Bear Den Designs - The Decider's Musings

iTerm2, tmux and vim

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:21:05 -0600

Switching up my development environment.

Recently I came across some posts describing tmux, a gnu/screen alternative. I use screen quite a bit but only when doing remote system admin and really enjoy it’s features. Especially being able to attach to a session that was terminated due to connectivity problems.

I had never given a second thought about using screen on my dev machine since is so quick to jump between apps. However, after reading through the Giant Robots Post I have had a re-think. In some ways I feel as though I’m stepping back 20 years but has dev really changed at all in 20 years? Maybe some of our methodologies but not the general trend of Test-Code-Deploy-Repeat.

Anyway, there are 3 tools needed to make this work on my Mac.

iTerm2
tmux
and the best editor in the world, vim

iTerm2

Probably any terminal will do but iTerm2 is much faster at resizing than iTerm and is actively being developed.

tmux

This is a terminial multiplexor with many of the features of gnu/screen but in my opinion easier to configure. Recommended Tutorial The port version is a bit dated so I recommend installing from source. Follow the instructions. It’s your basic configure, make, make install.

vim

Now normally I run MacVim on my mac. It’s pretty. The console version courtesy of Apple seems just fine. It reads my .vimrc with no issues and behaves just great with Tim Pope’s Rails plugin.

Modifying my Behavior

This is the hardest part of the switch. I really hate my mouse and really thought that I had shun using it for many years now. However, I find myself reaching for it to switch windows when a command-tab is easier. It’s strange if I’m in my terminal I always command-tab to chrome but for some reason reach for the mouse when switching to macvim. Now that macvim is no longer in the equation I still find myself reaching for the mouse to move from my bash tmux pane to my vim pane.

Speaking of panes I run tmux full screen divided into 3 panes.

my .tmux.conf file:

set -g prefix C-a
unbind C-b
bind C-a send-prefix

bind-key C-a last-window

# Set status bar
set -g status-bg blue
set -g status-fg white

# Highlight active window
set-window-option -g window-status-current-bg red

# Automatically set window title
setw -g automatic-rename

# use "v" and "s" to do vertical/horizontal splits, like vim
bind s split-window -v
bind v split-window -h

# use the vim motion keys to move between panes
bind h select-pane -L
bind j select-pane -D
bind k select-pane -U
bind l select-pane -R

# use vim motion keys while in copy mode
setw -g mode-keys vi
# force a reload of the config file
unbind r
bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf
#
# # quick pane cyclingunbind ^A
bind ^A select-pane -t :.+

read this post unless busy

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:27:39 -0600

I really like unless but only if it makes something much more readable. Of course Jamis beat me to it

We are hiring

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:20:02 -0600

Looking for a rails programmer with at least a Bachelors in Computer Science or Engineering and at least 2 years software development experience. This is a full time position with benefits.

We are a small but financially strong firm that expects a great attitude and superior skills. We are as agile, as possible :) and have a great passion for producing quality products.

The software we build helps children and the underserved in our communities. Your contribution will make a difference.

There is some travel 2-3 times per year.

Our office is near downtown in the trendy 5 Points/Riverside area. Lots of weird people, great restaurants and bars.

When applying a cover letter is required and should address these concerns:

When is the last time you created a complete RoR app? What did it do?
What does Array#reject! return ?
How do you continue your education in the field of computing?

Required Skills

Professional
Punctual
Great attitude
Exceptional Ruby Skills
- Strong Ruby on Rails experience
2 years experience software development
Famililiar with agile methodologies
At least a BS in Computer Science or Engineering
mySQL
git

Desired Skills

Deployment of RoR apps
Javascript fluent
Familiar with YUI
Haml
sass/CSS

EOY Ruby Roundup

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:39:16 -0600

I don’t know how I missed this EOY Ruby Roundup

Good stuff.

Fair Balancing for nginx

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:59:41 -0600

If you have a busy server running multiple mongrels you probably have noticed how nginx will sometimes queue requests onto already busy mongrels while some mongrels are completely idle.

There is now a fair balancer plugin for nginx that makes it fair rather than round robin. It’s easy to install. Grab the the plugin here and grab the latest stable release of nginx (I’m using 0.7.6) from here

Follow the directions on github:

Installation:

You’ll need to re-compile Nginx from source to include this module.
Modify your compile of Nginx by adding the following directive
(modified to suit your path of course):

./configure —with-http_ssl_module —add-module=/absolute/path/to/nginx-upstream-fair make make install

Usage:

Change your Nginx config file’s upstream block to include the ‘fair’ directive:

upstream mongrel { fair; server 127.0.0.1:5000; server 127.0.0.1:5001; server 127.0.0.1:5002; }

Caution

One issue I ran into was having to change my nginx config files that contained false to off. For example:

proxy_redirect false;

now reads

proxy_redirect off;

De Morgan, Ruby

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:46:23 -0600

#De Morgan the Ruby way

[true,false].each do |p|
  [true,false].each do |q|
    puts "p=#{p} q=#{q}"
    if !(p or q) == (!p and !q)
      puts "De Morgan Rules! !(p or q) == (!p and !q)"
    else
      puts "De Morgan is a Liar!"
    end

    # if find yourself writing
    if !p and !q
      print "-"
      # you could be writing 
      unless p or q
        puts "if !p and !q equivalent to unless p or q"
      end
    end


    if !(p and q) == (!p or !q)
      puts "De Morgan Rules! !(p and q) == (!p or !q)"
    else
      puts "De Morgan is a Liar!"
    end

    # if find yourself writing
    if !p or !q
      print "-"
      # you could be writing 
      unless p and q
        puts "if !p or !q equivalent to unless p and q"
      end
    end

  end
end

Run individual shoulda tests

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:17:16 -0500

When you run tests of just one model or controller you usually do something like:

ruby test/unit/evaluation_test.rb

If you want to target just one test you can use the -n option

ruby test/unit/evaluation_test.rb -n test_return_pending_evaluatees_from_composite_group

For shoulda users if you want to target just one test the -n option can also take regular expressions.

ruby test/unit/evaluation_test.rb -v -n "/have many/"

The -v lists the test name before every test, aka verbose mode.

Please Spam This Post

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:27:50 -0500

Just updated the code to detect the spamming bastards. Let’s see if it works.

Pretty Local Rdoc

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:14:30 -0500

From the RubyInside site a couple of gems to make your local rdocs look and behave nicer.

To reap the benefits:

sudo gem install mislav-hanna sudo gem install manalang-bdoc sudo hanna —gems bdoc

Protect Staging Server with Password

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:20:50 -0600

When developing a new application and releasing often you may want to protect the site from prying eyes. A simple way to do this when using the nginx web server is to use basic http authentication.

I prefer to do this in the nginx config file so it doesn’t impact local development.

You’ll need to create a password file using htpasswd command line utility. This file should be relative to the install directory of nginx. The default install would place this file in /usr/local/nginx

sudo htpasswd -cb /usr/local/this_hosts_password_file username password

Next, you need to tell nginx to use basic auth for any access to this (virtual) host. I place the 2 relevant lines in the server portion of the config file

server { listen 80;

…
auth_basic “Login to see this alpha site.”;
auth_basic_user_file this_hosts_password_file;
…
}

A login will now be presented for any entry into the site.