Saturday, June 6, 2009

manutil 0.1.1 and my first git experience

Well, two things to rant today, firstly about a short intro to manutil 0.1.1 and then about my first experience using git connecting to the sourceforge git version control I am using for my new project, dbDir.

manutil 0.1.1
Finally, manutil for Makagiga have moved itself out of 0.1 alpha to 0.1.1 as I have deemed it ready to move forward. A thing I added into 0.1.1 is the function to open HTML help manuals (help manuals written in HTML files) to provide more diversity to how developers want their help files to present themselves and the format. It opens these HTML help files in an internal HTML browser built into the latest makagiga versions (3.5 and 3.6 version). It uses the cobra engine used by the Lobo Web browser project. The rendering is admittingly pretty off because the cobra engine isn't really mature yet but that's the best engine that could be found in the open source written in Java to be used. All else of manutil works fine as they should. Give feed backs about manutil 0.1.1 to kdt, the creator of makagiga or me. I have given manutil a custom icon too. It's a bit rough around the edge but this is the first version. Better ones would come in the next versions when I get time to experiment more graphic effects for the icon desgin.

My first experience using Git
I have created a new project called dbDir in sourceforge and set git as my default version control.It wasn't easy nor straightforward. Since I am using Linux, you don't really expect any GUI unlike the Windows version but I tried the Windows' version of git using the GUI and it is equally not easy to understand how to use. Simply, the documentations in Git pretty much isn't good. I had to figure out what I have to do to connect my already created Git repo in my machine to sf.net's one and upload my first commit of codes.

I finally got already it a bit by reading a blog post at http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/git-fatal-no-matching-remote-head/ .

Git, like SVN , is not easy to understand when you just started because you don't know how to start it and how to approach and what the codes or even the manuals are talking. They are either too cryptic or abstract but when you got it, you can move on. So for developers of git and SVN and other softwares, make sure the user (presuming they are noobs) have to understand and find it easy to navigate and how to start off. A good example that fulfil the above 'easy to start off' is the H2 database. I would make a new post to talk about the pure brainlessness of H2, it's strenght.

SO back to Git, I have to 'cd' to my directory containing my codes , use 'git init' and I tried to 'git clone' the url sf.net provided me for my personal access to my git in sf.net and it throws some weird error of whatever remote headers. I had to play around and add files to the git on my machine and do a commit and then go one round to edit some git config and connect again upload and push the uploads. I have forgotten much of the steps but finally it worked. It shows the complexity developers just like to put into the use. Why not something simple ?

Git , seems simpler to use after you have set it up... so, good for it.

That's all for now, folks.

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