Running git-svn and svn smoothly with kerberos on Mac OS X

Sep 28 ’09

Filed in operating systems

I've been trying to learn git, and I thought that I would start by using git-svn to wrap up my upstream subversion repositories and lean the beauty of easy branching.

As I learned, however, getting git-svn to work with kerberos tickets on your system is a pain.

With the built-in OS X subversion binaries, you get a very strange error:

PROPFIND request failed on '/my_repo/my_project': PROPFIND of '/my_repo/my_project':
207 Multi-Status (https://svn.domain.com) at /usr/local/libexec/git-core/git-svn line 1699

Wow. That's unhelpful. It turns out that git uses the perl svn modules in order to talk to subversion, and that they are lacking a kerberos binding on Mac OS X. Or something like that. My unix-fu wasn't up to the task of figuring this problem out; I got help from my local unix guru. The solution was remarkably simple, however. Read the rest …

HOWTO: Get up and running with PostgreSQL and Ruby on Rails on Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5)

Oct 01 ’08

Filed in operating systems, ruby on rails

I ran into this problem at work today: for once, instead of Oracle, it was time to use a PostgreSQL database. I've never used PostgreSQL before, so this was all new territory to me.

Looking around online, I found several pages that describe how to do this with MacPorts. But I don't have MacPorts, and I don't want it, since PostgreSQL ships binaries with an installer for Mac OSX. I want something simpler, anyway.

It turns out that the solution is fairly easy: Read the rest …

HOWTO: Install mysql gem on Leopard

Sep 12 ’08

Filed in operating systems, ruby on rails

A while ago, when I upgraded to Rails 2.0, I started getting the annoying "upgrade to the real mysql library" message every time I did anything with rails from the command line. Running rake tasks, running tests, opening a console session, I'd always get the error. When I would try to install the gem (sudo gem install mysql) I'd get the following error: Read the rest …

HOWTO: Upgrade your Ruby on Rails install to version 2.0 on Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5)

Nov 13 ’07

Filed in operating systems, ruby on rails

This one's real easy. Leopard ships with a default Rails installation (/usr/bin/rails), but overriding it is quite simple, since it's just a gem.

Read the rest …

Ruby on Rails has the same appeal as the MacOS

Aug 05 ’06

Filed in design, operating systems, ruby on rails

Why do people flip out over RoR? Primarily, because it's fast. It's so fast to develop new applications in RoR. But why? What separates RoR from any of the other frameworks out there? The approach that defines RoR is "convention over configuration," and that's where much of the speed comes from. I had an epiphany this morning: "convention over configuration" sounds familliar. That's why I use a Mac. Read the rest …