Tag Archive for 'work'

Daily git-svn

Published
by
lennon
on January 20, 2009
in code
. 4 Comments

My team at Sun uses Subversion to host our “authoritative” source repository for Project Kenai. However, since most work is done on the trunk, many of us find it more convenient to work locally with Git, using the git svn subcommand heavily to keep ourselves up-to-date without interfering with others’ work.

When I first started using this combo, I had some early trouble keeping my local Git repository from getting horribly b0rked whenever there were edits made to the same files I had been working on locally. Having used CVS and Subversion for so long, I initially assumed such conflicts (and the manual merge steps they entailed) were simply part of the equation, even when working with a proper DVCS. However, by applying a little more discipline to my use of local branches, I’ve been able to basically eliminate manual merges, except in cases where the exact same line has literally been edited by multiple people.

My first, most critical discovery was to never use the fetch command. Instead, use rebase. Second, never pull the latest changes from Subversion into a working feature branch; instead, switch to your master branch, create a new branch for merging (I usually call mine “svn-merge”), and do your rebase there. After the rebase has finished, merge in your feature branch changes, and then use dcommit to push your changes upstream.

As an example, here are to commands I would use to check out a new local Git clone of the main Subverion repository, work on a single command, and then push it back into SVN:

viper:Work$ git svn clone https://example.com/svn/repo/trunk -r500:HEAD repo
# ... lots of Git output here ...
viper:Work$ cd repo
viper:repo$ git checkout -b issue-123
# ... hack, hack, hack...
viper:repo$ git commit -m "fix for issue #123"
viper:repo$ git checkout master
viper:repo$ git checkout -b svn-merge
viper:repo$ git svn rebase
# ... watch results for conflicts ...
viper:repo$ git merge --squash issue-123
viper:repo$ git commit -m "ISSUE-123: fixed"
viper:repo$ git svn dcommit -e
# ... $EDITOR launches, allows you to write useful commit message for svn ...
viper:repo$ git checkout master
viper:repo$ git merge svn-merge

This may seem like a lot of extra branch switching, localized commits, etc., but the end result has been worth it (for me, at least). If you following this process, you can be relatively certain that your master branch will only ever mirror changes that have been made in Subversion.

Insuring that the master branch is always “clean” (i.e., has no conflicting commits) with regard to the shared svn tree makes it easy to switch temporarily to another feature branch if you have an urgent bugfix or simple change to make, while your bigger changes happily sit on another feature branch waiting to be pushed.

Updated Mar. 4, 2009: Changed merge to use --squash option, so that many local Git commits can be combined into a single upstream revision.

Quick status update

Published
by
lennon
on December 15, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

It’s been two weeks since I posted, which is a bit embarassing. I’ve been pretty busy with the new job, though, and generally sticking to Twitter to get the word out about how I’m doing.

The quick version is: the Project Kenai team is turning out to be just about as good a group to work with as I could hope for. We’ve got enough to do to keep things from getting boring, but it’s the good kind of work: interesting + challenging, but nothing that feels like a death march. Plus, every time I fire up an editor to look at a new piece of code and see the GPL license in the header comments, I feel a little better about the company as a whole. Being somewhere that open source is the default (rather than a special case for which you have to lobby) is a pretty cool feeling for a OSS nerd like me.

Otherwise, things are pretty normal. As my family and friends all give in to the gravitational pull of SE Portland, I also find that my social life is less and less about going out, and more about staying in for social meals + conversation, which suits me just fine, especially in the winter.

That’s it for now. Expect more on the technical side of the work I’m doing after Christmas, when I have some time to write up my impressions of doing JRuby on Rails, and working in a heterogenous Solaris/Linux/OS X environment.

Big changes

Published
by
lennon
on October 29, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

So, I’ve been sitting on this for a while now, but finally get to make a wider announcement, now that the “i”s have been dotted and the “t”s have been crossed:

I’m leaving Reed College in a few weeks, and starting a new job at Sun Microsystems to work on Project Kenai. It’s a big change for me — I’ve been hiding out in academia for almost four years now, so switching back into the commercial world is both exciting and scary.

Kenai is a fascinating project, which I hope to talk about a lot more in the near future. I can say already that it’s one of the more ambitious JRuby on Rails projects out there, and that I’m excited to see what we can do with the full Sun hardware + open source software stack underpinning a high-volume Rails site. In addition, I’m going to get the chance to work more closely on UI and interaction design, which is an area in which I look forward to expanding and updating my skills.

Reed has been a great place to work, and I can’t say enough good things about everyone else in the IT organization here. That being said, I’m really psyched about getting to focus almost entirely on writing code and implementing features, and working in a small, distributed group within the larger Sun umbrella.

Working

Published
by
lennon
on June 8, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

I was listening to OPB on the radio last week, and their morning call-in show Think Out Loud was hosting a discussion on teenagers in the workforce. They had an employment economist who worked for the state of Oregon, an 18-year-old just starting in the workforce, and a variety of parents and teens contribute to the discussion, but I was struck by a weird sort of defeatist tone beneath the entire conversation.

The parents, in particular, seemed to have basically given up on their kids being able to find work, due to the classic “you need experience to get experience” Catch-22. I personally found myself desperately wanting to yell back at them to stop whining, and start helping their kids out with something other than rides to the mall.

Going to school absolutely does not prepare kids for the workforce. Nothing short of work prepares people for work. There is an endemic assumption right now that the only reasonable course for a young person is through the K-12 system, then straight on to college, perhaps with a brief detour into a volunteering stint along the way to help pad the college application. This track produces exactly the kind of clueless, over-privileged 22-year-old that Baby Boomer managers love to complain about.

Admittedly, my own perspective on this is a bit skewed, compared even to a lot of my coworkers and friends. I started working in the summers when I was 14, and year-round by the time I was 16. My first job was running a summer reading program at the local county library branch, and I locked it in before the interview even started by being the only applicant to show up wearing a tie, resumé in hand. I continued working for the year I was in college, and have been supporting myself (and other people as well, occasionally) since I was 18.

Not every one of those jobs has been pleasant — packing boxes for shipping at a Mailboxes, Etc. during the Christmas season, for example, or making salads at a pizza shop — but I’ve learned something useful from each and every customer, project, and boss. 

Of course, no parent would want to listen to the advice of a college dropout who has no kids of his own, right? Obviously, college and a pure white-collar background are the only real path to success.