"SCIENCE IS RAD" Git Commits

So I thought this was a great idea! But I did not want to just copy the clapping, cheering kids. I work on a bioinformatics & plant sciences project so I thought I'd come up with something more related to that. I edited a comedy bit that used to appear on Triple J (the youth radio station for Australia) called "A Precise History of ...." Sam Simmons did the bits for Robbie Buck's afternoon (aussie time) radio show and they're pure genius (IHMO).

Thanks Collective Idea! I smile and am giddy with each commit.

"SCIENCE IS RAD! HEY YOU SCIENCE FACE!"

Indeed.

Disclaimer: this clip is not used with permission from Australian Broadcast Company (ABC) or Triple J. All rights are reserved to ACB/Triple J. It is 3.5 seconds and falls under no commercial / fair use. Its' appearance here is promotion of the Triple J and their On-Air talent. It will be removed upon request.

P.S. - I didn't give Robbie a link because he can be lame I do not want to promote him. Sorry mate.

Finding the right place to put static JavaScript files in GWT

I work on in the UI group for a software team building a large distributed system. We use Google Web Toolkt (GWT) and Sencha's Ext JS extensions for GWT (GXT). And we've been running into some warnings when building the applications that were quite annoying:

[INFO] using GWT jars from project dependencies : 2.0.3
[INFO] establishing classpath list (scope = test)
[INFO] using GWT jars for specified version 2.0.3
[INFO] using GWT jars for specified version 2.0.3
[INFO]
[INFO] ---------------------------------------------------
[INFO] T E S T S
[INFO] ---------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running org.iplantc.de.client.GwtTestComponentValueTable
[INFO] The development shell servlet received a request for 'tizakie.js' in module 'org.iplantc.de.discoveryenvironment.JUnit.gwt.xml'
[INFO] [WARN] Resource not found: tizakie.js; (could a file be missing from the public path or a <servlet> tag misconfigured in module org.iplantc.de.discoveryenvironment.JUnit.gwt.xml ?)
[INFO] Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 16.982 sec
[INFO]
[INFO] Results :
[INFO]
[INFO] Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
[INFO]

We're working with GWT 2.0 and the inclusion of static JavaScript resources are changed. So the odd thing is that the functionality supported by ``tizakie.js`` works fine. So when deploying the application, or just running it in dev-mode via the Firefox plugin, everything works as you might expect. It seems the crux is that the test JUnit servlet is not finding it.

I took the hunch and starting searching for the info/warning messages on Google and ended up finding the private method that produces the message in the GWTShellServlet. The servlet is only used during development (which I believe since the package is com.google.gwt.dev.shell). The interesting part was the name of the method: doGetPublicFile()

(I should also mention that we use Maven 2 as build engine so I was looking for the best place to put this file in the Maven directory structure)

So I tried placing the static file in a number of different places to no avail. The info/warning messages were still happening. I thought that if I place the static JavaScript file under org.iplantc.de.discoveryenvironment, like specific in a GwtTestCase, then the development shell might find the file. After all, you have state a package name as your module name for each test case.

With the project's gwt.xml file coming under org/iplantc/de, I figured that putting the file there might get it resolved:

org/iplantc/de/
|-- discoveryenvironment.gwt.xml
`-- ...

But still no luck. One of my co-works and colleagues, Evan, stopped by my desk and I mentioned my frustration. He suggested putting the file in a directory named ``public`` under the base directory structure where the *.gwt.xml file for the project was, like so:

src/main/resources/
|-- discoveryenvironment.properties
|-- log4j.properties
`-- org
    `-- iplantc
        `-- de
            |-- discoveryenvironment
            `-- public
                `-- tizakie.js

This finally resolved the info/warning messages. I had seen in GWT In Action that they had their static JavaScript files under public directories for then ScriptaculousDemo, and I had seen the private method that produces the message. But I never thought to try this.

I will admit I should have documented all the places that I tried putting the tizakie.js file so I could produce that now. I'm looking to see if I really have done this correct. Or, perhaps, this is a artifact of something related to Maven 2 or just GWT. But it sure is not the most obvious approach to resolving the info/warning messages.

If anyone has suggestions on the appropriate way to include static JavaScript files (in a Maven 2 directory structure), please post comments. I know Maven 2 is not used by GWT development team, but if I know where the static JavaScript file should be in the WAR directory structure - I can figure out in Maven 2 how to make that happen.

Recover lost commits from a Git repository

This morning I managed to blast away a colleagues local commits. We were running into ``non-fast-forward`` errors when pushing and somehow I lost one of the local commits (which I'm still curious how I screwed that up). Anyway, I use the technique I wrote about almost 3 months ago (to the day!): "Recover a deleted branch from a Git repository"

The main difference was I was not after the dangling commit, but the commit just before for it (which would show after the dangling commit in ``git-log``).

So I use that command I borrowed from StackOverflow:

$> git fsck --full --no-reflogs | grep commit

Then, use ``git log --stat <commit-hash>`` on the identified hashes and look for the following commit that you're after.

I will 100% admit that this is in the realm of MacGyver - but I didn't want to be responsible for blowing away any of my co-workers code.

Unearthing old "ideas"

So I gave a talk to a class of undergrads studying Computer Science at Duke University just this past February. I had talked with the instructor, a friend & colleague, about doing this for years. Well, I've been digging around an old laptop and I found my list of "ideas" for the talk:

• capture effort
• testing is important
• refactoring needs a safety net
• strive to improve
• you are an agent of change (if things aren't to your liking)
• the importance of talking to none-tech people
• look for outside influence
• allow your hobbies to recharge your career

I was glad to see that my list of ideas was not too far from the actual talk I gave.

Tomorrow night, I need to restructure some slides for a talk I'm giving to an interdisciplinary group studying biology who have backgrounds in computer science, mathematics, and biology. I'll post the slide to Slideshare as soon as they're complete.

Recover a deleted branch from a Git repository

So I thought I would quickly note this since I managed to reach into a Git repo and pull out code that I thought I had foolishly deleted. I was in a rush during a release two weeks ago and in a fit to clean up the repo I was working in trashed a feature branch for code I was working on.

My colleague Evan said there was a way to grab the branch since it's still in the .git objects (since I had not done a ``git-gc``). But the method for that was left as an exercise for me, the reader.

I used the command suggested by Iamamac on Stack Overflow.

So here's what I did:

$> git fsck --full --no-reflogs | grep commit

This finds the "dangling commits" in the repository. Again, the commit for the HEAD of the branch is still there - but it's just not listed as a ref/head. This will get you a list like so:

dangling commit 0c91cb293..
dangling commit 1896a7b7f..
dangling commit ec9ac3cd..
dangling commit 5c6a8f1af..
dangling commit fd729386..

Then just use ``git-log`` w/ some extra verbosity to find the HEAD commit you're looking for:

$> git log --stat 5c6a8f1af

Which gives you output like:

commit 5c6a8f1af
Author: lenards
Date: Wed Mar 24 08:56:20 2010 -0700

Test new version of gwtupload

pom.xml | 2 +-
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

I hope that helps someone out...

(and thanks to Scott Chacon and everyone in the Git community for sharing tutorials, advice, and wisdom)