Use Tmux instead of screen

I've been using tmux for awhile instead of screen. The options are a little more intuitive. The code is far cleaner than the screen code, and the development is active and ongoing. I've been working with Nicholas Marriot the maintainer to get a patch in (now added) to create some functionality similar to screen hardcopy and he has been very responsive.

better gnu screen copy mode

Ok, so I have been struggling with screen copy mode. But now, here it is, the ultimate screen copy mode.
Just make an alias out this:

alias a='screen -X hardcopy blah && vim -c "normal G" ~/blah'

or for tmux

alias a='tmux capture-pane;tmux save-buffer /tmp/screen_contents;vim -c "normal G" /tmp/screen_contents'

now type a<enter> for the ultimate screen copy mode. This gives you the full power of vim whenever you want to yank a couple lines from the text you already have on the screen.

git utilities workflow

One of my best workflow techniques it to use git cherry-pick to pull in what I call utility changes. A utility change would be like a change to point all the database configuration at the test database. Normally it's pointed at your local database. It takes a few minutes to make the change to the test database and sometimes you forget a spot. So to do it I first...

-- make the change to point at the test database --

# stash all your changes so you can checkout your utility branch
git stash

# checkout utility branch
git checkout utils

# put your changes back
git stash apply

# commit your changes to your utility branch
git commit -a -m "Point environment at the test database"

# switch back to the branch you were working on, trunk probably
git checkout trunk

# double check what branch you are on since you don't want to make a mistake
git branch

# find the commit sha number for those changes you just committed
git log utils

# cherry-pick just the change
git cherry-pick ab38b9

-- now you test your site against the test db --

-- you find out whatever you were looking for --

# get rid of the cherry picked commit from your branch and change back to pointing your database locally
git reset --hard HEAD^

your utility commit is still in your utils branch history so you can just git cherry-pick ab38b9 it out anytime you want and point at the test database.

Caps-lock escape

So I've been using vim for awhile now and finally changed my caps-lock to be my escape key instead of using Ctrl-[ which is just too painful a keystroke. I used was using that keyboard combination instead of the normal escape key because the normal escape key is way up in top left corner :0 Who ever would have put it up there? I guess the escape key used to be decently located on very old systems which is why it is being used for vim. Using the caps-lock key now I can change modes with one key, suitably located. Ahhhhh, that feels better.
Here's a link:
http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/08/02/remapping-the-caps-lock-key/

Git grep and navigate

I use Eclipse for my java project work. It has a decent search, but it is not all that fast, however what it does do is let you see what files have the search string and click on a list to get to a file of interest. I don't like using the mouse, but I need to be able to search for various strings and then view them in context to navigate the code.

Enter git grep. Git grep turns out to be a much faster alternative than even grep. What is nice about git grep is that it avoids searching through any non-git files (like the .git subdirectory). Also it is 10% faster than regular grep because if the way git compresses files. The uncompression and reading of the git files is actually faster than opening every file inode, so it can get that speedup. The problem with a simple grep is that after greping, typically you need to look at the context of the line. Grep has options for adding a few context lines, but I might need 10 lines of context for some specific lines and that can get hard to read. However, if I could use some curses interface to explore the files then it would be ok.

Enter vim. I found that Vim has a way of exploring a filename with a specified line number by typing gF (woohoo). So I tried

git grep -n "somesearchstring" > output.txt
vim output.txt

the -n on grep gives you the line numbers. I would rather have this as one-line command. So I tried

git grep -n "somesearchstring" | vim -

This bring up the grep list, but when you hit gF to go to a particular file vim wants you to save the file first, which is lame because these are just temporary files, I'm only using them for the moment.

So I wrote this alias for doing what I want

alias z="tee /tmp/blah; vim /tmp/blah"

This will save the output to a tmp file and open that tmp file.

So finally, my command is now


git grep -n "somesearchstring" | z

and up pops my vim editor where I can go to each file line of interest with gF and come back with ctrl-o. By the time Eclipse finishes it's search, I can already have found what I want on the command line, and no mousing.

Note: this can be further simplified by a bash function in your .bashrc

function gg { git grep -n '$1' | z; };

so that it becomes

gg "somesearchstring"

git svn switch

I have been using git as an svn frontend for awhile. Recently the svn repository was moved. At first I thought I would just change the remote repository in .git/config to point to the new repository. I did that, but when I ran git svn rebase I would get an error saying

"Unable to determine upstream SVN information from git-svn history"

I noticed that I could fetch, but I couldn't rebase. I found an answer here after awhile Googling: http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSvnSwitch

Now I am able to use my git repo again :)

Making Kingston DataTraveller G2 bootable in linux

I bought a Kingston DataTraveller to transfer EasyPeasy onto my Asus EEE pc in place of it's Xandros operating system. After I downloaded the EasyPeasy iso and put it onto the usb stick with unetbootin I tried to boot into it from the AsusEEEpc but it would not boot from it. I ended up launching GParted. In that you can right click the usb drive and there is a dropdown that says "Manage Flags". I clicked that and clicked the checkbox next to the boot flag. After placing the iso on the drive again using unetbootin, it booted, and now I have ubuntu mobile on my EEEpc :)