Category Archives: Tools

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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Using IntelliJ IDEA

I’ve started using Intellij IDEA as an IDE. I’ve always heard good things about it but stuck with Eclipse because it’s pretty good, and the standard used by most clients I’ve worked with. What got me to try it out … Continue reading

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OpenID, Yahoo, and other news

Recent OpenID developments… At the end of this month, Yahoo will be supporting OpenID. Any Yahoo user that chooses to enable the feature will be able to use their Yahoo ID on sites that support OpenID. The announcement doesn’t mention … Continue reading

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Handy Java utility: jarexplorer

Wanted to give kudos to a handy little Java utility I started using: jarexplorer. It’s a Swing-based app that indexes the contents of jar files found in an entire directory structure, and lets you search for classes and files within … Continue reading

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Using Mercurial

As I posted earlier, I’ve been looking at some of the decentralized version control systems and started using Mercurial. There are several decentralized VCSs, including Bazaar, GIT, Mercurial, and others. Out of the decentralized VCSs, Mercurial and GIT seemed to … Continue reading

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Version control systems: Going decentralized

I’ve used a number of version control systems over time, starting out with SCCS and RCS. I used CVS for many years for my own work and for client projects where CVS could be used. For the last 4 years … Continue reading

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