JIRA

Trying to do a short self-elucidative piece. What is it that doesn't klick for me with this JIRA thing? If there is a central thing that is the problem, not counting the slowness, the inconsistency, the clunkiness; they're all there, but not damningly so.

Could it be that it focuses on tasks, and not on what should be done?

I think that the cause of this is that it was designed as a bug-tracker, an issue system from the beginning. It feels like I may have written this before somewhere, maybe I think it is was an astute observation or something.

As I write, a new idea popped into my head: isn't that an assembly-line style of operation?

Now that wouldn't be so bad for me really, if it wasn't for the fact that...oh, short piece. Stop.

Eclipse's Java Stack Trace Console

Another one of these weird things that you don't know if it's deliberate or not. It's a good idea, paste some stack trace that you've copied from wherever, and it can help you find and open the source locations for editing or just perusal. But the implementation is really not that good. 

Exhibit A. We paste something like this:

True MySQLSyntaxErrorException (ProfileRequest.java:129)



Two links appear. Or: two blue underlines appear, appearing to be two links. In this example, 'MySQLSyntaxErrorException' forms one link, and the file name + line number the other, which is what I am actually after. But the links don't work separately. The first linkable thing found on each line seems to be what the whole line links to when you click.

I mean, just weird. Why show the second one as a link, if you don't have the time to implement it? Maybe it's using a regex syntax colorer or something.

The workaround is either to copy text with the intended links first on each line, or set the caret before the link and hit return to insert a linebreak before the intended link. The intended link will now be first on the next line, and thus we can click that line to open it.

And also, while I'm at it: don't keep multiple projects open, if they contain stuff that can confuse this thing. It seems it will not check further once it finds any library, source code or not, with a matching class name or whatever, even if there is another project that has source code for that class.

Alt 7

Did some testing on a Windows machine. Suddenly, the layout looked like a disaster. And it could not be fixed. I reverted some (small) changes, still no improvement. There was cursing. Involved colleague.  Colleague's version of the site looked fine. Mystifixation, Anger. Web Development.

Finally I realized: I must've inadvertently have touched the 'Alt' and '7' keys, which changes the compatibility mode to that of IE7.

Genuine class

I love web development. It's so...mature...integrated...well thought-out...tooled-up...yeah.

Just found the following stupid bug, and I don't intend to be a smart-Alec about it. It's trivial. So, we do these jquery things .live('click', function ...) or whatever. And we use 'class' for this. After some  refactoring, let's call it that, a clickable link changes behavior. 

Turns out that the rewrite put two 'class' attributes in the same element tag. The first class attribute contained some styling. The second class attribute contained the 'class' that controls the click action. The second class attribute is ignored.

The syntax-coloring html editor of the Eclipse I use does not flag this as a problem.

Conclusions: don't use 'class', use attributes. They are not as clumsy, except that they kind of have to be prefixed 'data-', so that tools don't color it in warning yellow, and the web can use new attributes in the brighter future. They also can have values. Also, find or invent better editing tools. Turn on html syntax warnings in browser, if it has them.

Java Operators MIssing

||=, &&=

Should be short-circuiting, of course.

Maven Classpath

mvn exec:exec -Dexec.executable="echo" -Dexec.args="%classpath"

That's one way you can get a classpath suitable for running a class in your project. I.e. it includes your 'target/classes'.

Now, how do you get the classpath for 'test'?

EDIT.

A to the Q: you use the 'classpathScope' parameter. Like so:

mvn exec:exec -Dexec.executable="echo" -Dexec.classpathScope=test -Dexec.args="%classpath"

Subclipse, the Eclipse SVN GUI

Since there is too little blogging content going out here, why don't I make a post where I list the oddities of the Eclipse SVN client, the one called Subclipse? I am considering creating a new GUI implementation for SVN myself, or else I think I might just not do this list, since I am afraid of coming across as something of a whiner.

I am not saying whining is all bad, but it might be something of a mental pollutant.  On the good side, it can be used for shared recognition of a problem, which is a collective good; or as a vent, which is less of a collective good. Digression completed.

So, lets go. First, off the top of the head:

• It's not very well integrated with the rest of the file management, it's like a separate plugin. Because it is a separate plugin. 
• It does not to pre-flight, IYSWIM: when you do a commit, it can Fail, due to sync errors; you may recognize when this happens, by the informative, if not helpful message "You must update" or "synchronize" or something like that. The client could and should talk to the server in the background to find out about this. 
• When the commit dialog opens, the tree is not expanded, at all, even if it's a single path and a single file. A single file is not shown. Etcetera. 
• There seems to be no 'Synchronize' keyboard shortcut by default. I mean, what? This is something I do almost as often as saving. Saving can be preferenced (Yes, so I verbed; alright?) to be done automatically, but I would not go so far yet. At least with SVN. 

Actually, that's a really good start. Some items rather high-level, I was aiming lower. Maybe I should add bugs I've happened upon. But some of them are with svn itself, and that's another department. And this post is intended as an updateable list, so 'see you soon' I guess.

Well, I'm back before I left: 

• The dialog box -- why is it so small by default? Can't use anything behind it anyway. UI designers; when you consider creating a small popup dialog box, ask yourselves: what is it about this particular task that makes it easier to do in a small dialog box rather than a big dialog box? The answer would be 'nothing', 99 out of 100, I believe. And remember, programmers should have big screens. You should have one yourself. 
• The inconsistency in editing. In the compare view, the left and right hand side editors seem to be different, in ways other than those useful to the completion of the task. And the commit message editor seems to have almost none of the amenities of the real editors. No undo? What the? And you can't copy from the other editors, since it's a modal dialog, that blocks the background window from use. 

...