iPhone development: Stage 1: Familiarise self with Objective C

December 24th, 2008 • Apple, Objective C, iPhone, software development
Tags: linkedin

Thanks apple for this primer:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/gettingstarted/docs/objectivecprimer.action;jsessionid=EBE50C6510FD05380290B42E0C4E8EC6.worker10

I’ll add comments as i get through this primer.

iCode iPhone Programming Blog

December 23rd, 2008 • Apple, iPhone, software development
Tags: linkedin

http://icodeblog.com/

Neat!

SVN: Handling merging of multiple branches up and down from trunk

December 17th, 2008 • 2 comments software development, subversion, svn, version control
Tags: linkedin

I’ve been away from code and SVN branch merges a little recently so I forgot the exact process of handling multiple branches merging up and down from trunk.

After a little thought and partially effective googling, i found that the following is an efficient process:

Introduction – What I had

• trunk
• branch_a created at SVN revision 2111
• branch_b created at SVN revision 2113

Step 1 – Preparation – Checkout local copies of trunk, branch_a, and branch_b

1. cd ~/
2. svn co http://svn_repository/trunk ./trunk
3. svn co http://svn_repository/branches/branch_a ./branch_a
4. svn co http://svn_repository/branches/branch_b ./branch_b
5. I ensured that all changes had been committed to trunk and both branches

Step 2 – Merging branch_a back to trunk after a successful rollout

1. cd ~/trunk
2. svn merge http://svn_repository/trunk http://svn_repository/branches/branch_a
3. svn commit -m “merged branch_a into trunk”

Step 3 – Merging the newly updated trunk into branch_b

1. cd ~/branch_b
2. svn merge http://svn_repository/trunk -r2113:HEAD .
3. svn commit -m “merged up from trunk, applying changes between 2113:HEAD that included changes made on branch_a”

Step 4 – When i’m ready, i’ll merge branch_b back into trunk, following Step 2 above

That’s it!

Now we’re rocking! DSL story driven development and testing in Java!

December 9th, 2008 • 1 comment Business, Internet, Java, Productivity, Ruby, agile, software development
Tags: linkedin

At TechnoPhobia, we have an interesting challenge to implement a technology agnostic requirements capture process that (in my mind) will enable us, with very minimal effort, to repurpose these documented requirements into fully automated browser tests. I’m thinking that the process could look something like this:

1. The project and client team write end-user functional requirements as User Stories and Scenarios
2. The stories are stored as plain text in SVN or GIT and made immediately available to the development and test teams
3. The development and test teams create a few executable padder files, wrapped around these stories, turning them into fully automatable browser tests
4. The executable files are run, they read the stories and interact with the browser to determine if the stories successfully pass

Pretty cool, huh! No more massive team specific documents, just good old plain textual stories that are shared by all on the project, including the client.

Making this happen across multiple technologies

• In Ruby, we’ve already used this parts of this approach on a live project using Cucumber (formally RSpec story runner). It worked pretty well. 
• In Java, easyb seems to be the a good forward. Here’s a little more about using easyb

I am WAY TOO EXCITED to see an implementation in Java! This opens massive opportunity to progress with a technology agnostic approach. Now to find a suitable solution for .Net and perhaps PHP

Merb & Adobe Air File Uploader – Nice!

October 29th, 2008 • Internet, Ruby, Uncategorized, software development
Tags: linkedin

Whilst writing an Adobe Lightroom plugin to upload library items to a rails app, i spotted something i definitely need to play with! Adobe Air and Merb file uploader. Looks rather handy!