Install Pear on Windows 7

Just a little tips about installing PEAR for PHP on Windows 7.

I have spent 3 hours today to install PEAR on Windows. I had systematically the error, when I was trying to execute config-set auto_discover 1 in the CMD:

PEAR_Config::writeConfigFile fopen('C:/Windows/pear.ini', 'w') failed... permission denied

It was clear that the problem in the PEAR installation - the location of pear.ini file was wrong. It's important to note, that all installation and manipulation with pear I made with basic CMD.

If you have the same problems, you have to reinstall your PEAR with PowerShell.

With PowerShell the pear.ini is in the PHP folder and it will fixe all the problems

Git killer features

After 3 weeks of working with Git (the DCVS written by Linus Torwalds), I definitely can say that it is a great technology.

If you are asking yourself what you need to learn right now? What is the next major revolution in the IT world? Maybe, the answer will be Git.

What are the killer features of Git for me:

• Distributed – I can develop normally even without Internet and access to the central repository. It’s a great feature to make small and concise commits while developing at home, during the weekend.
• Rich history revision mechanism – the search within the log-history is wonderful. With

  git log –sSecurityManager

  I can find, for example, all commits that introduce or remove the SecurityManager class. Attention, the search is performed on the source code and not on the commit log. It’s a best tool for making the code live analysis.
• Git bisect – automatically find a failing commit using the binary search and a set of unit tests. If you don’t use the CI server (shame on you :)), you can nevertheless quickly find a bad commit. Git bisect command will run the tests against the project snapshots. Each snapshot is associated with a particular commit. I did not try to use this command yet. But, the concept is great.
• CMD – git is a command line based tool. You can script the commands, make aliasing etc. CMD speed up your productivity. Of course, for making the merge it’s not so trivial, but the guys from Eclipse will soon release a completely functional version of the plugin eGit.
• git cherry-pick - reintegate an existing commit to the current branch. How many times you have forgot to switch to the correct branch before making a commit? I have been confronted with this painfull mistake quite often. Now you don't have to report your commit manually to the correct branch. The magic cherry-pick command will make it four you!
  

I have worked with git on Windows and Mac. Git for Mac is a stable and I have not noticed any problem. It is not the case for Windows...

Git remote tags problems

For running Git on Windows box, you have to install msysgit (I used 1.7.4.msysgit.0). The one problem I encountered with msysgit, it was that I could not push my tag to the remote repo. The command

git push --tags origin master

did not create a tag remotely. The same command executed on Mac did the job correctly.

Git - pdf book about git
I can recommend to download a free PDF book "Git Community Book" about git from http://book.git-scm.com

As long as I learning Git, as more I understand its powerfull.

Tools : free screenshot capture

The tool of the day is gadwin printScreen (only for Windows users).

A really powerful and free screenshot capture tool that I used on my Windows box.

You can download it here

Des espaces à la fin des noms. Version Windows et Linux

Bonjour,

Est-ce que vous savez que les règles du nommage des fichiers sont très dépendantes du système d’exploitation. Voilà un exemple qui m’a coûté quelques jours d’investigation pour un projet sur lequel je travaille.

Sous Windows le nom du fichier ne peut pas contenir des espaces à la fin! Pour Windows les fichies :
1. ‘toto.txt’
2. ‘toto.txt ’ (un espace à la fin)
3. ‘toto.txt ‘ (deux espaces à la fin)
sont identiques et seront représentez par UN SEUL fichier sur votre disque ! Windows va tronquer les espaces à la fin.

Dans les OS comme Linux RedHat ce n’est pas le cas. Pour ce système, ces trois fichiers sont les fichiers différents. Donc, pour Linux l’espace à la fin du nom de fichier est tout à fait légitime.

Cette différence subtile m’a coûté 2 jours pour réussir à reproduire une anomalie. Vu que notre plateforme de développement est sous Windows et les serveurs de production sont sous Linux, je ne pouvais pas avoir le même comportement de l'application que nos clients.

Conclusion. La reproduction des anomalies, les tests de régression, les tests unitaires doivent être exécutés dans l’environnement le plus proche possible de votre environnement de production. C’est une règle de-facto de développement que je n’ai pas respecté. Mais, l’anomalie est reproduite et sera corrigé et moi, j’ai appris quelque-chose de nouveau et c’est ça qui compte !