Joe Cincotta: Thoughts and such…

Nerdism for the masses.

September 24, 2007 • 8:45 pm 0

Un-SVN … for those times you just need to start again!

Download UnSVN which is a little Win32 command line tool which will search for and delete all the hidden .svn or _svn folders in a folder so that you can ‘start again’ with your working copy and commit as if it were new.

I have found that a lot of the time we do a BIG merge and are really starting a whole new repository and would like to just blow away the SVN directories from my working copy so that I can just do a fresh check out and commit process to a new trunk or branch.

Its not that sexy so it will try to just do a local delete of .svn if you do not supply any parameters. Instead, try using -help to get a list of options. Not bad for 10 minutes work…

Example:
unsvn -r -u -t c:\developer\newProject

[Note: there was a crazy problem last night where I found that directories and files which were under the .svn folder which were marked as read only would not delete. This was fixed by just changing folder permissions - I found the solution here.]

UPDATED 4/3/2010! I have changed the link in this article to point to VERSION 2 of this great little utility. It traverses large filesystems recursively and works a treat. Download UnSVN version 2.0 to fix your SVN woes! Requires .Net framework 2.0 to be installed.

Filed under: agile development, Open Source

August 10, 2007 • 11:25 pm 0

New releases coming next week: PreNIS2 and BizBlox Builder

We have been busily migrating our core technologies from .Net 1.1 to .Net 2.0 – that is nearly two million lines of code across several projects and I have to say that it is testament to the Visual Studio 2005 environment that it has taken two developers less than a week to complete most of the migration. Increadible…

Whilst we were at it, we found that there were some tools which had been left behind and needed a refresh:

PreNIS, the NullSoft Install System pre-processor is going to version TWO next week. It now supports Visual Studio 2005 projects and also supports more advanced developer UI suites like Infragistics where they do not always ‘copy local’ all of the DLLs, but they are needed for web deployment.

The other product which desperately needed a refresh was the BizBlox Builder. Since the open source API went to version 1.4 it has supported Visual Studio 2005, however the Builder has not supported the newer SQL Schema of SQL2005 until now. You can now dynamically create thousands of lines of ORM code from the Builder using either SQL2000 or SQL2005 generated scripts.

Final testing is next week and releases will be up by then. If you’re really keen you can check out the current trunk on PreNIS to see what the new verison is capable of.

Filed under: BizBlox, Open Source, PreNIS, Software Development

May 29, 2007 • 1:13 pm 0

We’re hiring

Click here to see more or apply: mycareer.com.au/5098411

Full Time .Net Developer :
Get on the Cutting Edge!

COMPANY PROFILE
Pixolüt Industries is a research and development company which incubates start-up companies to develop their ideas in to successful businesses. We also deal with mature businesses looking for technology partners when they want to expand in to new markets.

Position Overview
We need a very bright and motivated developer for a full time role. You get to work on a broad spectrum of projects using everything from web services to AJAX and the new WPF in .Net 3!

Work on the cutting edge of the Microsoft technologies, get time to experiment and research as well as work on several amazing systems for local and global clients.

We actively support open source projects and encourage contribution to the community from our ‘labs’ projects which are the maturing of some of our research and development.

You will come in to existing projects and work with a team of excellent developers and you would be lead by Joe Cincotta; which will provide you some great mentoring and learning opportunities. You would also get training on the job with these bleeding edge technologies and the skills and processes to back them up. We really want people who can learn as an ongoing process – we don’t expect people with loads of .Net 3.0 experience!

Working at Pixolüt you will be in a very casual environment in our lab located in Sydney’s south. Defninitely no suits or ties necessary. Its near the beach and we encourage a life/work balance – so you can take time to enjoy it…

There is no peak hour traffic ever, its just a short walk to the train station and there is free all day parking too. Perfect! On average its a 30 minute commute from the city.

MAP LINK:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2tm64d

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Please provide a concise resume in .DOC or .PDF format. Ensure your resume has evidence of education history and skills.

To be eligible to apply for this position you must have an appropriate Australian or New Zealand work visa.

Click here to see more or apply: mycareer.com.au/5098411

Filed under: agile development, Open Source, pixolut, Software Development

May 7, 2007 • 4:27 am 2

Norton says ‘No’ to Nopey

Looks like the days of Nopey are numbered! As of Friday last week, Norton Anti Virus signatures classified Nopey as a malicious hacking tool and the default action was to quarantine it. No doubt other vendors will quickly follow suit.

In reality, Nopey is a system management tool which is invaluable in performing low-level operating system actions using high level shell tools. For example, we used to use Nopey in our NSIS scripts to kill running instances of an application or force a PC restart. I can see how it is extremely powerful - and as such potentially dangerous, but the question has to be asked; at what point is a utility classified as malicious? And why would the classification for a freely available tool change now?

We have used Nopey in various guises in production installers for over three years and only now has its classification been changed. Admittedly, we have not used this application in our broadly released commercial application installers (for precisely the reason it has been reclassified by Symantec) and instead use more specific tools for the job like the ones from the guys at Beyond Logic.

How much control do security vendors really have over our desktop? Maybe too much.

Filed under: Industry Opinion, Open Source, Software Development

March 9, 2007 • 11:51 am 0

BizBlox 1.4 Released with .Net 2.0 Support!

Well, we have finally gotten BizBlox ported to .Net 2.0 and using ADO2 specific features. There is an updated preview installer available on SourceForge with the two streams in one (.Net 1.1 and .Net 2.0).

BizBlox now supports a much better transactional model and also features some minor updates to be compliant with C# and CLS 2.0.

It was a tough decision to make BizBlox development become two independant streams and will mean a little more work in the code maintenance, but at the end of the day there are too many advanced, powerful .Net 2.0 native feaures which the API should provide access to, so we chose to create two streams in the source trunk and not simply do a ‘permanent branch’.

The first impact of making this decision is that the .Net 1.1 version of BizBlox does not support the new transactional features which the .Net 2.0 version does, yet the 2.0 version is backwardly compatible with the 1.1 version. I think this is a situation which will ocntinue to emerge as we continue on development.

The 1.4 release will be tidied up and the BizBlox Builder code generation engine for 1.4 will be released as soon as we have a stable and fully documented API release.

Get BizBlox now…
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/bizblox

Filed under: BizBlox, Open Source, pixolut

January 17, 2007 • 3:03 am 0

Funambol Sync

Plaxo has irked me for some time with its flaky sync capabilities when used across multiple devices. Now, to be fair, I know Plaxo is not really intended to be used across multiple devices, so this is forgivable – but here is the thing… how do you maintain your address book, calendar, tasks and notes across every device you own? Not just the office PC and home PC – and laptop too – but also the cell phone and even the iPod?

Easy. Use Funambol.

It is a complete sync solution which supports OTA sync (thats a network based sync when on the road!) and has modules for many PIM platforms like Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Outlook, Palm and iPod. Its cross platform (Java) core allows the Sync server to be run on just about anything and it supports integration with some heavyweight platforms like Domino, LDAP, Allora, Sugar and Kolab. It also has a Web Service SDK so its easy(ish) to adapt it to any PIM-style platform (like VersionOne burndown tasks for example!)

I have started using Funabol for Pixolüt as a trial and its already saved me from Plaxo duplcate hell once this week and its ability to sync with multiple PIM applications using different sync strategies is just fantastic.

Filed under: gadgets, Open Source, pixolut

January 4, 2007 • 12:32 am 0

Big News for 2007

Lots happening for Pixolüt in 2007.

Firstly, I would like to let you know that we will be releasing the BizBlox API on SourceForge as an Open Source project. The BizBlox Builder will remain the commercial developer product that it is, however given the existing flexible license which the BizBlox API used, we decided that it made sense to convert the API and library to an LGPL and release it to the open source community.

There are several benefits in doing this which will benefit all users and customers using BizBlox. First of all, it allows other code generation systems to be used on the BizBlox platform and not just our BizBlox Builder. Secondly, it opens our code to public scrutiny – yet allows for our continued control over the direction of the platform – allowing for a more robust and secure product. Finally, it allows access to the technology to the greater developer community and that’s always a good thing.

So what is the commercial benefit of selling the BizBlox Builder software if the most important part is free? Well, BizBlox Builder has been designed to integrate with the BizBlox library from the beginning, it comes with loads of example code in C# and VB.Net and also integrates with Visual Studio natively. We also provide enterprise support for our customers. All in all, as the director of Pixolüt and chief architect of the BizBlox ORM I feel like we have made right decision in opening the platform to the developer community and I hope many people can benefit from our research and development over the past three years.

We will have binary releases and the SubVersion repository ready for use by mid-January.

Pixolüt will also be releasing PreNIS under the LGPL as another project on SourceForge within the next couple of months and we aim to have a .Net 2.0 / VS2005 version of it ready for April.

Filed under: BizBlox, Open Source, pixolut, PreNIS

September 12, 2006 • 11:12 am 0