ViewSVN full history released
March 6th, 2010
The full history of ViewSVN (2004-2007) is now public and hosted in a gitorious repository. Ohloh statistics are also available.
Separating history of a git repository subtree
February 20th, 2010
Most people probably already know that it’s possible to merge histories of multiple repositories by using the subtree merge strategy [1]. However, sometimes you also need to separate/decouple the history of a repository’s subdirectory into a stand-alone repository. This post outlines how.
Disk usage reports – JDiskReport
February 16th, 2010
In case you have wondered how to find out which files to delete to free up disk space, wonder no more. JDiskReport can easily visualize the disk usage of a directory tree with pie charts and other diagrams. Very useful for having a quick look at what is eating up the space, and since it supports Java Web Start, you don’t really need to install it if you have Java properly configured.
git status / utf-8 umlaut tip
January 16th, 2010
git status and other commands display utf-8 filenames containing umlauts (äö etc) differently from the shell, eg. as escaped (\266, \303 etc). So in case you are having problems with umlauts, the following command should help:
$ git config core.quotepath false
From man git-config(1) for core.quotepath:
The commands that output paths (e.g. ls-files, diff), when not
given the -z option, will quote “unusual” characters in the
pathname by enclosing the pathname in a double-quote pair and with
backslashes the same way strings in C source code are quoted. If
this variable is set to false, the bytes higher than 0×80 are not
quoted but output as verbatim. Note that double quote, backslash
and control characters are always quoted without -z regardless of
the setting of this variable.
git tips/tricks
December 14th, 2009
I have to admit the more I use git the more I love it. Here are some random tips of commands I have found useful.
Read more…
Sorting dicts by value in python
November 27th, 2009
A couple of tips (read: notes to self:) using sorted() and lambda to sort dicts by values in python.
Hedgewars – a worms clone
November 21st, 2009
Blowtorch can kill, too...
Since it’s been over two years since the last time I blogged about Debian games, I figured it’s time to mention this small gem.
Hedgewars is a pretty polished & very playable Worms clone. It supports quick singleplayer games against the AI, hotseat multiplayer games, and multiplayer games over the internet. Naturally, the multiplayer game is the Crux here 
You can play on the global server where players seem to be available pretty readily. I’ve mostly played with known friends, but some extras have always joined in because I’ve forgotten to restrict joins and team additions.
Can you guess what happens next?
In case you haven’t played Team17’s Worms yet, the game consists of teams of hedgehogs that battle against each other with a variety of weapons. The weapons available can be controlled from game settings. Each team starts with the same set of weapons, all of which are not available for use in the beginning. For some weapons you have to wait a couple of turns until they become activated (for example: airstrike, napalm, cake). This allows players to prepare a bit for the inevitable airstrikes etc. More weapons can be picked up from crates that fall from the sky randomly.
Cake!
Last team alive wins the game, as simple as that. The game is turn-based, and there is a limit of time each hedgehog can use to move around and choose a way to attack other hedgehogs. After attacking the turn ends, and the next team gets to act.
Fire Punch!
Turns are team-based, not character-based, so a team with only one hog and another with three hogs get to act as often. This also means that in a team with only hog that hog gets to act every time, while for bigger teams the hog gets to act only every N turns (where N is the number of alive hogs). This can be used tactically for your benefit 
Assuming the opposing team does not have Switch Hog -charges left…
Happy Birthday!
Besides the limit of time on turns, the whole game time is limited so that Sudden Death mode is activated eventually in long battles. This reduces the health of all hogs by 5 (hogs start at 100 health, which can, by the way, be larger when health boxes are picked up) each turn, until it reaches 1. The water level also rises, drowning all boxes and hogs that are below the line. Naturally, the hogs that are higher, have an advantage in the end, so this adds more tactical elements to the game.
All in all, Hedgewars is a very amusing game to play with a bunch of friends, and the games are rather short, so it’s easy to have ex tempore gaming evenings 
Sudden Death for the win!
There is a similar project named Wormux, but I admit to only playing it once very quickly. The playability and polishing just seemed to be better in Hedgewars, but I admit this might be an erroneous evaluation. I guess I might need to give it some proper testing in the future.
Another game I should probably test out is teeworlds
Debian popcon statistics for gitstats
November 21st, 2009
Who said you can’t know how many Debian users are there for a given package?
The popcon installations for gitstats seem to be up to 100 at the moment (package rank 17712 – my unstable installation claims to know 28085 normal packages). Out of those, 23 users actually use it actively.
Now if there was only a way to scale this up by knowing how many % of Debian users have the popularity-contest package installed…
CD/DVD tray stuck on Debian Sid
November 19th, 2009
ViewGit 0.0.5 released
November 16th, 2009
ViewGit 0.0.5 has been released.
Freshmeat announcement is pending:
Improved RSS interoperability, added a new default style, simple authorisation plugin, and git-issues plugin.
On a very much related note, the new SourceForge.net interface is a usability horror. Took me 18 minutes to figure out how to make the bloody file release. I guess I was wrong when I thought they couldn’t make releasing worse.
I like the new user page with RSS, Ohloh and other widgets though. Allows one to easily include RSS feed of a development blog and overview of Ohloh projects as well. Neat.
Ohloh
