James Crisp

Software dev, tech, mind hacks and the occasional personal bit

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Workaround for Subversion (SVN) certificate verification error: insecure algorithm on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

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On June 5, 2010

In Technical

If you try to check out your code from a hosted subversion repository, under your shiny new Ubuntu 10.04, you may be disappointed to have it fail with the error:

svn: OPTIONS of 'https://server.com/repo': Certificate verification error: signed using insecure algorithm (https://server.com/repo)

Despite multiple threads on various linux and subversion forums which didn’t really help (it’s not subversion’s fault, it’s from gnu-utils, and yes, it would be great if everyone could get all their hosting providers to upgrade their certificates, and you could patch and recompile relevant utils), I finally found a work around here in Slovak. With a bit of help from Google translate, here is the work around:

Add to the end of your ~/.subversion/servers file:
ssl-trust-default-ca = no

It means you’ll have to verify every certificate manually, but at least you’ll be able to check out your code until you can get your hosting provider to update their certificates! Happy days!

ACS Alm Talk: Presentation Wrap Up & Slides

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On June 3, 2010

In C#, Design / Architecture, Ruby / Rails, Talks, Technical, Testing

Thanks everyone who came along last night. It was a fun session, with a lot of lively discussion, especially around project management and software design. As mentioned during the talk, you might want to check out nRake for .NET builds and psDeploy for Powershell deployments. Here are the slides from the talk. If you have any more questions or areas to discuss, please feel free to drop me a line.

ACS Talk: The Ultimate ALM Environment (circa 2010)

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On May 31, 2010

In C#, Design / Architecture, Talks, Technical, Testing

I’ll be giving a presentation at an Australian Computer Society Special Interest Group on Wed 2 June, 6:30pm. More details here.

The abstract is:

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) covers the whole software development lifecycle and associated processes including project management, business analysis, testing, build and deploy and development. Based on experiences in the field on projects with ThoughtWorks and consulting with other teams, I will describe what I consider to be the ultimate ALM environment, using an agile approach and techniques. This talk will cover goals, assessment criteria, practices, tools, and physical workspace design.

Hope to see you there!

Multi-touch two finger scrolling on Samung N150 with Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

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On May 25, 2010

In Technical

After much googling, trial and error, finally, a solution for enabling two finger scrolling on Ubuntu 10.04 on my new Samsung n150 netbook.

For some reason, it is not possible to enable it through the Mouse configuration in GNOME – the two finger scrolling option is grayed out (disabled).

You may need to fine tune the MinW and MinZ values – they are configured to work well for my fingers 🙂

synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1
synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=1
synclient EmulateTwoFingerMinW=5
synclient EmulateTwoFingerMinZ=48

To make these settings sticky, add the synclient calls into a script that runs when you log in.

nRake now on IronRuby

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On May 25, 2010

In ALT.NET, C#, Ruby / Rails, Technical

nRake, the premier project and build template for .NET projects using the Rake build system now has a branch for .NET4 using IronRuby. Projects are also updated to VS2010 format, and Albacore gems are now updated to 0.1.5.

Check out the IronRuby .NET 4 branch of nRake.

or the check out the IronRuby .NET 2 / 3.5 branch of nRake.

Master branch is still using MRI ruby 1.9. However, plans are to change over to IronRuby for master branch in the future. IronRuby is now performing well enough and sufficiently compatible to support .NET builds. IronRuby has advantages around size (smaller download) and more exciting interop possibilities with .NET code.

Podcast from ALM Conference

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On April 27, 2010

In ALT.NET, C#, Design / Architecture, Ruby / Rails, Technical

At the ALM Conference, Richard interviewed me for a podcast on the Ultimate ALM Environment circa 2010 as well as a little on build and deployment automation. Check out the podcast on Talking Shop!

Australian ALM Conference, and slides from ‘The Ultimate ALM Environment circa 2010’

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On April 14, 2010

In C#, Design / Architecture, Talks, Technical, Testing

The inaugural Australian ALM Conference has been an interesting 2 days. The first day had a number of insightful talks, especially interesting to hear Sam Guckenheimer on how Microsoft has been reshaping their internal development practices into a more agile model. Today, I enjoyed Richard‘s agile adoption talk (hear hear!) and the other highlight was the last presentation of the day, explaining what’s gone into the design of the new Windows 7 Mobile OS (though some things still seem under wraps). Also a pleasure to catch up with some old friends at the conference.

Conference organisation was very good (thanks to Anthony Borton and his team). The focus was very Microsoft centric, but next year, the plans are for a much wider variety of content. Lunar Park was a cosy conference venue and fun to go outside during the breaks and see kids screaming on rides and the sun shining on the bridge and harbour.

My presentation was 8.30am this morning (aargh!) but despite the early hour, there was a reasonable turn out and quite a few interested people asking questions. The plan was to co-present with Jason Yip, but he was called away to Perth so I presented solo. Unlike most other presentations at the conference, Visual Studio and TFS were barely mentioned. Instead I focused on current problems in each area of ALM, coming up with a criteria to assess this area, and what we usually do on projects to meet this criteria – eg, story walls, story maps, automated build and deploy etc. You can find the Powerpoint slides here. The slides are promises for a conversation (ie, mainly images with some notes), so don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to chat.

Also, thanks Richard for this photo from the presentation:

James Crisp presenting ‘The Ultimate ALM Environment circa 2010′

Talk: The ultimate (circa 2010) ALM environment

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On March 20, 2010

In Design / Architecture, Talks, Technical

Jason Yip and I will be presenting on “The ultimate (circa 2010) ALM environment” at the Australian ALM Conference on 14 April. We’ll be talking about using agile methods and tools for ALM, rather than a vendor suite.

Here’s the blurb:

Based on our experiences in the field on projects and consulting with other teams, we will describe what we consider to be the ultimate development environment (which is not just about vendor tools). This session will discuss principles, practices, tools, and physical workspace design.

Hope to see you there!

nRake – Rake builds for .NET

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On March 20, 2010

In C#, Design / Architecture, Ruby / Rails, Technical

Fed up with XML based builds that are hard to maintain, refactor and extend? Rather than trying to fix this with more xml and community tasks, or re-invent the wheel, let’s use Rake. Rake is a mature build system developed by the ruby community which can be applied equally well in the .NET world.

To help you get started quickly, I’ve put together nRake. nRake provides a template C# .NET solution with a nice directory structure (src, tools, lib, etc), a Rake build, NUnit tests, templated app and web configs for different environments (eg, dev, uat, prod, etc) and Continuous Integration server sample config files. It comes with everything you need – no additional libraries or downloads required, and all the plumbing work has been done for you.

How to use

  • Git clone or Download nRake as a Zip
  • Rename PlaceHolder app and tests to reflect your project
  • Run rake in the root of the project. This will clean, compile, template config files and run unit tests.
  • Start developing your app! How easy was that 🙂

    • Note: nRake currently uses Ruby 1.9 since IronRuby start up time was prohibitively slow. Hopefully IronRuby will get faster, and then nRake can make use of it. Also nRake uses the Albacore Gem for .NET build tasks. Documentation on Albacore tasks here.

    Also check out the IronRuby update!

Buying Books Online in Australia – Alternatives to Amazon

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On February 20, 2010

In Book Reviews, Personal, Technical

In the past, I have been a happy customer of Amazon USA for technical books, and more recently, even for fiction. Australian bookshops seem to have very limited and expensive stock, so buying online is an attractive option.

Recently some of my colleagues recommended two other options:

  • Book Depository UK: good prices, free international shipping, fast delivery, but at first glance less books than Amazon
  • Booko book price comparison: compares multiple sites including Amazon and BookDepository. Presumably make money using affiliate links from search.

I’ll be giving these a go and posting on the experience in future.

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