Automate Yo' Self (OpenWest 2016)

Fine-tuning your development environment means more than just getting your editor set up just so -- it means finding and setting up a variety of tools to take care of the mundane housekeeping chores that you have to do -- so you have more time to program, of course! I'll share the benefits of a number of yak shaving expeditions, including using App::GitGot to batch manage _all_ your git repos, App::MiseEnPlace to automate getting things _just_ so in your working environment, and a few others as time allows.

Transcript

1. Automate Yo' Self! OpenWest 2016 Sandy UT John SJ Anderson @genehack if anybody has any questions or i'm going too fast, please throw up a hand and ask -- or i'm here all week, grab me on the hallway track
2. Hi, I'm John. hi, i'm john
3. @genehack i go by genehack most places on line. today i'm going to talk to you today about some tools and tricks i have for being productive while developing. but before i do that, i need to explain a bit about why i needed it. my life is busy.
4. Sammy i've got a dog.
5. @sammygenehack dog's got a twitter account.
6. Two kids two daughters
7. A Wife and a wife that i like to hang out with
8. long-suffering conference widow A Wife
9. photobomber is not impressed. A Wife long-suffering conference widow
10. Job I've also got a job
11. Hobbies and i have a few hobbies -- maintain some Perl modules,
12. Hobbies Trying to learn Swift, check out Angular 2,
13. Lots of Hobbies reading, hiking, cooking,
14. I've got a lot of balls in the air don't have time for trivial nonsense, so i use a lot of automation and other "lifehacks"
15. AUTOMATE YO' SELF occasionally, you just have to automate yo' self!
16. Basic Principles whenever i'm trying to do this, there are some basic principles that i try to keep in mind
17. Don't Make Me Think none of this automation stuff should require me to think -- if i have to think about it, it's not really saving me any time
18. This is my "you made me think" face. the whole point is not having to think.
19. Consistency is Good. so, in those terms, one thing that's essential: make everything the same. have a standard directory layout under $HOME. you shouldn't have to think about what system you're on, what shell, what project. things should just be the same -- or at least *correct* -- all the time
20. Idempotence is better! Idempotence: the property of certain operations in mathematics and computer science, that can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application
21. App::MiseEnPlace so, here's an example of idempotence, a utility i wrote to manage symlinks and directories in my home directory
22. App::MiseEnPlace "everything in its place" "mise en place" is a French phrase meaning "everythng in its place" -- it comes from cooking, and the principle that you should have all your ingredients prepped and ready to go before you start cooking. i wanted something to make sure i always had my standard directory layout under $HOME as well as setting up various symlinks
23. % cat ~/.mise --- manage: - doc - etc - private - proj/* - src/* create: directories: - bin - proj - proj/go/src/github.com/genehack - src - var links: - Desktop: var/tmp - Desktop: tmp here's what the top level config for mise looks like -- it goes in .mise in your home directory. we have a list of directories we want to manage (more on that in a minute) and a set of directories and symlinks to create. links are source:target
24. % cat proj/emacs/.mise --- create: links: - DIR: ~/.emacs.d - bin/build-most-recent-emacs: BIN - bin/e: BIN - bin/ec: BIN - bin/git-blame-from-line-num: BIN - bin/map-test-lib: BIN this is a per-project config file. mise has a couple special keywords DIR and BIN, that refer to the directory containing the .mise file and ~/bin, respectively the advantage of this is you don't need to have a huge gnarly $PATH with a bunch of project directories in it, everything is just symlinked into ~/bin
25. % mise [LINK] created ~/proj/emacs -> ~/.emacs.d [LINK] created ~/proj/emacs/bin/build-most-recent-emacs -> ~/bin/build-most-recent-emacs [LINK] created ~/proj/emacs/bin/e -> ~/bin/e [LINK] created ~/proj/emacs/bin/ec -> ~/bin/ec [LINK] created ~/proj/emacs/bin/git-blame-from-line-num -> ~/bin/git-blame-from-line-num [LINK] created ~/proj/emacs/bin/map-test-lib -> ~/bin/map-test-lib % mise % rm ~/bin/e % mise [LINK] created ~/proj/emacs/bin/e -> ~/bin/e when we run mise for the first time, you can see it creates all those links. if we run it again, it does NOTHING. Idempotency for the win! If you remove a link and run it again, it creates _just_ that link
26. App::MiseEnPlace get it from your favorite CPAN mirror available on CPAN, minimal dependencies, works on any perl from this decade.
27. smartcd ok, so that handles getting a consistent directory structure, and linking project binaries. what if you have other per-project stuff that you want to set up? environment variables or other stuff?
28. smartcd Automatically run code when entering or leaving directories or sub-directories enter smartcd, which hooks the 'cd' command and then runs scripts when you enter or leave a directory (or even a subdirectory)
29. % smartcd show enter /Users/genehack/.smartcd/scripts/Users/genehack/fake-node-proj/bash_enter exists ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ######################################################################## # smartcd enter - /Users/genehack/fake-node-proj # # This is a smartcd script. Commands you type will be run when you # enter this directory. The string __PATH__ will be replaced with # the current path. Some examples are editing your $PATH or creating # a temporary alias: # # autostash PATH=__PATH__/bin:$PATH # autostash alias restart="service stop; sleep 1; service start" # # See http://smartcd.org for more ideas about what can be put here ######################################################################## autostash NODE=4.2.3 autostash PATH=$PATH:__PATH__/node_modules/.bin/ nvm use $NODE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- smartcd has 'edit' and 'show' subcmds (and a bunch of others), and 'leave' and 'enter' scripts. here's an enter script for an arbitrary node project. the autostash keyword sets up an environment variable that will be *unset* when you leave this directory. you can also run arbitrary commands; the 'nvm' command here selects a version of node to use
30. % cd ~/fake-node-proc Now using node v4.2.3 (npm v2.14.7) % echo xx$NODE xx4.2.3 % cd .. % echo xx$NODE xx here's what it looks like when you cd into that directory. and you can see the env var is set. if we change back out of the directory, the environment variable is unset.
31. smartcd https://github.com/cxreg/smartcd pretty cool, available on github. works with bash and zsh. really easy to install. i can pay this the highest possible compliment: i haven't forked it or needed to patch it in any way, i just use a checkout from the upstream repo
32. App/Env Builders are your friends speaking of per-project settings, let's talk for a minute about application builders.
33. perlbrew plenv nvm App::GitGitr build-most- recent-emacs here are some of the ones i've used or use now. perlbrew and plenv let you have multiple perls. nvm does the same thing for node. similar tools exist for python, ruby, etc. then there's GitGitr, which I wrote while maintaining Git wrapper library. I needed to be able to quickly install arbitrary Git versions while responding to bug reports -- so I wrote a little tool that does that. Similarly, I'm an Emacs user. If a new version is released, I want to upgrade, across all my systems - so I scripted that.
34. Consistency Corollary: Don't trust system binaries Back at the beginning, I said "consistency is good". Now, if you're developing on MacOS and deploying to Linux (or dev-ing on Ubuntu and deploying to Debian), you're probably not going to have the same version of tool from the OS (and if you do now, it's not going to last). Even if the versions are the same, there may have been vendor patches applied.
35. Automate building your critical tools. No, if you really want to be consistent, the best approach is to build the tools that are most critical for your project. ("Build" in this case may just mean automating the install; it doesn't have to mean "build from source".) Note: only do this for the *important* stuff. (include examples)
36. The Silver Searcher Speaking of tools, here's a tool that has literally improved my entire development life -- the silver searcher. Anybody here using this?
37. grep? ok, so, grep -- everybody knows grep, right? let's you search for text inside files, which is something you do a lot while developing code.
38. grep? powerful, speedy, indiscriminate so, grep is super powerful in terms of what you can search for, and it's pretty quick, but it's not very selective. you can list all the files you want to search, or search whole dir trees, but you quickly realize this sucks, because of things like .git directories. anybody ever do a recursive grep on a big git checkout? yeah.
39. ack? anybody here use ack? ack is a grep-like tool written in perl.
40. ack? powerful, selective, slow it's just as powerful as grep in terms of what you can search for, but it's recursive by default (which is what you want) and it's smart about ignoring .git and SVN stuff. the problem is, it's pretty slow, particularly to start up (because Perl)
41. ag! enter ag (which is what the binary for the silver searcher is called.
42. ag! powerful, selective, FAST ag works much like ack (not _exactly_, but close enough), but it's written in C and it's oh so fast.
43. The Silver Searcher https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher available on Github, also packaged in several Linux distros. again, no higher compliment than to say I just build from a checkout of the upstream. have never needed to fork or patch
44. My biggest productivity/automation tip so, here's my single biggest tip in this whole talk. are you ready? brace yourselves.
45. Revision control
    $HOME this is it. anybody know what this is? this is your home directory under revision control
46. Why bother? no, but seriously. it's a little bit of a pain to develop the discipline but once you get used to having _everything_ under revision control, it's nice. you don't have to worry about experimenting with anything, backing stuff up, or dealing with cross-machine variation in your environments
47. say automation again originally i had series of kludgy shell scripts to manage repo updates and checkouts super ugly and not worth sharing and then, inspiration: Ingy döt Net talking about App::AYCABTU @ PPW2010
48. Ingy döt Net this is ingy - he's a crazy awesome open source hacker guy who has done a whole bunch of stuff. probably best known for being one of the inventors of YAML
49. Things I wanted to steal the thing ingy had developed had a bunch of stuff i wanted to steal: The basic idea The interface Info about repositories in config file Flexible ways of selecting repos for operations – by #, by name, by tag
50. Things I wanted to add Support for more than just Git Locate repositories in arbitrary locations Easily add and remove repositories Ability to easily extend with more subcommands Most importantly: better name!
51. App::AYCABTU?!?!‽ and finally, the name. what even is this.
52. GitGot Thus was born GitGot http://search.cpan.org/dist/App-GitGot/ Installs a ‘got’ command Uses Moo and App::Cmd under the covers Add new subcommands by writing a single class!
53. Whirlwind Tour Let's take a whirlwind tour of how got works
54. got add you tell got about repos using the 'add' command, from inside the git repo
55. % got add Name: foo URL: Path: /Users/genehack/foo Tags: bar it'll prompt you for required info, and supply sensible defaults. note that you can also apply tags (space-delimited)
56. got add -D or you can just add the '-D' switch and it'll automatically use the defaults
57. got clone <REPO URL> you can also clone a remote repo, which will check it out into the working directory and add it to got, prompting you for details
58. % got clone git@github.com:genehack/app-gitgot.git Name: [app-gitgot]: Path: [/Users/genehack/app-gitgot]: Tags: : Cloning into '/Users/genehack/app-gitgot'... it'll prompt you for required info, and supply sensible defaults. note that you can also apply tags (space-delimited)
59. got clone -D <REPO URL> got clone also respects the '-D' switch
60. got fork <GITHUB URL> finally, you can give got a github url, and it will fork that project under your github id, then check it out into the current directory and add it to got
61. ~/.gitgot all the info about the repos managed by got lives in this .gitgot file in your home directory
62. - name: App-Amylase path: /Users/genehack/proj/App-Amylase repo: git@github.com:genehack/App-Amylase.git type: git - name: Git-Wrapper path: /Users/genehack/proj/Git-Wrapper repo: git@github.com:genehack/Git-Wrapper.git tags: git type: git - name: HiD path: /Users/genehack/proj/HiD repo: git@github.com:genehack/HiD.git type: git - name: Perl-Build path: /opt/plenv/plugins/perl-build repo: git://github.com/tokuhirom/Perl-Build.git type: git it's just a simple YAML formatted line, totally hand-editable (although you shouldn't _need_ to do that, you can) note that repos can be located anywhere on the disk, don't have to under a common dir or in your home or whatever. anywhere you can write to is fair game
63. But now what? ok, so you've added all your git repositories to got. what now?
64. got list well, you can get a list of them
65. got ls which you can shorten to this
66. 1) App-Amylase git git@github.com:genehack/App-Amylase.git 2) Git-Wrapper git git@github.com:genehack/Git-Wrapper.git 3) HiD git git@github.com:genehack/HiD.git 4) Perl-Build git git://github.com/tokuhirom/Perl-Build.git 5) Perl-Critic git git@github.com:genehack/Perl-Critic.git 6) STAMPS git git@github.com:genehack/STAMPS.git 7) advanced-moose-class git ssh://git@git.iinteractive.com/train/advanced-moose-class.git 8) app-gitgitr git git@github.com:genehack/app-gitgitr.git 9) app-gitgot git git@github.com:genehack/app-gitgot.git that'll get you this sort of listing.
67. got ls -q if you don't want to see the upstream repo info, you can use the '-q' or '--quiet' switch
68. 1) App-Amylase 2) Git-Wrapper 3) HiD 4) Perl-Build 5) Perl-Critic 6) STAMPS 7) advanced-moose-class 8) app-gitgitr 9) app-gitgot and that'll get you this output. note the numbers - those will give you a way to select repos for other commands
69. got ls [repos] easiest way to demo that is with an example. you can restrict the listing
70. got ls 5 this will just list repo #5 for example
71. 5) Perl-Critic also, note that the list is always sorted the same way, so the numbers will be stable (unless you add new repos)
72. got ls 5-8 you can also give a range of repos
73. 5) Perl-Critic 6) STAMPS 7) advanced-moose-class 8) app-gitgitr and that'll give you that range, like you would expect
74. got ls HiD you can also specify repos by name
75. 3) HiD
76. got ls -t git or by using tags. can specify multiple tags with multiple '-t' switches. they combine with 'or' semantics.
77. 2) Git-Wrapper 8) app-gitgitr 9) app-gitgot here are all the repos tagged with 'git' (at least in our example)
78. got ls 5-8 HiD 21 -t git finally, you can combine all of these selection methods together. here we're asking for repos 5 thru 8, the repo named HiD, repo 21, and all repos tagged with git
79. 2) Git-Wrapper 3) HiD 5) Perl-Critic 6) STAMPS 7) advanced-moose-class 8) app-gitgitr 9) app-gitgot 21) etc and this is what we get note that most commands operate on all repos, and any that do, you can use these techniques to restrict the command to a subset.
80. What else you got? That's cool.
81. (no pun intended.)
82. got status you can check the status of your repos. *all* your repos
83. got st or if you're into the whole brevity thing...
84. 1) App-Amylase : OK 2) Git-Wrapper : OK 3) HiD : OK 4) Perl-Build : OK 5) Perl-Critic : OK 6) STAMPS : OK 7) advanced-moose-class : OK 8) app-gitgitr : OK 9) app-gitgot : OK that'll get you output like this. again, note the use of color to give quick visual cues
85. 1) App-Amylase : OK 2) Git-Wrapper : OK 3) HiD : Dirty 4) Perl-Build : OK 5) Perl-Critic : OK 6) STAMPS : OK 7) advanced-moose-class : OK 8) app-gitgitr : OK 9) app-gitgot : OK Dirty got status will let you know if a repo has uncommitted changes. super handy if, for example, working on one machine and are going to move to another one and want to see what hasn't been committed.
86. 1) App-Amylase : OK 2) Git-Wrapper : OK 3) HiD : OK 4) Perl-Build : OK 5) Perl-Critic : OK 6) STAMPS : OK Ahead by 1 7) advanced-moose-class : OK 8) app-gitgitr : OK 9) app-gitgot : OK 1) App-Amylase : OK 2) Git-Wrapper : OK 3) HiD : OK 4) Perl-Build : Dirty 5) Perl-Critic : OK 6) STAMPS : OK 7) advanced-moose-class : OK 8) app-gitgitr : OK 9) app-gitgot : OK Dirty 1) App-Amylase : OK 2) Git-Wrapper : OK 3) HiD : OK 4) Perl-Build : OK 5) Perl-Critic : OK 6) STAMPS : OK Ahead by 1 7) advanced-moose-class : OK 8) app-gitgitr : OK 9) app-gitgot : OK Ahead by 1 it'll also tell you if you have local commits that haven't been pushed to the remote yet
87. got st -q finally, you can use the '-q' switch to hide the "uninteresting" stuff
88. got st -q 3) HiD : Dirty 6) STAMPS : OK Ahead by 1 Dirty Ahead by 1 which in this case is all the repos that don't have changes and are up to date
89. got update you can also run 'git pull' across all your repos
90. got up which abbreviates to 'up' and yeah, i should have called it pull but i'm a dummy and we're stuck with it now.
91. 1) App-Amylase : Up to date 2) Git-Wrapper : Up to date 3) HiD : Up to date 4) Perl-Build : Updated Updating 7f25f89..72587c8 Fast-forward lib/Perl/Build.pm | 14 +++++++++++++- script/perl-build | 14 +++++++++++++- 2 files changed, 26 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) 5) Perl-Critic : Up to date Updated it'll do pretty much what you expect (and it supports '-q' too)
92. got update_status finally, there's a command that combines both those, because it's something i do pretty frequent -- update everything, then look at the status of everything
93. got upst surprise - you can abbreviate that one too
94. got upst -q and it also supports the '--quiet' option to only show you the interesting stuff
95. How much would you pay? so, how much would you pay?
96. Wait, don't answer yet
97. got fetch if you're not a fan of the way 'git pull' works you can also run 'git fetch' via got.
98. got push you can even do a push across all your repos at once. (personally, this strikes me as insane but somebody sent in a patch, so...)
99. got gc you can garbage collect all your repos
100. got this at some point, somebody sent in a patch to add 'got this' -- which tells you if the current directory is under got control
101. got that <DIRECTORY> this provoked somebody else to send in a 'got that' command, which does the same thing, but takes a path to check
102. got chdir finally, there are a number of commands that help you jump to the directory of a project. got chdir
103. got cd also spelled 'got cd', will change your current working directory to the given repo (note that this is one of the few got commands that requires a single repo)
104. got tmux we also have tmux integration -- 'got tmux' will open a new tmux window with the working directory in your repo. this _can_ be done with multiple repos. better, the tux window is persistent; as long as it's open 'got tmux' will just select the already open window, not open a new one
105. got tmux -s you can also spawn whole new tmux sessions if you prefer those to windows -- and again, those will be re-used as long as they're around
106. How much would you pay now ?
107. Good news! It's free! nothing!
108. Works on any perl from the last 5 years
109. cpan App::GitGot installation is simple
110. cpanm App::GitGot can be even simpler
111. BLATANT PUG If you're not sure what 'cpanm' is, come to my Unfrozen Paleolithic Perl Programmer talk tomorrow at 4pm! blatant plug
112. Find me at OpenWest and I'll help you install! or you can find me on the hallway track and i'll help you get it installed on your machine
113. Easy to extend
114. package App::GitGot::Command::chdir; # ABSTRACT: open a subshell in a selected project use 5.014; use App::GitGot -command; use Moo; extends 'App::GitGot::Command'; use namespace::autoclean; sub command_names { qw/ chdir cd / } sub _execute { my( $self, $opt, $args ) = @_; unless ( $self->active_repos and $self->active_repos == 1 ) { say STDERR 'ERROR: You need to select a single repo'; exit(1); } my( $repo ) = $self->active_repos; chdir $repo->path or say STDERR "ERROR: Failed to chdir to repo ($!)" and exit(1); exec $ENV{SHELL}; } 1;
115. package App::GitGot::Command::chdir; # ABSTRACT: open a subshell in a selected project use Moo; extends 'App::GitGot::Command';
116. sub command_names { qw/ chdir cd / }
117. sub _execute { my( $self, $opt, $args ) = @_; unless ( $self->active_repos and $self->active_repos == 1 ) { say STDERR 'ERROR: You need to select a single repo'; exit(1); } my( $repo ) = $self->active_repos; chdir $repo->path or say STDERR "ERROR: Failed to chdir to repo ($!)" and exit(1); exec $ENV{SHELL}; }
118. package App::GitGot::Command::chdir; # ABSTRACT: open a subshell in a selected project use 5.014; use App::GitGot -command; use Moo; extends 'App::GitGot::Command'; use namespace::autoclean; sub command_names { qw/ chdir cd / } sub _execute { my( $self, $opt, $args ) = @_; unless ( $self->active_repos and $self->active_repos == 1 ) { say STDERR 'ERROR: You need to select a single repo'; exit(1); } my( $repo ) = $self->active_repos; chdir $repo->path or say STDERR "ERROR: Failed to chdir to repo ($!)" and exit(1); exec $ENV{SHELL}; } 1;
119. Suggestions welcome! areas for improvement: support for other VCSen better config management tools any other crazy workflow improvement you can think of!
120. Thanks OpenWest organizers Ingy döt Net Yanick Champoux Michael Greb Rolando Pereira Chris Prather photo credits: all photos by speaker except Ingy döt Net photo - https://www.flickr.com/photos/bulknews/389986053/ and pug - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Sad-pug.jpg and automate yo'self - somewhere on the net
122. Questions? https://joind.in/event/openwest-2016/automate-yoself as i said, i'm here all week and i *love* to talk to people about this productivity type stuff, so grab me on the hallway track. i'm friendly.