means that if you have two files anywhere in your project that are exactly the same, even if they have different names, Git will only store the blob once. This also means that during repository transfers, such as clones or fetches, Git will only transfer the blob once, then expand it out into multiple files upon checkout.

This "content driven" structure (if I may say so) has 2 implications I'll try to write about next time -- I'm already late for my next meeting !

299

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Armando on May 09, 2011, 11:00 AM »

Thanks for the heads up ewemoa, and also for bringing back this thread to my mind ! 

300

General Software Discussion / Re: Deduplication, encryption, security and... Dropbox

« Last post by Armando on May 06, 2011, 12:08 PM »

Thanks or the heads up !  Will have a look at it later.