Agile Project Managers
Quote from a response on LinkedIn.
"If you are a PM or IT manager, you should sit with your developers often at random. They should be pairing, talking to each other, writing failing tests before writing code, checking in several times a day, should have a green CI build before the end of the day, etc. etc. Yes, of course no team does these things ALL the time. But real Agile teams do them almost all the time, and have frequent discussions at Retrospectives about when it is appropriate NOT to do them.
If your developers are not doing these things, but still say they are "Agile", here's a secret - they ain't. They are paying lip service, and are at a great risk of failing - and besmirching the good name of Agile."
Written by Chad Wooley
If you are a project manager - regardless or whether you are actively using scrum - read this every day with your morning coffee.
Google GWT Maven Archetype and GWT Debugging
mvn archetype:create -DarchetypeGroupId=com.totsp.gwt -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-googlewebtoolkit2-archetype -DarchetypeVersion=1.0.3 -DartifactId=foobar -DgroupId=foo.bar -DremoteRepositories=http://gwt-maven.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/mavenrepo mvn eclipse:eclipse mvn clean mvn com.totsp.gwt:maven-googlewebtoolkit2-plugin:gwt mvn com.totsp.gwt:maven-googlewebtoolkit2-plugin:debug
To set up debugging, see
http://www.screaming-penguin.com/node/7353
Goodbye Dojo. Hello GWT.
Difference #2 – Windows vs. Ubuntu
Table names through MySQL are case sensitive.
'select * from sch.TABLE' is not the same as 'select * from sch.table'
So if you start getting "Table 'xxxx' doesn't exist" you'll know why.
Check your hibernate mapping and table names. Hibernate does not check the database structure on startup, only the mappings.
Difference #1 – Windows vs. Ubuntu
The security policy for Tomcat on Ubuntu is enabled by default. GRRR.
cd /etc/tomcat5.5/policy.d/
sudo nano 50user.policy
Add this to the bottom:
grant codeBase "file:${catalina.base}/webapps/<YOURAPPDEPLOYNAME>/-" {
permission java.security.AllPermission;
};
And it's all good.
Slicehost – First Impressions
It's been a couple of weeks since I began using slicehost and here are my first impressions.
1) Although I would not be considered a linux noob, the documentation available for setting up the normal-use server is exactly what I am looking for. Specific and tested. No need sifting through the flamewars of linux geeks on obscure blogs trying to figure out how to set up and use the iptables.
2) The size of the smallest slice is *almost* perfect for development needs. I have a SVN server running and use the slice to deploy applications in a preliminary sandbox. Sanity check for testing and demos. That being said, when my maven tomcat:deploy starts running, I can almost see the lights dim. But realistically, I am only deploying at development break points, which might be once or twice a day so it's not a deal at all.
3) The web-based console is great for those of us boxed in by corporate firewalls. You can still check system processes and tweak during your lunch break.
4) I could see this service being a reasonable alternative for small and medium size development shops. For example, buying a single slice for imaging purposes would maximize the time it takes to reinitialize an environment that's been plundered. Even if you wanted to manage your own production environment, having an image slice, a development slice, and a QA slice could reduce the amount of headaches in the development processes.
5) Forget proFTPd. Use vsftpd.
Overall, I am impressed and will continue to use the service. I am looking forward to possibly taking a new product into production and seeing how the slice upgrades work. If it is as simple as everything else, then it should be cake.
What I've done so far:
SVN
Apache
Tomcat
MySQL
Future:
Clustered JBoss
LDAP