GET it from http://jruby.org/

There is a download page, download and exract the tar file somehwere.

I put it in /System/Library/Frameworks/JRuby.framework/jruby-1.5.1

I then created a symbolic link to jruby_current

ln -s jruby-1.5.1/ jruby_current

And then simply add it to my ~/.bash_profile

$vi ~/.bash_profile
export PATH=/System/Library/Frameworks/JRuby.framework/jruby_current/bin:$PATH
#Reload the profile…
$. ~/.bash_profile
#Try out jruby…
$jruby -v
jruby 1.5.1 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249) (2010-06-06 f3a3480) (Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.6.0_17) [x86_64-java]

Now you can add the JRuby SDK to your Java Module in Intellij:

Now you can have ruby and Java in the same project. Awesome.

I find google reader a useful way to aggregate information from many blogs. Particularly convenient is to be able to read these on my iPhone and then mark them as shared. That way I can build up a list of information I am interested in.

This is then conveniently exposed as an RSS feed by google. You can see my shared items at http://www.google.co.uk/reader/shared/jim.barritt for example.

I used to have a sidebar on this site which had a snippet directly from google reader, but it was determined to have its own style. I wanted a wordpress plugin that would do it for me and found “Recommended Reading Google Reader” by C. Murray Consulting

Its the nice “READING” section on my sidebar. Thanks guys! You just saved me from writing my own!

I recently (Friday 14th May 2010) gave the closing Keynote at Agile North, a one day conference held up in Preston.

The talk was loosely based around a metaphor of mountain climbing and playing with the analogy of being a consultant on an agile project being like a mountain guide. The idea is that someone who is a mountain guide has many years of experience climbing and coaching people on the mountain.

The talk I think was well recieved and generated quite a bit of interest from people, I think because we were talking about real experiences on our current project.

I co-presented with Mark Crossfield who is the Tech Lead on the team I am Coaching at our current client, AutoTrader, and I felt it was an interesting balance between my “Guide” view and his experience leading a team into an Agile project for the first time.

We covered five short stories about our experiences on the project.

• Safety First – going beyond CI to pipelines
• The Walking Skeleton as a metaphor for iterative feature delivery
• Evolution of the codebase
• Collective Design
• Telling the story of the code

The Slide deck is up on slideshare and the talk can be viewed here.

At some point they promise to put up the video of the event at which point I will update this post.

Whilst playing around with some code analysis I thought it would be useful to be able to output a hyperlink back to a line of code in the IDE console. As it happens, you can “Trick” IntelliJ to do this with the following log statement:

    @Test
    public void canClickOnAFileInTheConsoleAndGoToTheLineOfCode() {
        log.info(String.format(“Check it at %s. (%s.java:%d)”,
            getClass().getName(), getClass().getSimpleName(), 15));
    }

The pattern it seems to match is something like at {classFullName}.{identifier}({classSimpleName}.java)

classFullName has to be a valid class name.
identifier is usually used for the method name, but it can be anything. The full stop is nescessary. So in the example above, I put a space in there and so it reads like a sentance.

Anyone know a another way to do this?

UPDATE:

Actually it seems that you can get something similar if you output a full path name, e.g.:

    File f = new File(“./src/test/resource/testfiles/level_01/level_01_01/file_01_01_A.txt”);
    log.info(f.getAbsolutePath() + “:” + 34);

This will create a link in the output window to the line of the file. Nice.

Mind mapping, invented by Tony Buzan is a way to get lots of ideas down and relate them together.

MindMeister is a great online Mind Mapping tool. It can be used for free but for $59 for a year you get things like offline access. It is completely written using html and javascript.

Map On!

REST Client plugin

It was also available from the plugins list in the settings.

Rest Client intellij plugin screenshot

I just discovered Exploding Pixels’ MacWidgets. Its a beautiful library. Literally just pasted a couple of lines of code into my Java app and now it looks right at home on the os x desktop. I’m running JDK 1.6 on Leopard.

Here is is in action:

And here is the code (its been edited slightly so may not copy and paste, but you get the idea) …

 
        MacUtils.makeWindowLeopardStyle(getRootPane());
 
        UnifiedToolBar toolBar = new UnifiedToolBar();
 
        JButton button = new JButton(“My Button”);
        button.putClientProperty(“JButton.buttonType”, “textured”);
        toolBar.addComponentToLeft(button);
 
        getContentPane().add(toolBar.getComponent(), BorderLayout.NORTH);
 
        BottomBar bottomBar = new BottomBar(BottomBarSize.SMALL);
        bottomBar.addComponentToLeft(MacWidgetFactory.createEmphasizedLabel(” Status”));
 
        getContentPane().add(bottomBar.getComponent(), BorderLayout.SOUTH);
 

I had naively assumed that the syntax for environment variables was the same as for system properties but alas not.

The correct code is:

    package
        <plugins>
        <plugin>
               org.apache.maven.plugins
               maven-surefire-plugin
               2.4.2
               
                   
                       some value
                   
                   
                       <property>
                           acceptance.test.host
                           ${acceptance.test.host}
                       </property>
                   
                
           </plugin>
       </plugins>

<pre>
<build>
<defaultGoal>package</defaultGoal>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.4.2</version>
<configuration>
<environmentVariables>
<SOME_ENV_VARIABLE>some value</SOME_ENV_VARIABLE>
</environmentVariables>
<systemProperties>
<property>
<name>someSystemProperty</name>
<value>${thisCanBePassedIn}</value>
</property>
</systemProperties>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

I'm afraid I had to update this post as initially I naively assumed that the syntax for environment variables was the same as for system properties. As you can see from above, you have to actually put a separate xml tag in there for the variable.

By putting the value in ${} you can then pass it in with -DsomeSystemProperty from the command line when you do mvn clean install

e.g. :

mvn -DsomeSystemProperty=foobar clean install

What is it?

A Java / .NET profiling tool.

YourKit, LLC is a technology leader, creator of the most innovative and intelligent tools for profiling Java & .NET applications. The YourKit Java Profiler has been already recognized by the IT professionals and analysts as the best profiling tool.

With YourKit solutions, both CPU and memory profiling have come to the highest professional level, where one can profile even huge applications with maximum productivity and zero overhead.

There are several, recent innovations to profiling that have gained well-deserved popularity among professional Java developers, both in big and small companies.

YourKit is the standard-setter in the evolution of profiling tools.

It is incredibly slick and easy to use. Thanks to Felix for putting me on to it.

Simply download it (Java, .NET), copy it to your Applications folder and add the following to your java startup options (on a mac, that is):

JAVA_PROFILING_OPTIONS="\
-agentpath:/Applications/YourKit_Java_Profiler_8.0.15.app/bin/mac/libyjpagent.jnilib\
 -agentlib:yjpagent "

Then kick back and enjoy!