A Humble Geek Wannabe

How to Use WinMerge as the Diff tool for Mercurial

2010-06-04T12:00:00.002+03:00

Here is how you can setup TortoiseHg to use WinMerge for visual diffs and 3-way merges (instead of using KDiff):

Open Mercurial.ini config file. On my WIN7 system, this file exists at C:\Users\MyUser\Mercurial.ini. If you are on an XP system, it's probably in C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Mercurial.ini.
Add the following lines:
[extdiff]
cmd.winmerge = C:\Program Files (x86)\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe
opts.winmerge = /e /x /ub /wl

[merge-tools]
winmergeu.executable = C:\Program Files (x86)\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe
winmergeu.priority= 1
winmergeu.fixeol=True
winmergeu.checkchanged=True
winmergeu.args= /e /ub /dl other /dr local $other $local $output
winmergeu.gui=False
winmergeu.binary=True

[tortoisehg]
vdiff = winmerge
Now run TortoiseHg's Global Settings tool. On the TortoiseHg tab, select winmerge for the Visual Diff Command, and winmergeu for the Three-way Merge Tool options, apply, close.

Sources:
http://superuser.com/questions/23576/how-to-use-winmerge-as-the-diff-tool-for-mercurial
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2073543/use-winmerge-as-tortoisehg-merge-tool

Add binary serialization to a WCF webservice using UsernameOverTransport security

2010-04-27T20:50:00.001+03:00

In order to enable this we have to add a new binding to our service and specify which endpoint to use. Add the following binding to the bindings section in the web.config on the service and client side:

<customBinding>
        <binding name="binaryHttpBinding">
          <security authenticationMode="UserNameOverTransport" requireSecurityContextCancellation="true" >
            <secureConversationBootstrap authenticationMode="UserNameForSslNegotiated" />
          </security>          
          <binaryMessageEncoding maxReadPoolSize="2147483647" maxSessionSize="2147483647" maxWritePoolSize="2147483647">
            <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="5242880"
            maxArrayLength="200000" maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
          </binaryMessageEncoding>          
          <httpsTransport maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"></httpsTransport>          
        </binding>        
      </customBinding>

Specify an endpoint for it like this, and you are ready to go:

<endpoint address="" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="binaryHttpBinding" contract="ServiceLibrary.MyService" />    

Hope this helps, I searched a while for the solution and it wasn't on the web.

Starting to love this WCF thingy :)

How to properly close WCF connections

2010-03-20T01:14:00.005+02:00

Seems that reading InfoQ is really a good thing, even though the content related to .NET is pretty weak, it has really good content on Architecture and Languages.While doing the weekly swoop I stumbled across this article which triggered the alarm/sleepy memory in my head. The not so funny thing is that just last week I implemented the Dispose pattern for some WCF connections to a web service, because I’m a programmer and programmers are lazy, and lazy means less code to do more, which kind of forces you to use the Dispose pattern and the “using" statement to automatically close your connections.
If you don’t have the time to read the article and the references, the summary is that using the Dispose pattern is a bad practice for WCF connections, because well, someone at MSFT screwed up the design and ICommunicationObject.Close() throws a bunch of exceptions, which goes against the specifications for IDisposable which should NEVER throw an exception on Dispose(). So let’s see what code I have before:

   17 public partial class IFooServiceClient : IDisposable
   18 {
   19     public void Dispose()
   20     {
   21         Close();
   22     }
   23 }

This is not good code, but not really bad either as long as Close doesn’t throw, which does, so slap in the face and let’s fix this. Someone proposed something like this which make things worse:

   25publicpartialclassIFooServiceClient : IDisposable
   26 {
   27     public void Dispose()
   28     {
   29         try
   30         {
   31             Close();
   32         }
   33         catch (Exception)
   34         {
   35             if (State == CommunicationState.Opened)
   36             {
   37                 Close();
   38             }
   39             else
   40             {
   41                 Abort();
   42             }
   43         }
   44     }
   45 }

This is bad because you lose the exception context and this has the possibility to deadlock as well, checking the channel state is an anti pattern as well. This is the solution I came up with:

classIFooServiceClientHelper
{
    internal T CallServiceMethod<T>(ICommunicationObject service,    Func<T> serviceMethod)
    {
        T returnedInstance = default(T);
        try
        {
            returnedInstance = serviceMethod();
            service.Close();
        }
        catch (FaultException<IFooServiceFault> iof)
        {
            service.Abort();
            throw new IFooServiceException("Executing" + serviceMethod.Method.Name + " has failed.", iof);
        }
        catch (CommunicationException e)
        {
            service.Abort();
            throw new IFooServiceConnectionException("There was a communication problem. " + e.Message, e);
        }
        catch (TimeoutException e)
        {
            service.Abort();
            throw new IFooServiceConnectionException("The service operation timed out. " + e.Message, e);
        }
        catch (InvalidMessageContractException e)
        {
            service.Abort();
            throw new IFooServiceConnectionException(
                "The DataContract for the web service is not up-to-date. " + e.Message, e);
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            service.Abort();
            throw new IFooServiceException("Executing" + serviceMethod.Method.Name + " has failed." + e.Message, e);
        }
        return returnedInstance;
    }
}

This helper method has multiple overloads in order to call Func with parameters but the idea is the same. Calling this is pretty easy:

publicFooGetFoo()
{
    var service = new FooServiceClient();
    var serviceHelper = new FooServiceHelper();
    return serviceHelper.CallServiceMethod<Foo>(service, service.GetFoo);
}

This is better than we had before, but maybe I can improve this more. Any ideas?
Develop with passion,
Adrian

IPad

2010-01-27T23:18:00.003+02:00

   Today Apple announced their next offering: IPad. From what it seems, this is going to be the real competitor to Kindle DX, and Amazon even has to do some catch-up in a field which until now they were leading.
   The IPad has some serious downsides, maybe the best outcome is Amazon releasing a cheaper/better Kindle soon?
   IPad is interesting, but I still favor a netbook/PC + e-Reader, a lot more openness and possibilities.

Building my own website

2010-01-24T23:18:00.000+02:00

   I've started to read Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 , the first chapter is free. After working with Web Forms for a short period (a year and a half) the MVC framework seems like a breeze of fresh air. I don't really understand the whole debate on Web Forms vs. MVC, it's pretty clear which one is cleaner, more robust and easy to use. And no, the lack of controls is not a minus, the web is based on HTML and JavaScript served through HTTP, then why bury all those inside a bunch of web controls when we can use HTML directly?
   Giving the fact that at work I will continue working with Web Forms for the next year I think, I need to start some home project to learn Asp.Net MVC. I'm thinking for some time at creating my own website, so this seems to be a great opportunity to do something useful while learning. I know that there are a bunch of blogging engines for .NET, but I think I will do it from scratch anyway.
   I wonder how soon I will have something usable...

Books

2009-09-28T16:12:00.002+03:00

Not sure how, but this year I managed to have enough time to read a couple of books:

Test Driven Development by Example - this is a great introductory book for TDD, what I enjoyed the most about it was the easy writing style and the small jokes throughout the book, see the comment regarding Singleton pattern :) Reading this book made me feel that I can somehow absorb author's knowledge and experience about code quality and design even if this wasn't the main purpose of the book.
Refactoring: Improving the design of existing code - well, this is the best book related to programming I've read so far, a book which I will reread each year. The 4th chapter, related to Code Smells is really great and succeeds at naming almost all smells found in a bad code. Reading this book you realize how many times you sort of felt that the code is "smelling", but you didn't know how to make it clean and how to tackle the problem. This is a must read for every programmer, I guarantee that it will change how you look at coding.
Working Effectively with Legacy Code - a great book by Michael Feathers, sort of complementary to Refactoring by Fowler. This book is about "safe" refactoring s, how can you find the sensing points and how to introduce tests in a legacy code base. Giving the fact that 80-90% of the time we are working with a legacy code base, sometimes we even write "legacy code", this is a must read for every programmer, at least once :)
Clean Code - great book by Uncle Bob, this contains his amendments about how clean code should look like. Even if you don't have to agree with him on all of his rules, certainly our lives would be much easier if all the programmers would follow 80-90% of the rules. Giving the fact that the definition for "clean code" is not set in stone yet, the most important thing is to try create clean and beautiful code, code that we will be proud of or at least not embarrassed in the future :)

This list contains only the books I managed finishing, seems that I'm really good at reading books half-way, I have 4 or 5 books waiting to be finished, but that is not gonna happen soon :)

I've started reading Coders at Work, this is a really good book, managed to read the first 4 chapters in a couple of hours, recommended for all programmers interested about how great programmers work and think. This is great for boosting motivation and morale :)

Read and Code with Passion,

Adrian

Crazy year

2009-09-28T13:37:00.005+03:00

Looking back at the last couple of months I realized that this was indeed a crazy year:

we found that we are going to have a daughter
we decided to buy our first house even if the economics are crazy
decided that I want a safer job and acted accordingly
decided that safe jobs are not for me and acted accordingly

    I left my previous job because I wanted somenthing stable for the next period when our daughter will be born, but found rather quickly that "safe" and "stable" means boring, and boring definitely is not for me.
   Given this I decided to return to work for Macadamian, which was the company I really enjoyed working for, great people and interesting projects.
   It's not easy to recognize that you don't like boring jobs, but I read an article which made me decide what to do, this is a quote form it:

"If you find yourself stuck in a place that’s killing your innate passion for technology, by all means, move the hell on!" - Gustavo Duarte

I hope that JP won't be mad by stoling his line, but you should really "Develop with Passion".

Why hero coding is bad

2009-06-18T11:37:00.005+03:00

      Seems that hero coders are a breed not really respected by their peers, but pretty loved by the project managers... Why? Well, because they are the ones called to save the day when the s..t hits the fan but they are dark and grumpy with their colleagues(this is not always true... :) ).
      We all want to be(come) those mythical geeks that by raising their eyebrows are inverting the bits create monumental masterpieces which makes the world tremble, but unfortunately hero coding is not the answer, at least not for me. Hero coding is more like a drug for programmers, which once tasted is hard to give up on, it's like a drug because we have our big egos and who doesn't want to feel irreplaceable and important to the people around them, to be the ones called to pull insane amount of time and work for that ugly feature never finished and always late?
      As a geek wannabe, hero coding seems to be the answer for quickly becoming a good and respected developer but after doing it for a couple of months and being forced to stop for a couple of weeks, looking back at what I achieved in that time doesn't look too good, and this is not because programming 16 hours a day is not cool, but because hero coding favors an environment in which some important things are lost: code quality, self esteem, each short-cut looks appealing and you quickly forgot things which are important for you: sucking less each year , improve your skills and be near the ones you love.
     Hero coding is followed by a pretty ugly burnout period, which is quite depressing...
     By writing this, does it mean that I'm an uber geek programmer shouting his ego? No, it means that I acknowledge that I have a problem and I must get rid of it...
Until next time, be good...

P.S. "Hi, my name is Adrian and I'm a hero coding addict..."

Google did it again

2009-06-03T00:13:00.004+03:00

Well, right now I'm quite speachless, the inovation brought by google with Google Wave is astonishing.

If you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, watch this.

If you see me walking around in circles, probably I'm searching for the wave...

Spawning a new process

2009-04-17T12:59:00.003+03:00

After a lot of planning and applying all sorts of design patterns, we finally got it right. We are proud to announce that a new process is going to be spawned somewhere around mid October. Until then I’ll show you a demo of her in all it’s glory.

I will do my best to make an uber geek from her… :)
Welcome to this world my daughter and I’m already proud of you.
Now I will go and buy a shotgun to keep all the boys away :)

YUI Library

2009-02-09T23:12:00.005+02:00

   I spent the last two weeks working with Yahoo User Interface Library, better said with the Datatable control. After having nightmares with the Win Forms version, I was pretty scared about it, but even if the learning curve is high, the library is nice and it integrates nicely with jQuery and Ajax Pro.
   I strongly recomend it to all web developers, especially to the ones not afraid of some javascript hacking :)

   I hope to have some free time this month to play a little more with this :)

   Happy coding and tinkering,
   Adrian

Romacadamians ++

2009-02-09T23:07:00.005+02:00

A good friend is coming back tomorrow to work for Macadamian.
Way to go Macadamian and welcome back Bela :).

The pain of converting an ASP web site to a web application

2008-10-21T16:28:00.006+03:00

Microsoft confused a lot of people when they changed the solution type for web sites in VS2005. After this they realized that this was nowhere near perfection so they reintroduced the web application model (the one which have the solution file) in VS2005 SP1 and VS2008.

The problem this caused is that in certain situations we must convert some legacy sites from the web site model to the web application one. There already exists a pretty good tutorial for this, but it's minimizing some pretty important steps.

If you need to convert a web site to the web application model you must be really careful with the step in which you add the required namespaces. First of all, this will take a while depending on the size of the site, secondly it creates some issues not easily found at first:

If you have Register directives like this one:

<%@ Register Namespace="FancyControls" TagPrefix="cc1" %>

you will need to add the assembly property:

<%@ Register Namespace="FancyControls" TagPrefix="cc1" Assembly="SiteControls" %>

otherwise your controls won't be recognized and you will get "Element not known error" message.

You must update the javascript code which is calling Ajax methods in order to add the required namespaces.

This process is pretty painful, I will update this post if other issues pop-up.

Good luck at converting.

Reading List

2008-09-12T10:23:00.007+03:00

With so much information around is pretty hard to stay focused and concentrate on what you are studying, at least I'm affected by this :(

In order to solve this, the following reading list I hope will help me stay focused :)

Some of them are already read, but it will be good if I will read them again from time to time.

So here it goes:

1. CLR via C#

2. C# In Depth

3. Head First Design Patterns

4. Code Complete

5. Pragmatic Programmer

6. The Mythical Man Month
7. C# 3.0 in a Nutshell
8. Refactoring

9. Test Driven Development By Example

More to come.

Happy reading.

Hello World

2008-09-12T10:10:00.008+03:00

This seems to be my first blog post... I hope there would be more in the future :).

What can you expect to find in this blog: related and unrelated posts about programming, operating systems, games, book reviews, some thoughts about me and what not :).
Currently I'm a software developer at Macadamian Romania, learning the nuts and bolts about software construction and trying to improve myself.
The word says that you learn a lot by blogging, so here I am, trying new ways to learn and add my contribution to this live thing called internet.

Enjoy the ride and happy coding.