TDD unlimited

So I read a short rant that questions TDD (or unit testing – it’s hard to figure). Here’s my message:

If you want to learn your trade don’t get too excited about gurus that outsmarted the Universe and found cracks in TDD. There are way more IT celebrities that successfully practice TDD. They blog about, they teach and you know what? Their code kicks ass big time. So… Write loads of tests, try TDD, taste BDD. Learn it yourself and at some point you won’t be needing blogs to decide what side to take (Alliance or the Horde? =).

Now, if you already know your trade please try to influence others to write more tests and learn TDD. How much inspirational is this or that! Anyway, it’s just my humble request to the world. Of course, you can write whatever you want, dear influential blogger!

hgsubversion on windows

Who likes mercurial? I do. Lately, I even started using mercurial as a client for subversion repositories. Let me describe the hgsubversion installation steps that worked for me; on my laptop that is boldly supplied with The Only Right operation system…

I heavily borrow from excellent entry by Ben Collins-Sussman and from outrageously diligent post by Dave Cameron. I want to focus on the smallest possible installation routine on windows. Also, I want to emphasize that you don’t have to build anything on windows. All the prepackaged installables or binaries are ready, waiting for you to grab them.

Oh right, here are the steps that worked for me:

1. Install mercurial (TortoiseHg)
2. Clone hgsubversion
3. Configure hgsubversion extension
4. Start cloning svn repos!
5. Understand the gotchas
6. Stay happy

1. Install mercurial (TortoiseHg). I installed TortoiseHg (mercurial + tortoise). Your cmd should nicely take: hg version.

In theory you can install different Mercurial client. However, there is a huge advantage of installing TortoiseHg: you don’t have to install python, svn python bindings & make your Mercurial use it. All because TortoiseHg comes with python+svn bindings (thanks Afriza for a hint!).

2. Clone hgsubversion:

hg clone http://bitbucket.org/durin42/hgsubversion SomeFantasticFolder

In my case SomeFantasticFolder is c:\projects\open-source\hgsubversion. At the moment I cloned hgsubversion the tip was the changeset 500.

3. Configure hgsubversion extension. Add extensions to your USER_HOME/.hgrc, which on windows is Documents and Settings\SomeFabulousName. In my case SomeFabulousName is sg0897xxx (after years in IT industry I’m still just a number…). Note that hgsubversion is duplicated at the end – that’s fine. Your .hgrc should contain something like:

[extensions]
rebase=
#do not quote the path if it has spaces!
svn=c:\projects\open-source\hgsubversion\hgsubversion

Your cmd should print enabled extensions at the bottom of the screen when you do: hg help extensions

4. Start cloning svn repos!

Instead of cloning repos with “hg clone” I suggest to “hg pull” instead. Pull is better because it can continue in case something breaks (cloning very large repo can takes hours).

hg init example
cd example
hg pull http://example-for-hgsubversion.googlecode.com/svn example-for-hgsubversion

5. Understand the gotchas.

• gotcha 1. If svn requires authentication, you may be asked to enter user/password… 3 times. Don’t worry, just enter correct credentials patiently. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. (update) Augie Fackler, the mastermind of hgsubversion points out svn+http or svn+https can be used to work around this gotcha
• gotcha 2: After updating changes from svn (hg pull, hg update) never use ‘hg merge’, instead use ‘hg rebase’. Merges are not yet supported by hgsubversion I heard. If you accidentally do hg merge you probably have to rollback the merge in order to push.
• gotcha 3: (new) From my experience it is better to clone entire repo, not only trunk. Cloning trunk worked for me but I noticed exceptions thrown during unsuccessful rebase. Working with full repo clone was smooth for me so far.
• gotcha 4: (new) Commands you should know:

  hg help svn
  hg rebase --svn
  hg svn info
  hg svn rebuildmeta
  

• last gotcha: I’m not a mercurial expert so feel free to comment & give feedback. Also, newer (different) versions of before mentioned installables should work as well. If links to binaries are dead then get creative and google for it – I don’t guarantee all links will work forever.

6. Stay happy. Are you kidding me? You know what to do =)