Category Archives: Tools

Automatically installing and cleaning up software on Kubernetes hosts

I had a need to automatically install software on each node in a Kubernetes cluster. In my case, security scanning software. Kubernetes can start new nodes to scale up automatically, destroy nodes when no longer needed, and create/destroy nodes as … Continue reading

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Migrating Drupal and WordPress sites using Docker

There’s several sites I host for family and friends in addition to this site. It’s a mix of WordPress, Drupal, and static sites, all running on a Linux virtual host hosted by Rackspace. The Linux host is pretty old at … Continue reading

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Converting Maven APT docs to Markdown

In a project I worked on many moons ago we were writing documentation in the APT format, and publishing to HTML and PDF using a Maven-based toolchain. APT served us well, but it hasn’t been supported or improved by the … Continue reading

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Profiling Maven Sculptor execution using YourKit

The latest version of the Sculptor Generator is based on XTend 2, which is compiled to Java/Bytescode rather than interpreted as XTend1 and XPand was. This should bring large performance improvements to the code generation cycle, and it certainly feels … Continue reading

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Making Eclipse run configurations portable

I’m using Eclipse, GWT, and Maven on a couple projects, and have several customized Eclipse run configurations I use. There’s a bit of work and specific settings required to make these work well, and they have to be set up … Continue reading

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New change management tool: Redmine

I was starting a new project, needed a change management tool, and wasn’t really satisfied with the tools available last time I looked, so I took a look at what was currently available.  One option I came across that hadn’t … Continue reading

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Maven and skinny wars

Maven is a great build system, but sometimes limitations come up that can drive you crazy.  One such limitation is support for building “skinny war” files.  Granted, I don’t think it’s the most common configuration, but for certain types of … Continue reading

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Mercurial and Subversion : What’s working for me

One popular use of DVCS systems such as Mercurial and GIT is as “super clients” to Subversion, at least until more projects get on the DVCS bandwagon. You get most of the benefits of the DVCS and can still work … Continue reading

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Semantic documentation markup languages: XDocs, DocBook, Dita

I’ve been using the Maven XDoc markup language for documenting design on a client project. Looking into editors for XDoc led me to taking a closer look at DocBook, and Dita, a relative newcomer. All of these formats allow you … Continue reading

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Change Management and Bug Tracking

A project I’m involved with is in need of a change management tool, so I’m in the process of re-evaluating the landscape of open source change management tools, and testing a couple out. Change management is one of those software … Continue reading

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