(Continued from part one.)

Google Code Project Hosting

I mentioned this in my YARQ post and have since explored it further (although not much further). It’s a pretty cool free (as in beer) service. I like that they offer a Subversion (SVN) respository and it is easy to start up new projects. I had briefly looked at how to start a SourceForge project and it seemed more involved. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and maybe it helps ensure people are more serious about their project, but there are a lot of little projects you might want to host and not spend so much effort up front.

To experiment, I created the bash cpafter project for my bash cpafter.sh and copy_it.sh scripts. An important feature for me is that you can use SVN’s sync command to retrieve the full source control history, so you’re not locked in to Google Code if you want to move your project elsewhere. I also like that free software and license non-proliferation is encouraged by only offering a handful of free software licenses.

Subversion

I’ve been using CVS for many years at work in a limited capacity (my group’s source control needs aren’t that complicated), and had been looking forward to learning SVN eventually. Playing with the Google Code project finally inspired me to start figuring it out. There is a great free (as in freedom and beer) book at http://svnbook.red-bean.com. This is an O’Reilly book and does an excellent job of explaining things.

There was the usual trouble free installation of the software via apt-get, and it didn’t take long to get my own SVN repo set up locally. Now I can finally start versioning my WordPress theme files and plugins, along with the projects I have in mind to start some day.

Meld Diff Viewer

In Windows, I’ve used WinMerge as a graphical diff viewer, and it’s a great free software program, but it’s Windows only. I found that the premier GNOME diff GUI is Meld, and it’s super. I’ve only briefly tried it out, but I think it’s going to be better than WinMerge.

I used the same Nautilus customization that I wrote about in my FSM article to give myself a right-click diff option on two files in the file manager, which is a feature I use all the time with WinMerge in Windows.

Related: Hodgepodge of Miscellany, part 1 of 2: FSM, OO.o, Tomboy