Posts tagged with “OS X”
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Compiling Ruby, RubyGems, and Rails on Snow Leopard
Dan Benjamin walks through how to install Ruby, RubyGems, and Rails on Snow Leopard. Also be sure to check out his other Snow Leopard guides for Mercurial, Git, and MySQL.
11 major new Snow Leopard features
MacWorld rounds up Snow Leopard’s new features. “Smart Eject” sounds like it’s going to be super useful:
When you first attempt to eject a disk, the eject manager actually sends out a signal to its own subsystems and other programs, asking them to relinquish their hold on the volume if that’s possible. If that fails because a program really is using the drive, Snow Leopard will bring up a window telling you which program doesn’t want to let you eject the disk. You can then switch to that program, quit out of it, and eject the disk.
DreamMount
A Mac OS X tool for mounting your Dreamhost account on your computer, created for DreamHost’s API Contest (winners were announced today). I haven’t had a chance to give this a whirl yet, but it sounds pretty promising.
World of Apple takes a look at Snow Leopard
Strange:
One of the biggest changes is that Snow Leopard now counts data sizes in base 10. In this example a 320GB hard drive shows as 320GB as opposed to 297GB
This is going to be weird–if you take a file from another OS and put it in Snow Leopard, its size will increase (even though it still takes up the same physical space). Not sure how I feel about this.
Untitled Document Syndrome
Great post by John Gruber on how effective applications can be when they don’t require the author to ever “save” anything. For instance, he refers to iMovie, where the user never has to deal with saving a file somewhere–the application just figures it behind the scenes. Also check out Chris Clark’s response “By Proxy, By Proxy, By Proxy”, where he talks about how download windows could be helped by the very same idea.
Why I won't be buying Versions
Today, Versions, a Subversion app for OS X, moved to version 1.0, marking the end of its free beta period. While many people will be shelling out the €39 (~$49) for a license, I won’t be doing the same. Having used Versions for a couple months now, it just isn’t for me.
I don’t need a fancy UI.
When I loaded Versions for the first time, I was impressed by the amount of work that went into the UI. It looked nice, and it worked pretty well too. However, I found myself working harder to accomplish simple tasks than when I used the command line. For me, it’s a lot easier to cd to the directory in the Terminal and do a svn stat rather than take the time to load up Versions and do a similar command. Even though it might be nicer to look at, Versions was just never quite as quick or intuitive as the terminal commands I had grown used to. In addition, I almost always have the Terminal open, as I’m constantly running commands during development. Having to open up another app just got in the way of my workflow.
I already use TextMate.
TextMate is the center of my coding world. It is quite simply the greatest text editor I have ever used, and it’s where I spend the vast majority of my time when I’m coding. Built into TextMate is a great SVN plugin that really makes Versions unnecessary. Without changing applications, I just hit CTRL+SHIFT+A and I’m greeted with a list of SVN commands. I tap 5, and I see a dialog where I can set my SVN commit message and choose exactly which items I want to commit from a list of changed files. Why would I need anything more sophisticated than that? If I wanted to go ahead and commit a few files with Versions, I’d have to fire up the application, locate the files I want, and hit commit. The worst part is, at least in the beta version I used, there’s no good way to select multiple files in Versions without resorting to holding the command key and clicking each file. In TextMate, it’s as simple as checking boxes.
Git is the future.
My biggest problem with spending close to $50 on a Subversion app is that I really don’t want to use SVN any more. I’ve fallen in love with Git, a distributed version control system that puts Subversion to shame. Just about every new personal project I start will be using Git, so there’s really no point in buying a program just to manage my older projects. If Versions supported Git as well, I’d definitely be considering adding it to my arsenal.
A Grain of Salt
Now, just because Versions hasn’t worked its way into my routine doesn’t mean it can’t be part of yours. I personally know several people that really enjoy Versions, and it has really improved their workflow. It’s definitely a well-made product, it just doesn’t work for me.
Also, if you’re in the market for an OS X client for SVN, definitely check out Cornerstone as well. While I haven’t used it personally, I’ve heard good things about it.
Jade Ohlhauser Compares Versions and Cornerstone, Round 2
In July, Jade Ohlhauser compared Versions and Cornerstone, two OS X SVN clients, and he declared Versions the winner. Now, he revisited the two, and this time Cornerstone takes the prize. I’ve used Versions a bit myself, and while it’s pretty impressive, I still much prefer using TextMate’s built in SVN support and the command line. However, after reading this review, I’ll definitely have to try Cornerstone out.