IT book recommendations

I now have a list of IT book recommendations at GitHub.

Why I switched from Ubuntu to Arch Linux

Ubuntu is a great GNU/Linux distribution. I have been using it since 2004, and except for one LTS (long term support) upgrade a couple years back everything was fine. That LTS upgrade a couple years back screwed up the X system, leaving me with the bash shell. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy dabling with my Linux system, but an LTS upgrade should be safe.

Well, this was years ago.

After upgrading from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 the same thing happened again: No X system.

I have a cheap Nvidia card with dual head setup (dual head means you can plug in 2 monitors). Worked fine with Ubuntu since 2009. So I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04. And I’m back to: No X system.

I was not amused.

It was not a hardware problem: The old OS (Ubuntu 11.10) worked fine. It was not the fault of Nvidia. I am talking about a video card for 20-50 bucks! Not one of those high-end video cards.

Instead of switching to another deb or rpm based system I decided to switch to one of those “rolling” distributions like Gentoo or Arch. I picked the later and have so far not regrated the decision.

Arch Linux is my home production system of choice.

Impressions during developing my first application with Mono and Gtk# (GtkSharp)

Why Mono? Why Gtk?

Over the past couple of years I have been developing C# ASP.NET enterprise applications. So I am quite comfortable with the Microsoft stack.

That answers the first question: Mono gives me C# and the .NET stack.

On the other hand I have been using linux as a desktop environment on my home machine for over a decade. I am comfortable with using linux as my primary OS.

That answers the second question: Mono gives me access to Gtk, the graphics library of gnome, which is the default “desktop” in many linux distributions.

The App

I want to synchronize different Git repositories semi-automatically using a Gui.

• Default behaviour of the automation can be loaded via a Json file.
• Each entry describes a repository set to be synchronized.

The app is located at https://github.com/draptik/RepoSync

I also published a small demo application for gtk# and treeview: https://github.com/draptik/GtkSharpTreeViewDemo

Impressions

Monodevelop vs Visual Studio

I’ll keep it brief: If you’re used to Visual Studio and ReSharper, Monodevelop does not come close. On the other hand Monodevelop is a full C# IDE which works with linux. And Monodevelop can be used cross-plattform.

Gtk# API

The Gtk# API is not your typical .NET library. You will very soon notice that the origins are C/C++. This takes some getting used to if you have a .NET background.

Typically there are no return values. Instead Gtk# methods very often use the “out” keyword in .NET because that comes closer to the C++ implementation using pointers.

Here is an example:

## Mono Gtk# Code
bool someBool = false;
if (listStore.GetIterFirst (out iter)) {
do {
someBool = (bool) listStore.GetValue (iter, 0);
} while (someBool && listStore.IterNext (ref iter));
}
return someBool;

## Pseudo-C# Code
return listStore.ToList().Any(s => s.MyBoolProp);

From the .NET side, I don’t like the Gtk# API. I prefer methods having return values. I guess it is a matter of tast. If it would really bother me, I would write some wrappers around… 😉

PS1 prompt

Here’s my current PS1 prompt for bash with optional git support: https://gist.github.com/3324534

GNU/Emacs: Desktop Save with “Lazy Loading”

When using desktop-save-mode (
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Saving-Emacs-Sessions.html)

using desktop-restore-eager is a must:

(custom-set-variables
‘(desktop-save-mode t)
‘(desktop-restore-eager 5)
)

desktop-save-mode will load your last session. Setting desktop-restore-eager to 5 will only try to load and render the last 5 buffers while loading your saved buffers.

Converting a Mercurial repository to Git

Note to self:

Converting Hg repos to git using hg-fast-export.

Installation:

$ sudo aptitude install hg-fast-export

Usage:

$ cd new_git_dir

$ git init

$ hg-fast-export -r <hg-repo>

Works with:

git version 1.7.5.4

hg version 2.1

Converting a Subversion repository to Git

Just discovered this:

John Albin wrote an excellent article on how to convert a subversion repository to git:

http://john.albin.net/git/convert-subversion-to-git

NHibernate 3.2 Upgrades

Trying Google Plus for blogging…
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110847643332707464429/posts/7ymoJ6ZEfj3

uNhAddIns patch for NHibernate 3.1

since most NuGet packages related to NHibernate come with NHibernate version 3.1.0.4000 (at the time of writing), I tried rebuilding uNhAddIns (commit #773) with the newer version of NHibernate.

My changes:

• upgraded NHibernate to version 3.1.0.4000 (Iesi.Collections, NHibernate, NHibernate.ByteCode.Castle)
• implemented new Interface method ‘IsProxy’ for IProxyFactoryFactory (CSLProxyFactoryFactory, ProxyFactoryFactory)

BTW: .NET is becoming more and more like Java… Who doesn’t love names like ‘IProxyFactoryFactory’? 😉

I did not update any tests.

Feel free to use this code (no licence).

My patch can be found at:

Patch at Google Code

App.Config: Order matters

Note to self:

Within an App/Web.config in .NET… The startup node must be the last node…

Example: Create a plain WPF application from Visual Studio 2010, add an App.Config file, and try building Option 1 and Option 2 below.

Option 1:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/></startup>
  <configSections />
</configuration>

This throws: “The type initializer for ‘System.Windows.Application’ threw an exception.”

Option 2:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <configSections />
  <startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/></startup>
</configuration>

Fine.

Do I want to read 2.5MB of

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Xml\Schemas\DotNetConfig.xsd

? No.