tpope.net - Geek

Prettify Your Ruby Diffs

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:42:55 -0400

You've probably noticed that Git puts additional context data in the hunk headers: the lines that start with @@ and specify the line numbers where the hunk fits. For example, in the Rails Git repository, git show 13e7849 reveals the following two lines:

@@ -39,12 +39,7 @@ module ActionController #:nodoc:
@@ -67,6 +62,12 @@ module ActionController #:nodoc:

The algorithm Git uses to choose these lines is simple: search backwards for the first line with something other than whitespace in the first column, and use that. This works great for C, but as you can see above, it's not quite as informative when it comes to Ruby. Lucky for us, it can be customized with a two step process.

OS X, OS Schmen

Mon, 26 May 2008 23:11:15 -0400

So I've been scratching my head about how to use all my custom config files when I'm using a machine without a dedicated user account (e.g., when pair programming). It recently dawned on me I could sidestep the issue by setting up a config directory in /tmp, pointing HOME to it, and launching GNU Screen. I hacked together a quick script I could run via curl -s http://c.tpope.net|sh that allows nearly instant setup on any system. It works beautifully on Linux but trying it on OS X has revealed several reminders why I haven't migrated.

Example Git Workflows: Maintaining a Long Lived Topic Branch

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:55:21 -0400

In our previous post in the series, we took a look at how a Rails core committer could best pull in a branch submitted by a contributer. Today, we're going to be looking at things from the opposite side: How a contributer can best maintain a branch intended for pulling.

A Note About Git Commit Messages

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:44:55 -0400

Before I continue on in my workflows series, I wanted to take a moment to elaborate on my earlier comments about commit messages. I think the best practices for commit message formatting is one of the little details that makes Git great. Understandably, some of the first commits to rails.git have messages of the really-long-line variety, and I want to expand on why this is a poor practice.

Vim Runtime files for Git

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:55:14 -0400

A few months back, I started a low profile project to create a set of Vim runtime files for various Git filetypes that would ultimately be included with Vim. Given the warm reception they have received, an official announcement seems prudent. Five different filetypes are provided: gitcommit, gitconfig, gitrebase, gitsendemail, and git (which is a generic filetype for things like git log output).

There's no formalized install procedure but the following shell commands should suffice:

mkdir -p ~/.vim
git archive --remote=git://git.tpope.net/vim-git.git HEAD|tar tf - -C ~/.vim

The files tagged with v1.0 are already slated to be included with the next Vim release, and those tagged v2.0 have just recently been submitted for inclusion.

Example Git Workflows: Merging a Contributor via Pull

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:33:18 -0400

Welcome to my series of articles providing example workflows for working with the Rails core Git repository. My first post is designed for Rails core committers and explains one way to deal with contributions that come in the form of a Git URL and a branch name.

Best Practices for Contributing to Rails with Git

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:34:27 -0400

The Ruby on Rails core is now hosted on Git. This is great news for Git fans like myself. For those of Rails core contributors who are coming late to the party, here's a quick list of tips I've put together especially for you. This no substitute for a proper tutorial but rather a Rails biased supplement to one.

Easy Ruby Examples

Fri, 04 May 2007 00:40:30 -0400

Today I devised a little script to generate Ruby examples showing code and output.

% rubydemo '[1,2,3].inject {|m,o|m+o}'
[1,2,3].inject {|m,o|m+o} #=> 6
% rubydemo 1/0
1/0 #=> #<ZeroDivisionError: divided by 0>

Here's the script I used for generation. (It could have been one line if I didn't care so much about exception formatting.)

#!/usr/bin/ruby
print ARGV.join(" ") + " #=> "
begin
    p(eval(ARGV.join(" "),binding,"(demo)"))
rescue Exception => e
    puts "#<#{e.class}: #{e.message[/.*/]}>"
end

The real killer app, though, is using it in conjunction with IRC. Here's the alias I used in Irssi.

/alias rd exec -nosh - -out rubydemo $*

Now I need merely do /rd 2+2 to get a beautifully formatted 2+2 #=> 4 in any conversation.

Auto-loading Ruby Code

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:35:55 -0500

An incredibly useful technique when using Ruby is to auto-load at start-up a custom library written for exactly that purpose. This is easy to accomplish with a couple of environment variables, but I see very little discussion on the subject. Thus, I've written a nice summary of how to go about setting this up.

Website for rails.vim

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:12:24 -0500

The Rails plugin for Vim now has an official website. Coinciding with this announcement is a new release of rails.vim. Things have come a long way in the last six months.

Announcing surround.vim

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:42:32 -0400

Recently, when crafting some HTML macros for Vim, I had a profound idea for a general interface to deal with pairs of parentheses, quotes, HTML tags, and just about anything else. After a few hours work, I had an early version of surround.vim, a Vim plugin which allows one to easily add, remove, and change what I have termed "surroundings." This is perhaps the most useful plugin I have written since rails.vim (which recently had an update, by the way). Examples of use of surround.vim, along with a link to download, are available from vim.org. The development version can also be snagged from my CVS repository.

Rails Plugin for Vim

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 01:26:30 -0400

Recently, I've been working on a Vim plugin to aid development with Ruby on Rails. It features autodetection of Rails applications, easy file navigation, enhanced syntax highlighting, and more. Grab it from my Subversion repository (always the most up-to-date), as a zip file, or as a Vimball (Vim 7 only). Update: Also available from Vim.org (and has been for a while). Be sure to vote if you like it!

Relational Schema Diagramming

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:28:24 -0400

Recently, for a class, I was required to create a whole bunch of diagrams relational schema in a format specified in a textbook. While the format looks simple, it is apparently so obscure that no software exists that can easily reproduce it. I responded by creating my own. While this script is somewhat lacking in both functionality and user-friendliness, it might prove to be a good foundation for similar projects.

Schedule Processing

Wed, 31 May 2006 18:08:44 -0400

Not content with my last solution for retrieving my schedule, I came up with a new one. Both my original script (sctweb) and my more recent one (sct6) have been modified to only produce XML output. My brand new script (schedproc) reads in that XML and converts it to the usual formats like HTML and vCalendar. This seperates the website-parsing backend from the content-producing frontend, which should ease maintenance in the future.

Another Schedule Retrieval Announcement

Wed, 31 May 2006 18:08:28 -0400

No sooner had I finished updating my schedule retrieval script to work with my new school than I discovered said school was migrating to a new web interface, rendering my efforts obsolete before I even finished testing them. This week, I finally addressed the situation, creating a new script, as opposed to further hacking the old one, since the changes I had to implement were much more drastic this time around. Like last time, this script will be lacking in grade retrieval support until I have some actual grades to retrieve. (I have since added grade support to the old script, for what little good that does.)