Download the source archive from http://git-scm.com and extract it (I just extract it where it lands in my Downloads directory). Open a terminal in (or cd to) the extracted Git source directory (~/Downloads/git-1.7.2.1 as of my latest install).

Install required packages:

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-gnutls-dev libexpat1-dev libssl-dev gettext libz-dev asciidoc

Build and install Git and its documentation:

make prefix=/usr/local all doc
sudo make prefix=/usr/local install install-doc

If you don’t include the doc and install-doc tasks in the installation then the Git documentation will not be available via man pages or the git help command. If you don’t want the documentation then you can leave out those tasks and you won’t need to install the asciidoc package either. I prefer to have the documentation.

Yeah, the badge says “attendee” but it turns out I have a conflict this year and won’t be attending. It’s a family matter that could not be rescheduled, and it’s important to me, so I will have to miss out on a terrific event around the Python programming language. I made it to one day of the two day event last year and was really hoping to make it for both in 2010.

So if for some reason you are reading this blog, and you have even the slightest interest in Python, and you will be in the Columbus area on July 31st and/or August 1st, you really should check out PyOhio. I would. Alas, maybe next year.

Based on this post at railstips.org, I decided to adjust my Bash prompt by appending the following to my ~/.bashrc file:

#...

function parse_git_branch {
  ref=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD 2> /dev/null) || return
  echo "("${ref#refs/heads/}")"
}

BLACK="\[\033[0;30m\]"
BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
VIOLET="\[\033[1;35m\]"
CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\]"

PS1="\n[$CYAN\u@\h:$BLUE\w$VIOLET \$(parse_git_branch)$BLACK]\n\$ "

The prompt will now show the name of the branch I am working in when the current directory is part of a Git repository. The original code used yellow, red, and green to highlight parts of the prompt. That messed with my mind when I ran RSpec and saw yellow and red when I was expecting all green. Rather than get used to it, I changed the colors. I also added some newlines to perhaps keep the command line neater when deep in a directory tree.

[Update 2010-07-23]
After running with the above settings for a while I decided I don’t care for the colors in the prompt. Don’t need the square brackets either. I do like seeing the current git branch. That simplifies things a bit.

#...

function parse_git_branch {
  ref=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD 2> /dev/null) || return
  echo "("${ref#refs/heads/}")"
}

PS1="\n\u@\h:\w  \$(parse_git_branch)\n\$ "

Mike Doel who works at VacationView gave a talk on Capybara (a giant rodent that occasionally eats its own poop) and Capybara ("Son of Webrat"). One virtue of Capybara is that it facilitates testing the JavaScript bits on your site which Webrat cannot do.

Alex Moore presented IronRuby. Some IronRuby performance and RubySpec stats are at ironruby.info.

Alex recommended the book IronRuby Unleashed by Shay Friedman and mentioned the not yet released IronRuby in Action by Ivan Porto Carrero and Adam Burmister.

After the meeting we stopped at the nearby Busty Rucket for a pint. I tried Lake Erie Monster from Great Lakes Brewing Co. and I have to say it was indeed a monster. Starts with a malty sweetness and finishes by biting your head off with some powerful hops. Not exactly my cup of tea, which is not surprising since it was a beer.

The erubycon conference will be held Oct 1-3, 2010.

Ben Wagaman presented Core of the Core – Reflection.

Greg Malcolm showed us ruby-debug (cheat sheet).

Kevin Munc presented Method of the Month (methods actually) empty?, nil?, blank?, and present?

Matt Forsythe gave a nice walkthrough on using regular expressions.

Rubular.com was also mentioned.

Elizabeth Naramore gave an enthusiastic presentation on Technical Writing featuring Giant Inflatable Poop.

Joe O’Brien recommended a book by Jerry Weinberg – Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method

CHICKEN DIP

2 Cups – Cooked and shredded chicken breast.
1 Pkg. – Cream cheese.
2 Cups – Sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded.
2 Green onions, chopped.
1 Tomato, chopped.
2 Tbsp (or more) – Cilantro leaves, chopped (or snipped with scissors).
1 Small can – Chopped green chilis.
1/4 Cup – Salsa (Pace works well).
1 tsp. – Salt (or start with less and salt to taste).
1 tsp. – Ground Cumin.
1 tsp. – Chili powder.
1/4 tsp. – Ground black pepper.
1/8 tsp. – Ground Cayenne pepper (to taste)

Two large boneless skinless chicken breasts make about two cups. To cook, boil for 20 to 30 minutes until not pink inside and will shred easily with a fork.

After the chicken is cooked and shredded, place all ingredients in a large pot. Heat on low-medium setting, stirring often, until hot and cheeses melt and blend. Serve with tortilla chips.

Also good as filling for Jalapeno peppers: Cut peppers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds. Place on a flat cooking sheet or shallow baking pan. Fill with the chicken dip and bake at 350(F) for 15 – 20 minutes.

This also got me thinking about translation and internationalization. Since these services enlist testers from around the globe they could provide testing of translated versions of an application. There are crowdsourced translation services as well. It seems to me that combining such a service with a separate user testing service that puts the translation in front of many more eyes of native speakers could result in higher quality translated versions of an application. In the case where an application is built on a (non-web) platform that these services do not support, it might be worth mocking up menus and forms as web pages simply to make use of crowsourced translation and testing services.

At this point I’m just thinking out loud. This is not something I have a use for today but I wanted to make a note here for future reference. If anyone reading this (not that I think anyone actually reads the Blue Cog Blog) has experience in this area I’d like to hear about it.

Book: Book – Pro Git – by Scott Chacon – Concise coverage of using Git. You can purchase the book or read the whole book online.

Book: Safari Books Online: Version Control with Git, 1st Edition

Tool: msysgit – Run Git on Windows from a specialized BASH prompt.

[Update 2010-07-03: Changed the order of the list so the resources I have used the most are above this note.]

Website: GitHub – Secure Git hosting and collaborative development

Video: Webcast: Git in One Hour – Scott Chacon shows a lot of what he covers in his book in this screencast.

Video: James Gregory on Git – James Gregory does a screencast on Git as well.

Website: git ready – learn git one commit at a time

Article: An introduction to git-svn for Subversion/SVK users and deserters

Article: scie.nti.st – Hosting Git repositories, The Easy (and Secure) Way – Gitosis.

Article: Deploying A Web Application with Git and FTP – Rob Conery shows one way he uses Git.

Article: Git For Windows Developers – Git Series – Part 1 – Jason Meridth – Los Techies – Describes using msysgit.

Article: Branch-Per-Feature – How I Manage Subversion With Git Branches – Los Techies

Article: Git's guts: Branches, HEAD, and fast-forwards – James Gregory's Blog – Los Techies

Article: Martin Fowler – Version Control Tools – Not about Git specifically.

Article: ReinH – A Git Workflow for Agile Teams

Article: Jer on Rails – My Git Workflow

Article: JustinFrench.com – Git Aliases Rock

Article: GitHub – Guides – Put your git branch name in your shell prompt

Article: A Note About Git Commit Messages | tpope.net

Article/Tool: Michael Bien's Weblog – NetBeans GIT support – I have not tried the NBGit plugin yet but I have been playing with NetBeans a bit.

Podcast: Hanselminutes Podcast 108 – Exploring Distributed Source Control with Git

Tool: git_remote_branch

Tool: tortoisegit – Maybe like TortoiseSVN. I have not tried it.

Tool: EGit – Git plugin for Eclipse. I have not tried it.

Windows PowerShell MVP Keith Hill's Blog is a great resource for learning PowerShell. He has written a series of posts titled "Effective PowerShell" and combined them into Effective Windows PowerShell: The Free eBook as well.

• Effective PowerShell Item 1: The Four Cmdlets That are the Keys to Finding Your Way Around PowerShell
• Effective PowerShell Item 2: Use the Objects Luke. Use the Objects!
• Effective PowerShell Item 3: Know Your Output Formatters
• Effective PowerShell Item 4: Commenting Out Lines in a Script File
• Effective PowerShell Item 5: Use Set-PSDebug -Strict In Your Scripts – Religiously
• Effective PowerShell Item 6: Know What Objects Are Flowing Down the Pipe
• Effective PowerShell Item 7: Understanding "Output"
• Effective PowerShell Item 8: Output Cardinality – Scalars, Collections and Empty Sets – Oh My!
• Effective PowerShell Item 9: Regular Expressions – One of the Power Tools in PowerShell
• Effective PowerShell Item 10: Understanding PowerShell Parsing Modes
• Effective PowerShell Item 11: Understanding ByPropertyName Pipeline Bound Parameters
• Effective PowerShell Item 12: Understanding ByValue Pipeline Bound Parameters
• Effective PowerShell Item 13: Comparing Arrays in Windows PowerShell
• Effective PowerShell Item 14: Capturing All Output from a Script
• Effective PowerShell Item 15: Using the Output Field Separator $OFS
• Effective PowerShell Item 16: Dealing with Errors

I just ran across these today and I look forward to exploring each in the series.

On the Windows 7 PC, I downloaded the installer from the Google Code project page, installed the application, and ran it. After configuring the backup directory and export formats for the documents I executed the backup and it worked fine.

Running it on Ubuntu took a bit more setup since I did not have Mono installed. First I installed the required Mono packages.

sudo apt-get install mono-runtime libmono-winforms2.0-cil mono-devel

The mono-devel package installs the mozroots utility needed to install a certificate required to access Google Docs (see http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup/faq).

Next I imported the Mozilla root certificates into Mono (see http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/intrepid/man1/mozroots.1.html).

mozroots --import --sync

I downloaded GDocBackup_0.4.9.71_BIN.zip from the gdocbackup project’s Downloads page and extracted it to a GDocBak directory I created in my home directory. I also created a Data directory under GDocBak to hold the backup files. I opened a terminal in the GDocBak directory and ran GDocBackup.exe in Mono.

mono ./GDocBackup.exe

At this point the GDocBackup application worked the same as in Windows 7. It looks a little different but it downloaded the documents without errors. Now I just need to automate the backups.