Archive for October, 2009

Running Subversion on your Windows Home Server

October 22nd, 2009

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First off i know there should be no reason for me to do this as there are hosting options galore, but sometimes its just easier having the code running in your LAN, so with that in mind i remembered reading that Scott Hanselman wrote about his experience setting up VisualSvn on WHS. 

So i decided to follow his work and rather than reinvent the wheel, however as i went through the process i found that a couple of things needed changing to make this whole processes much easier.

  1. imageSetup a new share on your home server using the Windows Home Server Console. The recommended approach is to Uncheck the Enable Folder Duplication Check Box, though i have yet to experience any of the locking issues described here
  2. Log on to your Windows Home Server using Remote Desktop
  3. Give the Network Service access to the share as well as permissions on the folder to Read/Write/Modify files as required. For a detailed walkthrough on what and how to modify the permissions are available in the VisualSvn Knowledge base article for Storing Repositories on a Network Share.

    NOTE: it is recommended that you create a special user that has Run As Service Account as well as the permissions to the folder and not use the Network Service.

  4. Go to VisualSVN Download and begin installation
  5. When prompted by the installation for a location for the share provide it with the share location that you have just setup.
  6. Set choose port 8443 for your port and complete the installation. If the installer gives you any warnings its likely that you have not given the Network Service its required permissions.
  7. Setup up port forwarding on your router. and you should then be able to access the Visualsvn from your Home Server url either http://server:8443/ if your inside your network or http://my-dynamic-dns.homeserver.com:8443/

The interesting thing about this is that while this is one of about 6 different ways i could count to do this installation while i found this the most straight forward for me YMMV.

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Would you hire a half interested developer?

October 9th, 2009

Jeremy Miller tweeted this today which got me thinking. Jeremy’s comment was that being part of a small team mean that it mattered more. However i think that regardless of the team size or whether your a developer, a salesman, a business owner, you want an employee that will be committed to moving the business forward. A half interested developer will be bad for the entire team regardless of the size. For that matter any person not moving in the same direction of that team is not worth the hire, while just like Jeremy said it might be harsh but its just my opinion.   half interested

Regardless of what the job is you want to find the most motivated individual. Sales people for example are motivated by great commission schemes. Interested Developers are generally motivated by good jobs and a great environment. Finding either a good job or a motivated developer is the hard bit. Simon Segal posted a while back about “Semi Invested Developers” and some ways to better understand the individual during the hiring process. If a developer was to have read his post in preparation for an interview and used some canned answers for those questions and managed to get hired he still shows more interest that one who has not bothered to take that step.

On a personal note I have reduced the number of hours I spent in front a computer since having my daughter (a time and energy vampire), however I have not lost my passion or motivation to better myself, and be a more interested developer. I find my self picking and choosing what tasks/technologies I will devote my attention to much more wisely, a skill that is very hard to acquire.

Just out of curiosity i created this poll to find out what people thought about hiring a half interested person /developer.

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Posted in Career