DEV Community: Makar

How to your get back to programming after a great weekend?

Makar — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:47:00 +0000

It was a damn Monday again! The weekend is just 2 days, but sometimes it feels like it's been ages since your last commit on the work project -- especially after a great weekend.

Getting back on track seems even harder if the previous week ended with knocking out a nice feature followed by an immediate inflow of endorphin and a boost of self-confidence.

I myself try to get back on track by just starting from somewhere, slowly coding the first thing that comes to mind until I accelerate. But that doesn't always work, and the Monday code too often turns out to be a complete BS.

Does anyone else feel the same? What do you do about it?

Photo credit

Your reading list has just got better

Makar — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 14:37:26 +0000

My PR has just got merged! Now you can knock out each tag in your reading list one at a time -- my change persists the tag you have selected there, so as when you navigate back from an article you are on the same filtered list.

P.S. Contributing to opensource feels 🥳🎉🎇❗

3 features to make Dev.to perfect!

Makar — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 22:39:37 +0000

Dev.to is awesome indeed, it's just a few features short from perfection. Here's the 3 features I wish it had:

1. Ability to archive posts straight from the share menu

I tend to archive the best post I come by, but in order to do so I must bookmark them first, then go to my reading list and only there I can find the Archive button. I wish it was a one-click experience instead

2. Hide or grey out the posts I have seen/opened already

I wish I doomscrolled Dev.to as often as I do Facebook... but I can't even if I want to. An ability to skip the items you have already seen would be very helpful here, since subsequent attempts to scroll through Dev.to often comes to spending too much energy to identify what you have already read or worse -- decided not to read earlier. I wish the feed would automatically filter out (or at least grey out) the items I have already opened and let me mark items seen myself.

3. Tips

The feed has evolved a lot during this year, but I don't feel like I am fully aware of its nuts and bolts, so I am not making the most out of it. I wish there was a link to some wiki page (or at least some tooltips) right on top of the feed explaining it all.

That's all I have -- not a big ask, I assume. I wonder if you feel the same way or what features would make Dev.to perfect for you instead.

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How to use GitHub trough multiple users on the same PC

Makar — Mon, 29 May 2023 01:29:11 +0000

Referenced repo: https://github.com/tinkermakar/github-identity-101

TL;DR

Create a separate record for each account in the ~/.ssh/config file and set user name and email for each repo individually.

The problem

If you have to use multiple git accounts from the same PC, you may make wrong choices (like I did) and end up creating a huge mess with commits by wrong authors in wrong repos all over the place. That's due to the absence of any check on Git's side -- you can claim any identity when pushing commits.

I have been using 2 user accounts for over a year now -- one for work and one for personal projects. During this time I have tried different approaches until I landed on something straightforward, yet safe from human errors.

How to manage git identities

Your number one enemy here is git's global config settings (git config --global user.name ...). If you are used to set one global git name/email combo, then it's time to unset and forget about that option. Instead, you now need to set your git identity separately in each repo you have cloned by using the same command, but without --global.

git config user.name John Smith
git config user.email 123123+johnsmith@users.noreply.github.com

If that sounds too complicated, feel free to use this script to automate the process (more on that in the YouTube video above).

How to clone repositories

Before you can even commit anything, you need to clone repos at first place. The best method here is to utilize the SSH config file (~/.ssh/config). If this is the first time you hear the term SSH, you'd better do some reading first, e.g. starting from here.

In the video above I demo on the example of 2 GitHub users: tinkermakar and tinkermakar-alt. I have private SSH keys for both in my .ssh directory, like so:

├── tinkermakar
│   ├── id_rsa
└── tinkermakar-alt
    ├── id_rsa

To make use of both at the same time, I need to add a config file with the following content

Host github.com
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/tinkermakar/id_rsa
  UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/tinkermakar/known_hosts
  PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa

Host alt
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/tinkermakar-alt/id_rsa
  UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/tinkermakar-alt/known_hosts
  PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa

Now let's break down the above:

HostNae, User parameters are mandatory and their value is the same for all GitHub users.
IdentityFile parameter is mandatory for our setup and it points at the corresponding private key.
The UserKnownHostsFile is not mandatory -- it's a matter of preference on whether you want your known_hosts strings separate (as in the example) or all in one place.
PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes property has recently become required for some systems, so keeping it there is probably a good idea.

you can test both ssh configurations by running:

ssh git@github.com
ssh alt

Running the two above will result in the generation of known_hosts files, and the final structure of your .ssh directory will look similar to this:

├── config
├── tinkermakar
│   ├── id_rsa
│   ├── id_rsa.pub
│   └── known_hosts
└── tinkermakar-alt
    ├── id_rsa
    ├── id_rsa.pub
    └── known_hosts

Now you can git clone repos on behalf of both git users, but there is one caveat -- you may need to alter the URI of cloned repository based on the value of your SSH Host (the string right next to Host, which is the first line for each identity in the ~/.ssh/config file). In the example above, hosts are equal to github.com and alt. Since Host and HostName match for the former, it can clone with no need for alterations:

git clone git@github.com:tinkermakar/github-identity-101.git

However, the second user cannot do the same -- git clones on the latter's behalf must replace git@github.com with the value of Host, which is alt in our case.

git clone alt:tinkermakar/github-identity-101.git

Recap

So if you need to use multiple GitHub accounts from the same PC, then I strongly advise you to take the following steps:

Generate and store 2 separate pairs of RSA keys
Draft a config file to point at each separately
When cloning repos, alter the beginning of SSH strings with the value of Host for the user you want to use
Set your git name and email separately for each repo (feel free to use this script to streamline the process).

to Snap or not to Snap...

Makar — Sun, 12 Feb 2023 19:18:09 +0000

There's lots of negative towards Canonical's Snap store in Linux communities in favor of Flatpak, but when you dive deeper you figure Snap is not so bad -- it has at least two advantages:

It has more apps overall
It has stricter security rules

The second one is a dealbreaker for me, so I initially decided to stick to it. However, Snap's security rules have turned out to be a double-edged sword -- apps seemingly malfunction due to those strict rules. Particularly, I myself have stepped on broken functionality while using keepassxc, postman, simple-scan and discord. In all cases replacing snap apps with Debian versions fixed the issues for me. Perhaps it's time for me to give a try to Flatpak as well.

The Magic of a Todo List

Makar — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 00:36:54 +0000

TLDR
Planning takes extra time, but it also helps you get the job done faster overall.

It seems to be true in any industry, not just Tech. I myself have learned it long before switching to software development -- it was a part of my academic writing course as a political science student. These were my takeaways from it:

A study has been conducted among students and the resulting data backed the theory that planned work is faster overall.
The process of how to actually do the planning academic writing looks pretty much to something we all do -- identify the scope and break them down to smaller tasks.

But to me planning also has a magical 🧙‍♂️ effect -- it makes things doable despite seeming too hard or tedious in the beginning. Time and again have I caught myself on the thought that I would never get done with learning some framework or completing a personal project if I hadn't added it to my todo list. It's just magic, I cant explain how it works exactly, but it does for me.

So just go ahead and try it for yourself -- pick a todo list software, break down a goal you have into a checklist and see if that works for you as well.

P.S. I myself keep my tasks and projects in Google Keep, while all learning objectives are tracked in Zealoq.

How to automate checking for Ubuntu 22.4 release

Makar — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 12:55:01 +0000

So, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is due today, but the actual time of release is uncertain. If you are refreshing their site like me to be the first to download it, don't -- automate it instead. Here's my little bash script to alert me automatically as soon as 22 rolls out:

{
  function func_name () {
    FOUND=`curl -s https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop | grep 'Ubuntu 22'`
    echo $FOUND;
    if [ ! -z "$FOUND" ]; then
      spd-say "Ubuntu 22 is out"
    fi
  }

  export -f func_name

  watch -n 5 -x bash -c func_name
}

Ubuntu 22 rocks!

Makar — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 22:45:58 +0000

Trying out Ubuntu 22.04 Beta... and it rocks!

Nvidia driver finally supports dual graphics cards usage. Previously, I had to use only my Nvidia driver, which was reducing my battery time drastically. That got fixed with Nvidia's latest 510 driver. However, the driver works only in Xorg mode (not Wayland).
The microphone on my earbuds work properly now. Previously, I could hear the audio, but the mic would not work.
Ubuntu 22 ships with the brand new Gnome 42 desktop, and it's just flawless. On top of all the features, dark cyan desktop theme made my day 🤫. More on Gnome 42 here:

Generally, it's a great time to switch to Linux now. Many PCs won't be able to run Windows 11 now, so why won't you give a try to Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro or any other distro of your choice.

Looking forward to the LTE release on April 21 🤞

Linux Drivers, a New Hope

Makar — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 08:08:12 +0000

10 years ago (before learning programming) I switched to Linux, but drivers issues made me revert back to Windows. The problem was with my NVIDIA card.

2 years ago I tried Ubuntu 20 again and faced NVIDIA driver issues yet again. would make my system crush upon recovering from sleep. Additionally, my earbuds would not connect to the PC properly. So I started using Ubuntu in a VirtualBox.

Last year I did it for the third time and solved the NVIDIA issue (with this script) after hours of digging the internet. My PC would still not connect to my earbuds properly, but I could at least start using a natively installed Ubuntu.

Today I tried out Ubuntu 21 from USB and what a surprise -- both NVIDIA and earbuds drivers work out of box 🎉 🎉 🎉

Looking forward to upgrading to Ubuntu 22 this April!