Update 1 – I’ll be teaching the Code Fellows Bootcamp and Unix & Git for Everyone

In the coming month there are three courses I’ll be teaching here in the grand city of Portland, Oregon. Two of the courses are one day Unix & Git for Everyone (Jan 31 and Feb 28)  courses and the big course is the Computer Science & Web Development Bootcamp (Feb 2 – Feb 27). So if you’re interested in ramping up and becoming a software developer sooner than later, check out the courses and more on the Code Fellows Site, follow the PDX Code Fellows Twitter or Code Fellows Twitter, and like the Facebook Page.

I’ll have more information about teach, training, mentoring and other projects I have on the cooker over the course of today.

No excuse not to have your branching strategy taken care of, because: git-flow

First, get it installed. This takes less than a minute, at least on a *nix based machine. I’ve no idea what it takes on Windows, but hey, at least it’s available there too! I did a clean curl and install as shown. It took about 14 seconds solely because I wasn’t typing very fast today.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
12:28 $ curl -L -O https://raw.github.com/nvie/gitflow/develop/contrib/gitflow-installer.sh
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 –:–:– –:–:– –:–:– 0
100 2145 100 2145 0 0 1732 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 –:–:– 1732
~
12:28 $ sudo bash gitflow-installer.sh
Password:
### gitflow no-make installer ###
Installing git-flow to /usr/local/bin
Cloning repo from GitHub to gitflow
Cloning into ‘gitflow’…
remote: Counting objects: 1407, done.
remote: Total 1407 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (1407/1407), 623.29 KiB | 428.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (689/689), done.
Checking connectivity… done.
Updating submodules
Submodule ‘shFlags’ (git://github.com/nvie/shFlags.git) registered for path ‘shFlags’
Cloning into ‘shFlags’…
remote: Counting objects: 454, done.
remote: Total 454 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (454/454), 130.91 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (337/337), done.
Checking connectivity… done.
Submodule path ‘shFlags’: checked out ‘2fb06af13de884e9680f14a00c82e52a67c867f1’
install: gitflow/git-flow -> /usr/local/bin/git-flow
install: gitflow/git-flow-init -> /usr/local/bin/git-flow-init
install: gitflow/git-flow-feature -> /usr/local/bin/git-flow-feature
install: gitflow/git-flow-hotfix -> /usr/local/bin/git-flow-hotfix
install: gitflow/git-flow-release -> /usr/local/bin/git-flow-release
install: gitflow/git-flow-support -> /usr/local/bin/git-flow-support
install: gitflow/git-flow-version -> /usr/local/bin/git-flow-version
install: gitflow/gitflow-common -> /usr/local/bin/gitflow-common
install: gitflow/gitflow-shFlags -> /usr/local/bin/gitflow-shFlags
~
[/sourcecode]

For installation instructions check out the link here: https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/wiki/Installation

Now that everything is setup. Here’s the quick getting started of creating a repo, linking it up to a remote and working in a repository. The first step is to initialize a new repo. Continue reading “No excuse not to have your branching strategy taken care of, because: git-flow”

Setting Up Github for Windows for Powershell CLI Users

Recently I installed the Github for Windows App. It’s a great app, however, I’d rather not use it for the day to day interactions I have with Git. I have a lot of branching, forking and merging to do that just doesn’t happen to well with the app. It’s a great app, but overall I’m just a few dozen times faster with the command line versus using an application.

So why did I download it and install it? The UI is great looking. I wanted to check it out and see how it worked, overall I’ve been fairly impressed. It’s not all that bad. The other cool thing about having it installed is it makes getting started on a fresh machine much faster with Powershell and such, however all the repos are setup with https instead of git as the path. This I’m not a fan of, so I threw this video together real quick to show how I remedy the situation.

Huboard, Github Issues ala Kanban, Implemented…

Recently I discovered Huboard. Thanks to those that helped me find it! Huboard is really simple and helps keep that kanban visibility when everyone can’t be in the same environment all the time. I setup a board for one of the pending OSS Projects that will be coming live. These are the steps I took. 1. Go to http://www.huboard.comand login with your Github identifiy. This will use your existing github account and you’ll then have access to all your projects to setup and use as you see fit with Huboard.

Allow Github to Provide Identify Access
Allow Github to Provide Identify Access

2. Huboard will now list all of your projects you have github.

Huboard Repository List (Click for full size image)
Huboard Repository List (Click for full size image)

3. Get your list items all labeled appropriately. (All explained below image)

Issues listed with appropriate Labels (Click for full size image)
Issues listed with appropriate Labels (Click for full size image)

The key to Huboard is the simple tagging. Each issue in the project will display as an open issue on the repository/project list in Huboard, however to get them to show up on the kanban there is a special label pattern to use. Simply add a number, dash, and the title of the issue for it to be listed in the kanban. Then apply the label(s) to the issue. For example, in the screenshot above you can see that item #3, which has a titled of “#3 – Initiate Project & Setup” also has a label of “2 – Ready”. This label will list the item in the column “Ready” on the kanban board. The same goes for each of the items that are listed as backlog. The kanban board in Huboard uses the number to order the columns by the labels and the following title as the column header. The respective kanban board for the issue listing above looks like this.

Huboard kanban (Click for full size image)
Huboard kanban (Click for full size image)

For now I’ve primarily been just adding the issues and maintaining them via the Github web interface. However the items can be moved via commit messages. Here are some examples;

  • push GH-#
  • pushed GH-#
  • move GH-#
  • moves GH-#

With that you get maximum Github Awesome + Kanban Communication.

Oh Snap, Got That Kanban w/ Github Integration!!

A recent issue came up on the team yesterday. We needed to increase the visibility of what we’re working on without dragging ourselves into more one on one or team communication. As anyone that has spent more than 5 minutes with a team knows, meetings kill productivity and morale, so the idea to get a kanban board going was brought up.

That raised the second issue of a remotely distributed team. We can’t have a real kanban board and the literal presence that it provides by being physical. The next best thing though is to have a virtual kanban board that integrates well into our workflow. With integration we get to look at it regularly and work around it to communicate where and what we’re working on without it becoming a major interruption.

That left the need for a kanban board with github integration. I thought to myself, “this exists right?” I checked the ole’ Internet tubes and sure enough someone had posed the question on StackOverflow! The question read, “What’s the best kanban tool to use with github?” Unfortunately there wasn’t a whole lot of answers or information following that up. However, the one answer that did exist provided an interesting solution.

Hubbard

The simple one page site is located here: http://huboard.com/ and on Github here: https://github.com/rauhryan/huboard. This describes the product a bit, and Ryan Rauh(@rauhryan) has a blog entry on Los Techies titled “Huboard – Github issues made Awesome“. You can also follow Huboard on Twitter @Huboard.

(Screenshots courtesy of Ryan’s Blog Entry, click any of them to go to his blog entry)

Huboard
Huboard
Huboard #2
Huboard #2

Where I’m At…

At this point I’m just checking it out, forking the code, and seeing how it works. This tool looks very promising however and fits into the workflow in an extremely seamless way!