SVN Bus Error - Leopard

Hit on a weird problem tonight. When I went to checkout or export a subversion directory from a web location using the command

svn export [repolocation] [directorytocheckoutto]

I got the following output

bus error

Weird aye? I'm on a Macbook Pro running leopard and I finally worked out that there was a problem with my subversion installation. After reinstallation (http://hivelogic.com/articles/2006/04/svn_on_os_x) it worked fine.

Anyway just thought ild put it out on the web seeing as I googled for a far while without finding the solution.

Cross browser testing

Now this is something ilve been looking for for a while http://browsershots.org/, awesome you can get a screen shot of your webpage in every browser under the sun. Its free and really really simple to use... only downside is that you might have to wait a couple of minutes for your screenshots to be taken.

Until that majestic day where all IE browsers are obliterated OR IE start using the standards them this tool might make life slightly easier in the meantime.

If you use this tool commercially, please support the project to help keep it running.

19 Tips and Tricks for Rails Developers

http://www.rubyinside.com/19-rails-tricks-most-rails-coders-dont-know-131.html

Nothing to groundbreaking here .. especially since it was posted last year. But does provide some useful reminders about some lesser known functions in rails.

One thing of real interest to me is Engines (http://api.rails-engines.org/), ilve been working on a basic authentication system (based on the restful_authentication) that is well tested and fully operational, cause pretty much every rails project is going to need a nice authenticaion system, And if engine can supply an easy way to implement the code into all projects then life will be sweet.

Testing in Browser Versions - IE6, IE7

For us poor web developers who are trying to the right thing and support IE6 and IE7, here is a tool that might make your lives a little easier.

Its IE6 standalone, until I found this tool half the battle was getting both IE6 and IE7 installed on your computer and operating correctly. Now you can upgrade to IE7 if you havn't already and just install this product http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE (download link at the bottom of the page) to get IE6 aswell. If your looking for IE5 or even earlier, this product goes back to about IE3 i think... the mind boggles to think that there might be people still using IE2 but if you have requirements from a customer then you might need it.

Its still painful to test both IE6 and IE7 but sometimes things must be done and at least this way you don't have to play around with virtual machines and that sort of stuff.

Autotest and Snarl - Coding bliss is obtainable in Windows

Ok when I was trying to setup my autotest with Snarl on windows box I had quite a few problems and couldn't really find a blog that told me how to do it exactely. Ok so for the few people stuck on windows boxes out there this should get you up and running.

1. Install Snarl (This setup makes you install some other program that Snarl has a dependacy on)
   
2. Install autotest if you havn't got it (gem install ZenTest)
3. Install the ruby-snarl gem (gem install ruby-snarl)
4. Download and install the GNU DiffUtils package – I installed this into my C:\Program Files\GnuWin32 directory.
5. Add the C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin to your PATH environment variable. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310519 if you need some help with that)
6. Set your HOME environment variable to something like C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}
7. Ok now for some pretty pictures to show when a test passes or fails. I use the ones from here. But you can make your own or get some from somewhere else if you like. Save these pictures to the $RUBY_HOME\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\ZenTest-3.6.1\lib\icons as accept.png and exclamation.png (You may have to create the icons directory) Note that $RUBY_HOME is the directory where Ruby is installed, on my computer that means C:\Ruby
   
8. Now create a file called .autotest in your Rails Applications root directory and place the following line in it
   

   require 'autotest/snarl'

   Note: If you can't work out how to create the .autotest file in windows because renaming it in the GUI doesn't work. The easiest way I found to make the file was to open up a command window, navigate to the rails application root directory then type edit .autotest and then just save the file. (Im sure there are much easier ways to create this file but I didn't want to spend anymore time looking for them)
9. And thats it ... now you should just be able to type autotest in the command prompt while in your rails application root and autotest should begin. And if you tests pass you should see something like this

Welcome to a new world of productivity where you can implement a new feature and go straight onto the next while your tests run in the background. And now you wont need need to switch back to the command prompt to check that your tests passed!

If I'lve missed out something important then please leave a comment and Ill update the post.

Other references that may be helpful and that were used in the making of this blog include, many thanks to the authors of these blogs

• http://www.thewebfellas.com/blog/2007/12/10/rspec-autotest-and-snarl-on-windows
• http://ph7spot.com/articles/getting_started_with_autotest
  

Autotest Windows

If you having problems like `expand_path’: couldn’t find HOME environment when trying to run autotest on windows. Check out this blog it helped me fix my problems http://dirk.net/2008/01/30/autotest-rails-on-windows/

Google Code Blog: Introducing Google Doctype

Something pretty neat ... worth checking out

Google Doctype contains dozens of articles written by top Googlers on topics important to all web developers: security, performance, caching, DOM manipulation, CSS styling, and more. It contains over 8,000 lines of JavaScript code: Google's own battle-tested JavaScript library, released today under a liberal open source license. And it contains the beginnings of a test-driven reference of the open web: a reference of every element, every attribute, every DOM method, every CSS property, all backed up by test cases.

If your going to learn about the DOM and CSS and stuff this probably isn't such a bad place to go.

Google Code Blog: Introducing Google Doctype