Summersault Weblog

There’s been quite a lof interest in source control management (SCM) software since Linus Torvalds recently announced that he will no longer be using BitKeeper to manage the Linux kernel project. Related to this, kerneltrap.org has a timely survey about favorite SCM software. Sure it’s unscientific, but being skewed towards people who have some interest in large projects like the like the Linux kernel does make it more interesting. These are generally readers of kerneltrap.org, after all.

The two in the lead are no surprises: CVS and Subversion. CVS is the old heavyweight with a large mindshare. Subversion has gained popularity as a “better CVS”. Beyond these, the options get interesting because they get distributed.
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I love simplicity, and I found it today in shfs, a tool that allows me to
browse any server I can ssh into as a local file system.

Consider this common case: I’m working on some content for my website at home, and I’m ready to upload to my website. I can only access with SSH-based tools, to prevent my password from being sent in the clear, as FTP would do. That means my choices are basically ssh, scp, and sftp.
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Linux as a desktop operating system is finally at place where it can be
comfortable alternative to Windows or Mac OS X for a lot of people.

Linux has outgrown the perception that it’s necessary to use the command line
or have to compile your own software.

Yet, the hacker culture it has evolved from is ripe with opportunities for
additional efficiency and power for those users that do dare to visit the
command line.
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We use the excellent RT request tracker for our support system.

Each request is tracked through a unique ID that gets passed the e-mail subject line. Sometimes I want to update several tickets at once using a collection of unrelated IDs I have in my Inbox. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a tip for unix geeks:

After years of using tail -f to review log files, I’ve discovered this can be done with less in a way that you allows you to browse around the file as well as reviewing the last few lines.

After using less /log/file/path, just press Shift-F to cause it to move to the end of the file and wait for new data.

sandip’s blog just taught me some other uses for less I wasn’t aware of, such as the ability to review compressed files without using a seperate program to first uncompress them. Very nice.