git checkout `git rev-list -n 1 --before="2012-03-01" master`

Then, I ran cloc to count lines of code:

cloc .

Its really easy to register the point in time as a git branch so that you can get back and count lines of code later:

git co -b 2012-03

You can always verify latest revision like so:

Git log -1

The combination of git and cloc makes it really simple to keep history of codebase changes.

Since phantomJs is just released this week, I needed to build it myself.

I post this link to the binary in case it can benefit others.

PhantomJs 1.7.0 built on Linux Redhat Fedora 64 bit

PhantomJS is a fantastic tool for automating tests, since it is a headless browser which we wrapped in our automation framework to run javascript based tests very fast and easily.

I followed the build instructions (the instructions described for Amazon EC2 also worked on the fedora I am running).

sudo yum install gcc gcc-c++ make git openssl-devel freetype-devel fontconfig-devel
git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git
cd phantomjs
git checkout 1.7
./build.sh --jobs 1

#(added step below by me)
sudo yum install upx

After finishing the build, run deploy/package.sh which creates PhantomJS binary tarball that can be moved around and/or extracted to a different location. This is the correct way to install the built binary into an arbitrary directory, i.e. do not simply copy the executable as it won't work.

The link I posted is the actual outcome of ./deploy/package.sh

For other operating systems, you could probably just get the binary at the official PhantomJs download page.

Subversion recently has lost terrain to Git for several reasons. But actually, svn is capable of doing many of the things I love from Git.

Here are some less known commands I find extremely helpful.

Undo last commit

svn merge -r HEAD:PREV .

This commands merges in the changes required to go from latest version (HEAD) and back to the previous (PREV).

It also makes sense to view latest commit comment, and possibly include the revision number/description in your new commit message.

svn log --limit 1

After this, you should to an `svn status` and (if you are satisfied with the result), then commit:

svn commit -m "reverted accidentally committed previous version"

More info: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/747713/subversion-retract-accidental-checkin/

View files changed since last update

svn st -u

The -u flag gives  an overview of what has been updated on the server. This is what IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ do behind the scenes.

I have seen much confusion caused when `svn log` will not show what changed on the server. In case you need more info, then investigate the changes with

svn log -r BASE:HEAD

As opposed to `svn log`, this command actually shows log messages on the server.

and if you need the list of files changed:

svn diff -r xxx:HEAD --summarize

Where xxx represents the version number of BASE (and you can get it with `svn info`)

More info: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1444005/displaying-a-list-of-files-that-have-changed-since-last-changeset-in-svn

Merge to branch from trunk

After branching, it’s easy to keep up-to-date with changes of the trunk. Just go to the branch, and merge all from trunk, like this:

cd branch
svn merge ^/trunk

where as of Subversion 1.6, the  caret “^” is a handy annotation for the base repository url.

After this merge, you can just commit the changes with a standard comment that changes have been merge.

Merge from trunk to current branch

In this case I want to merge all changes from trunk to a specific branch. (I am doing this daily to keep my branch updated). First step is to find the branch split point:

$ svn log --stop-on-copy | tail -n 4
r1769 | jesper | 2012-05-09 11:07:45 +0200 (Wed, 09 May 2012) | 1 line

Adding the new branch in subversion
------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, the revision number is “1769″, which marks the first split point of the branch.

We now have a way to target all trunk changes with a higher revision number than “1769″.

The merge command is then:

 svn merge -r 1769:HEAD ^/trunk .

If that matters I am using svn 1.6.

You can do me a favor and vote (max 3 votes per person).

License: Creative commons (attribution).

Earler today I attended Matt Wynne’s presentation at QCon New York. It was one of the best presentations I have seen so far. Especially, since he began as his alter-ego, Darren Workshy.

Darren Workshy, hater of behaviour-driven development. Darren has invented Mortgage-driven development (MDD)

“it’s the only ‘DD’ you will have to learn

Maintainable code offers no job security! 

Here are the mantras of Mortgage driven development

If the code is maintainable it could be maintained by anyone — not just yourself, and then you cannot pay your mortgages

Programming needs to be a solicity: So I can plug in my earphones and listen to Megadeath

 He shows a picture of people interacting around a whiteboard

“look at these people chit-chatting” See any features getting done? See any code getting written?

So he describes the process as this:

As a mortgage-driven developer,
I make the experience of collaborating
as awkward and
unpleasant as I can

“Cucumber is a threat to us mortgage-driven developers”

It is really threatening ot my position!

Refucturing the code to make it undreadable and hard for others to understand:

“Refucturing is the process of taking a well-
designed piece of code and, through a series of small
reversible changes making it completely
unmaintainable to anybody except yourself”
– Jason Gorman, 2006 

So, for Darren Workshy, to pay his mortgages he will follow these best practices

• Include as much irrelevant detail in your features as possible
• keeps them boring to read
• and nice and brittle (hard to read)
• Avoid using words you hear business people using. Invent your own instead!

This way, Darren Workshy will become indispensible at work, nobody can maintain code but him. And he will be able to stay in the job and pay his mortgages. That is mortgage-driven development.

Matt Wynne eventually dropped the mask of his character and returned to his normal self. He is a big advocate of behaviour-driven development.

His talk about Mortgage-driven development provided many examples that turned around the arguments. In that way it was really refreshing.

More info:

• My Twitter stream (@jesperronn)
• Danish Version2 guest blog entries from my colleague Jesper S. Møller

This javascript counts the number of lines in the table with all jobs:

document.getElementById("projectstatus").children[0].children.length

Or save this as a browser toolbar bookmarklet:

Name: #HudsonJobs
 javascript:(function(e){alert(document.getElementById("projectstatus").children[0].children.length);e.preventDefault()})()

This line finds the table with id=”projectstatus”, and counts the TR elements inside of it’s TBODY.

At work it said 445 lines, including the table header.

Which means that this hudson server has configured 444 jobs.

That’s insane!

How many jobs are on your Hudson servers?

(I am currently relying on the html structure for Hudson version 2.1.2. It may work for other versions as well)

Studying the code, it turns out this is just clever use of Google’s font api. What you essentially do is to add this to your <HEAD> element:

<!-- Google Fonts --> 
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Cabin Sketch:bold' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /> 
<style type="text/css" media="screen"> 
  h1 { font-family: 'Cabin Sketch', arial, serif; } 
  .entry-title { 
    font-family:'Cabin Sketch'; 
  } 
</style>

Now the stylesheet referenced takes care of the rest. It’s as simple as that!

Browser support

The best part of this, is that it works for all modern browsers, and also for old IE versions (down to IE6).

From googles FAQ:

What browsers are supported?

The Google Web Fonts API is compatible with the following browsers:

• Google Chrome: version 4.249.4+
• Mozilla Firefox: version: 3.5+
• Apple Safari: version 3.1+
• Opera: version 10.5+
• Microsoft Internet Explorer: version 6+

Does the Google Web Fonts API work on mobile devices?

The Google Web Fonts API works reliably on the vast majority of modern mobile operating systems, including Android 2.2+ and iOS 4.2+ (iPhone, iPad, iPod). Support for earlier iOS versions is limited.

Bandwidth considerations

One word of caution: Think twice before adding a lot of extra bytes to your web application. You should only add assets to it if it really makes a difference for your end users!

I ended up at Level 2, which will have to meet all criteria from level 1 + the additional criteria from level 2.

So for convenience i will post all details here.

The table below is extracted from my certification sheet:

(bwt, i also have put the table below as a software engineer Certification Criteria)

Capgemini Certification criteria for Software Engineer, level 1-4 copied September 2011

Its not yet officially available, but can be downloaded directly from the codebase:
google-web-toolkit.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ prebuilt folder in here  is the gwt-dev-plugin.xpi, and it works like a charm :)

Previously i wrote when the plugin was updated to work with Firefox 7 and 8.

More info in the group discussion: “GWT Developer Plugin for Firefox 9”

What timing, as Mozilla is likely to release Firefox 10 this coming Tuesday. For the sake of web developers that use GWT, i hope the plugin updates can come sooner in the future.

UPDATE 2012-02-02: This thread in the google group follows plugin development for Firefox 10.

I ended up creating this little handy script based on webkit2png (download source)

#!/usr/bin/env sh
HOST="http://localhost:8080/myproject/viewer"
/usr/bin/python webkit2png -F -o "01dashboard" $HOST/dashboard
/usr/bin/python webkit2png -F -o "02showdetail" $HOST/detail
/usr/bin/python webkit2png -F -o "03listpage" $HOST/list

$ ls -1
01dashboard.png
02showdetail.png
03listpage.png