For a long time a code validator was one of the tools missing from the ActionScript developers toolbox. Last year that changed and we can now benefit by keeping a robotic eye on our projects. One that helps improve style and consistency, and avoid complexity. Something even more important in team or distributed code environments. Hooking validation up to a continuous integration server is even better as the audit triggers automatically, problems get reported and graphed, and builds can be failed when maximum limits are breached - a clear signal that it’s time to review and refactor. …
It should be really easy to publish website content to a server. One way to do this is by using SSH and rsync. Start by configuring SSH to work with keys rather than a password:
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Being a Ruby lover I’ve always intended on using Sprouts for project management. But when I was last looking for a solution you couldn’t easily specify which revision of a Flex SDK a project should be built with. This was something we needed to do. Access to the continuos integration box was limited which also caused problems, so we went with ant. I’ve been rolling out the same ant scripts and associated libraries into projects ever since. …
When I upgraded to Snow Leopard a few months ago I found out quite quickly that locate didn’t work on the command line. Why locate is missing I don’t know, maybe find was supposed to replace it. But find doesn’t look deep enough into the system files to be useful for me. I finally got round to looking into the problem.
Using locate file.txt get’s us this: WARNING: The locate database (/var/db/locate. …
Initially I set out with the aim to switch from Subversion to Git before there was an official plan from the TextMate crew. This has now changed, and all bundles that show Github activity are being removed from the TextMate svn repository. Which means that the official bundles I mirrored now have a duplicate Github mirror, and one that is more central for TextMate users and should be the root of all development. …
I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to learn some objective-c which means I’ve been looking at Xcode (not entirely) for the first time. It’s an alien environment for me, but after a couple of days is starting to feel a little better. Here’s a few random things I’ve found:
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Git is one of the tools I’ve been meaning to try for a while now. It’s a version control systems that offers a distributed model, is fast, light and perfect for branching and merging. I was pretty confident I’d be up and running quickly with git as I’m used to subversion. But given the past few days experience I wouldn’t say it’s been easy. It may have been, but I decided my way in would be to mirror both the Flex and ActionScript 3 TextMate Bundles over on github - which meant using git svn. …
The ActionScript 3 bundles had the ability to auto import a class for a long time, but the functionality has been limited to the area of the document between the package and class declarations. There have been some interesting solutions to improve this workflow, but ultimately it needed a more elegant solution. If you grab the most recent version of the bundle you’ll now find that ⇧⌘I can
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I thought it was time that I did a quick guide to getting up and building with Ant and TextMate.
Installation The easiest way to install Ant is to install Apple’s Developer Tools, they can be found on the DVD that came with your install of OS X. If you don’t have one you can also download them with Xcode here. Alternatively, if you prefer leaner downloads and cutting edge releases then the Ant binaries are available here. …
Here’s a little teaser showing autocompletion for ActionScript 3 in action using TextMate.
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