Sorry for the lack of updates over the past few weeks.
It’s been a car-azy time at IPS towers as we’ve just kicked off the first round of alpha and beta testing for two new products: IP.Dynamic and IP.Converge.
Initial feedback is very positive and we’ve got some great ideas to work with. The ‘biggest’ stumbling block was MySQL 5 support. None of our products install and run with MySQL 5 when sql_mode is set to STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION because of sloppy SQL schematics.
I’ve spent the best part of the day cleaning up IP.Dynamic, IP.Converge and IP.Board so that they all install and run cleanly.
I had some trouble trying to get MySQL 5 installed. Regular readers will known that I’ve upgraded my main machine to an intel iMac. This causes a slight problem as the current PHP and MySQL installers don’t run so well under the intel chipset. I spent a few hours fiddling with MySQL 5 to no avail and came across MAMP which is a stand-alone webserver running Apache, MySQL 5 and PHP 5. It doesn’t interfere with the Mac’s own apache installation which is very handy. It’s enabled me to run MySQL 5 without messing up the rest of my mac. The old iMac is running as a webserver and uses MySQL 4 - and I don’t really want to upgrade that machine just yet.
I’ve also been amusing myself by writing perl scripts to export the latest release from SVN, clean it up and create an encoded (ioncube / zend) release for the alpha testers.
14 comments
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April 10, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Jack Chapple
Perl, eh… Well aint you full of suprises
April 10, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Ronan O'Flaherty
I really wanted to try and be part of the IPD beta testers, but when the specs came out I couldn’t
April 10, 2006 at 4:56 pm
maxos
Please, PLEASE change the header image
Even this would be better:
http://www.abbyshot.com/newsletters/photos/jay-as-bob.jpg
April 10, 2006 at 8:05 pm
James
Pretty amazed with all the work you’ve been doing recently - having now seen it.
April 10, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Brandon
I need to get in contact with you Matt.
April 11, 2006 at 12:25 am
Brandon Collins
ATTN Matt:
For me contacting you regarding something very important (as I said above), please refer to Ticket: #264794
April 11, 2006 at 3:57 am
Michael Scott
Hey Matt.
Sounding great.
I have a question to you guys regarding your svn setup, how have you found it to work with (you haven’t really done a follow up on it). I’m quite interested in moving along to using svn, mainly for its versioning capabilities; the ability to fall-back to past versions of the code.
It would be great if you could go over its setup, and how you guys use it on both ends.
Thanks.
April 11, 2006 at 6:39 am
Kennedy
April 11, 2006 at 6:58 am
.John.
I’m still upset about not being chosen too, I would have loved to. I would have been so good, too!
April 11, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Cafeine
Stupid question of the day : what about PostgreSQL ?
Yeah, I see a lot of PHP stuff going this way lately, like the excellent blog system Dotclear (dotclear.net). What do you think about this DB system ?
April 12, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Adam Kinder
@Michael Scott
I’m responsible for the subversion install and maintenance, so I can probably give you a few insights as to the installation.
Are you using CVS currently? If so, it’ll take a little bit to get used to the way that subversion handles commits, and the fact that directories are versioned along with files. Aside from that, they work in nearly the same way from the user end.
I set it up on our development serving, using it’s built in svn server to serve up exports/commits/checkouts etc. Subversion can also be setup to use webDav, but I passed on that option.
April 13, 2006 at 9:52 am
Michael Scott
Thanks for the responsed Adam.
I have played with cvs but I am not using any versioning at the moment.
The other view I was looking for was on the side of the developer, developing an application and the procedures they do to do that. I know my way of developing (at the moment at least) is to develop 8-12 lines of code over 2 or 3 files, and saving, refreshing the webpage open in my browser and then editing the new code accordingly, rinse, repeat. I was wondering how the likes of Matt, and the other developers throughout invision develop towards saving into and around the SVN server.
April 13, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Matt
I tend to commit around twice a day. Once before lunch and once before finishing for the day.
If I’m working on a particular section and I complete it mid morning or mid afternoon, I’ll do another commit. Likewise, if I’m about to start something that could break a bunch of stuff, I do a commit before starting.
I use SVN for everything now - my makefile perl scripts, local PHP scripts - the lot. I don’t feel comfortable unless it’s all tucked up safetly in SVN.
With regards to writing and testin code: I tend to write whole functions and then test it rather than bits of code at a time. When I started out I wrote a few lines, tested and wrote some more - but I’ve got comfortable with it now and can pretty much visualise it all in my mind before the need to test.
April 14, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Adam Kinder
I use pretty much the same routine that Matt does ( two commits daily when working on Gallery ), unless I want to personalize the log message more for the part that I’m currently working on, then I’ll commit a large chunk ( like for PHP5 support ).