First off, some links to github documentation:

• GitHub: Using pull requests (the clickety-click way)
• GitHub: Checking out pull requests (The GIT way)

For just working with pull requests and even manually fetching / merging pull requests locally this information is more than enough. I found that by adding a new refspec, my branches are getting polluted with a looooong list of pull requests for certain projects. I would rather have a simple quick execute-once way of doing the same thing.

An extremely simple way is by adding a new alias:

git config alias.fpr '!sh -c "git fetch origin pull/${1}/head:pr/${1}" -'

This allows you to use git fpr 696 to pull in #696. Mind you, the remote is hardcoded to ‘origin‘ here.

In some cases, I’m really inpatient towards pull requests on upstream repositories and I want to merge them in my local repository more easily.
I created the following script for just that: git-merge-pr.sh.

A quick example:

$ ./git-merge-pr.sh 696
$ git log -n1
commit c0f62a0b1ed09ce928d35a90854a1eb2c2ac6d10
Merge: 1d837ed 54988e1
Author: Jan Vansteenkiste 
Date:   Tue May 6 06:48:43 2014 +0200

    Merged pull request: #696: Bugfix/debian control file permissions
    
    See jordansissel/fpm#696 for more information
    
    * pr/696:
      Ignore lsb init scripts warning since we are not providing a proper init script for testing
      Feeling brave, enable lintian for travis
      Fix file permissions on deb control files
    
    Conflicts:
    	.travis.yml

If you, like me, use instant messaging a lot to contact colleagues, you will probably recognize these kind of conversations. The great thing about using something text based is that you can still keep working on other stuff. I tend to have plenty terminals open and using a IM allows me to ‘not sit around waiting’ until the other party replies. You can argue that giving somebody a call is a lot faster, but I’ll be losing focus on the conversation anyhow as long as I have a screen in front of me. Thats bad for both of us.

This is a common conversation that sometimes annoys me. Especially if you are the third person or so who initiates it.

Somebody: Hi!
Me: Hi
Somebody: Good morning
Me: ‘Mornin
Somebody: How are you doing?
Me: Fine, you?
Somebody: Ok.
Somebody: Can I ask you something?
Somebody: Or is this a bad time?
Me: Shoot.
Somebody: …. <Question follows>

If you are like me, this is not the kind of conversation I want to have with everybody that needs something.
The following example is how most conversations go with the colleagues in the sysadmins team:

Somebody: ping
Me: pong
Somebody: …. <Question follows>

As you can see, the amount of interrupts is reduced dramatically. “But that’s not very friendly” you say? No need for, I know you are a nice dude and even if you are not, we are working together, right?

So, for all you “friendly” people out there on the work-floor: One rule to live by: Don’t ask to ask, just ask! Keep the friendly talk for the coffee machine which we will both be using frequently anyhow.

Puppet modules…  How I feel about them in a dot file:

digraph PuppetModules {
  node [
    fontname = "Bitstream Vera Sans"
    fontsize = 10
    shape    = "record"
  ]
  edge [
    fontname = "Bitstream Vera Sans"
    fontsize = 10
  ]
  question [label="Do I need to edit a file in your module for changing settings?", shape="oval"]
  ok  [label="Great.", shape="oval"]
  bah [label="You are doing it WRONG!", shape="oval"]

  question -> ok [label="No"]
  question -> bah [label="Yes"]
}

Read on if you want a rendered version.
(more…)

My new wordpress installation! I have yet to figure out wether or not to import my old blog entries. I don’t feel much like it for now, but I might change my mind later. For now, it’s going to be empty! (unless I feel like blogging).

Some info on the setup? I’m using wordpress svn with some git-svn magic to keep my code in version control. Using git-svn also solved my biggest hastle I used to have that I couldn’t easily mix a wordpress installation in my document root with existing files and/or folders (error pages, some stats folder, various other thingies).

The wordpress plugins I use are also managed in git, but not with git-svn. I’m unsure if its possible to use git-svn with git-submodules. And even if it is, it may be too much of a command mess to update them all. Instead, I’ll just write a little script I can run whenever wordpress complains about updating plugins that will loop over them and run a svn update (with a git commit with a nicely predefined commit message.

Code will follow!