Whilst Google Docs could have been a nice alternative, it’d take me some time (maybe forever) to convince the managerial ranks to endorse it. Time to look for an answer closer to our company’s chest, like some internal system for managing issues related to a project, with a coupled VCS, user-based access and… Oh, wait! We already had Trac-Wiki¹ set on our project!

With an embedded VCS enabled on the wiki, the only missing feature was being capable of properly rendering backlog tables on it. The built-in wiki syntax wasn’t enough to create a functional table, however it had a WikiProcessor² extension mechanism which let me use other markups. As maintaining the backlog in pure HTML would be a pain, the alternative was to experiment a very flexible markup called Textile³.

After researching a bit of textile syntax⁴ and trying some examples, the following snippet plus a tweak at the theme style sheet rendered something near to a backlog.

{{{
#!textile
table(backlog).
|_. ID |_. Name |_. Weight |
|/2. SW01 | Feature 1 | XXX |
|\2. (acceptance criteria 1) |
|/2. SW02 | Feature 2 | XXX |
|\2. (acceptance criteria 2) |
}}}

/* CSS required */
table.backlog { border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; }
table.backlog th {
 border: 1px solid black;
 padding: 0.5em;
 font-weight: bold;
 background-color: #ccc;
}
table.backlog td {
 border: 1px solid black;
 padding: 0.5em;
 font-size: 12px;
}

The acceptance criteria on a separate row was kind of lame, so lets try to join it with the story name.

{{{
#!textile
table(backlog).
|_. ID |_. Name |_. Weight |
| SW01 | %Feature 1% (acceptance criteria 1) | m |
| SW02 | %Feature 2% (acceptance criteria 2) | n |
}}}

/* CSS required */
table.backlog td > span:first-child { display: block; font-weight: bold; }

Much better! Now, what about appending dependencies to each story? Even better, why not referencing them as links to the story itself?

{{{
#!textile
table(backlog).
|_. ID |_. Name                              |_. Weight |_. Deps |
| SW01 | %(#SW01)Feature 1% (acceptance criteria 1) | m |   |
| SW02 | %(#SW02)Feature 2% (acceptance criteria 2) | n |   |
| SW03 | %Feature 3% (acceptance criteria 3) | o | "SW01":#SW01  |
| SW04 | %Feature 4% (acceptance criteria 4) | p        |   |
| SW05 | %Feature 5% (acceptance criteria 5) | q        | "SW01":#SW01, "SW02":#SW02 |
| SW06 | %Feature 6% (acceptance criteria 6) | r        |   |
}}}

The   hack, used to prevent column spanning, may not be required in Trac as it is in my wordpress processor.

To finish a fancy and useful backlog we can add two classes to visualize the separation of stories per sprint. Those without a background color are still in the project’s pipeline.

{{{
#!textile
table(backlog).
        |_. ID |_. Name                              |_. Weight |_. Deps |
(odd).  | SW01 | %(#SW01)Feature 1% (acceptance criteria 1) | m |   |
(odd).  | SW02 | %(#SW02)Feature 2% (acceptance criteria 2) | n |   |
(even). | SW03 | %Feature 3% (acceptance criteria 3) | o | "SW01":#SW01  |
(even). | SW04 | %Feature 4% (acceptance criteria 4) | p |   |
(odd).  | SW05 | %Feature 5% (acceptance criteria 5) | q | "SW01":#SW01, "SW02":#SW02 |
| SW06 | %Feature 6% (acceptance criteria 6) | r        |   |
}}}

/* CSS required */
table.backlog tr.odd { background-color: #ddd }
table.backlog tr.even { background-color: #ffa }

With this template and relatively simple syntax, it seems easier to create, delete and move stories around. Modifications can be figured out at Trac’s page history and things get associated by the hyperlinks. Good bye, nasty spreadsheets!

Other advantage is that if you don’t use Trac for your projects, the only thing you need is a textile processor to get it done. You may auto-generate it from build-scripts, use another bug-tracker or integrate into WordPress (as I did it here).

A downside in this alternative is the need to specify custom CSS rules outside of textile content. I had to hack it into WordPress current theme’s style sheet and into Trac’s too. Look at the complete excerpt below.

table.backlog { border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; }
table.backlog th {
 border: 1px solid black;
 padding: 0.5em;
 font-weight: bold;
 background-color: #ccc;
}
table.backlog td {
 border: 1px solid black;
 padding: 0.5em;
 font-size: 12px;
}
table.backlog td > span:first-child { display: block; font-weight: bold; }
table.backlog tr.odd { background-color: #ddd }
table.backlog tr.even { background-color: #ffa }

References

¹ Trac Wiki webpage

² Wiki Processors

³ Textile homepage

⁴ Hobix Textile Reference

UPDATE: better colors and avoid selecting spans after the first one.

São todos itens adquiridos desde 2007, com estado de conservação razoável. Estamos colocando as fotos aos poucos pra agilizar, mas quem quiser dar uma olhada, por favor, entre em contato (pode ser pelos comentários aqui no blog mesmo ou pelo meu celular, caso me conheça).

Cozinha

Sala

Quarto

Since I’ve had the chance to review Kim Schulz’s Hacking Vim 7.2 ebook¹ and a friend of mine started using vim as his main development tool, digging into Vim’s configurations and flavours has become somewhat even more pleasant.

In an attempt to improve my performance when editing various files, I’m trying to use tabpages instead of only several windows. It’s been working as some kind of context stack for me, as there can be one tabpage (probably with fewer windows) for modifying files from a project and another tabpage for a different but related one (or a non-related task in the same project). Plus, using more tabpages and less windows can save precious screen space.

But what to do about that odious tabline which, besides hurting my sense of aesthetics, eats a whole line of the screen? Thankfully to the Vim’s extremely flexible nature, it didn’t take long to find an answer. It came in form of disabling the tabline entirely and putting its only usable information into the statusline. Used a bit of scripting to overcome the only corner case I could think of and took the chance to try my rusty skills on python + vim bindings. Pretty much everything someone will need to put both domains together is in this little example (besides the vim module complete API, easily accessible by issuing :h python).

function! MyTabMarker(disable)
python << EOF
import vim
def tabpagecount():
        return int(vim.eval("tabpagenr('$')"))
def tabpage():
        return int(vim.eval("tabpagenr()"))
def tabmark():
        disable = int(vim.eval("a:disable"))
        if tabpagecount() > 1 and not disable:
                return "\"[tab %d/%d] \"" % (tabpage(), tabpagecount())
        return "\"\""
vim.command("return " + tabmark())
EOF
endfunction

set laststatus=2
set showtabline=0
set statusline=#%02n\ %{MyTabMarker(0)}%f\ %m%r%y%=\(%bd,%Bh)\ %c,%l/%L\ %P

There you see how to pass arguments into python methods and how to feed values back from it to the vim environment. Eventually I’ll publish my entire .vimrc with comments so everyone can rant about how theirs way is better

[1] as I’ve lost my notebook due to a robbery at the technical assistance, my review annotations were lost too. I’ll need to re-review the book to get something published about it then.

The only boring thing is to use it in my machine, a hp pavilion dv4-2167sb, which, AFAIK, still lacks a good graphical acceleration support.

I’ve made a very basic debian package (using checkinstall) for people too lazy to compile/install by themselves.

Enjoy it and have fun!

Num esforço de desapego, decidi passar pra frente minha fiel companheira… de estrada. É isso, pra quem se acostumou a me ver junto da minha máquina atravessando o Brasil e registrando no site do RockPesado, saiba que não faço isso por desgosto, mas simplesmente por adequação, já que não pretendo trazê-la novamente para Manaus-AM para negar-lhe os prazeres que uma moto estradeira merece (asfalto bom, várias opções de destino, peças a pronta entrega, enfim, tudo que alguém morando no Sul ou Sudeste tem de sobra).

Minha moto é uma Honda Shadow e foi apelidada de Uákti, em homenagem a lenda do belo e encantador índio que, após ressucitar de uma morte com várias flechadas, emitia um som de flauta quando o vento transpassava seu corpo, atraindo ainda mais as mulheres das tribos e provocando mais inveja dos homens. Abaixo uma breve ficha técnica:

Como toda moto custom que se preze, traz vários acessórios estendendo suas configurações originais.

• Sissy-bar com bagageiro
• Banco remodelado (feito pelo lendário Peninha, artesão de estofamentos de Curitiba-PR)
• Comando avançado
• Plataforma para os pés do piloto e carona
• Protetor de cárter (peito de aço)
• Protetor do reservatório de água (ponto fraco das Shadow)
• Mata-cachorro
• Faróis de milha com lanterna
• Alforges laterais (surrados, mas ainda bem usáveis)
• e mais alguns detalhes mais estéticos que funcionais (saia reduzida na placa traseira, tampão cromado do retificador, suporte extra na grade da refrigeração, etc)

Pela tabela FIPE ela custaria até R$16 mil reais, mas estou disposto a vendê-la por um preço menor que este.

E tem mais, quem ligar agora leva também um conjunto de câmeras (dianteira e traseira) dos pneus de brinde! Totalmente grátis! – momento polishop

Pra quem estiver interessado, ela se encontra em Curitiba na casa do meu pai. Pra apreciação, mande-me um e-mail que arranjo a visita.

Essa moto é guerreira, já me levou em segurança por todo o litoral do Brasil e do Uruguai, sobreviveu a hostilidade da polícia Argentina e cortou tranquilamente todo o Centro-Oeste brasileiro, inclusive passando pela capital federal. Portanto não estranhe se ela reclamar quando tirá-la de casa pra andar menos de 200km!

Do you have a good idea? Do you know the Qt library? Would you like to be awarded for that?

The INdT (Nokia Technology Institute), nowadays one of the main development excellence centers in Brazil, promotes the first Qt/openBossa challenge.

We look for developers capable of putting your ideas into practice and build Qt applications designed to Nokia’s mobile devices. Participants will create innovations which will be evaluated and awarded during the 10th International Free Software Forum (FISL).

More at http://openbossa.org/fisl/index.html.

For the sake of coding-style-importance-aware people, there are many great projects such as GNU indent, pep8 and astyle that perform all the work for you, whose only need the appropriate setup flags.

For Qt projects, astyle is the recommended tool. But there are a few drawbacks on using it.

• it’s too intrusive. astyle performs code modification in-line, disturbing the repository sources instead of serving as a verification tool only
• weak didactic factor. Unlike pep8 script, which tells the developer exactly what the problem is and contributes to avoid it at the future (as a lesson learned effect)
• it’s output can not be easily integrated with another tools

I’ve created a shell script in order to overcome some of the previous issues. It’s available here. Some relevant features.

• quickfix-style list output
• QTest style output at the end
• Ignore moc created files
• All suggested modifications can be applied as one patch, directly available to the user
• Can be run inside a testsuite (make test) or as a standalone program

TODO

• try to extend astyle classes
• allow alternative code styles
• better source selection schema (integrated with qmake, maybe?)
• fix-up improper indentation on some important macros (foreach, .e.g.)
• test and make it work on MacOS

GitCasts: Empty Branches

Summarizing the lesson:

$ git-symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/emptybranch
$ git-rm --cached -r .
$ git-commit --allow-empty -m "Initial commit for empty branch"

The library versus website example was perfect, but one can think about other relevant situations, like sub-projects inside a bigger project, management documentation or even meta-files configuring the repository itself (description and ACL).