No Huddle Offense

"Individual commitment to a group effort-that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."

My Software Development Environment for Python

February 21st, 2011 • Comments Off on My Software Development Environment for Python

Python is my favorite programming language for multiple reasons. Most important though is that it has a strong community, a Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) and allows rapid development of high quality software. I love automation of processes wherever possible because it saves time. Here is a list of tools, methodologies, stuff I use to ensure code quality:

Tools I sometimes use during the development of code:

Thinks I would like to have replacements for:

Overall I’m pretty happy with this setup and find it good for fast coding. I usually write unittests (With test for success, failure and sanity for every routine) first before starting coding. I don’t find it a time waste but actually I’m pretty sure that the overall setup allows me to code and refactor faster.

Maybe others or you (?) also want to writeup their setups and we can start a site like The Setup for Software Development? Please Retweet and share the link!

Update: Also have a look at this Python and Dtrace blog post.

OCCI and More

November 15th, 2010 • Comments Off on OCCI and More

Busy times – but this post nicely wraps up what is going on regarding OCCI!

Hudson and Python

September 23rd, 2010 • 3 Comments

Regarding Continuous Integration (CI) systems I probably still like Hudson! Great tool and runs perfectly well. Just get the latest jar file and run it with java – jar hudson.jar. Now to get started you will need to install some plugins:

You can install those plugins in he management interface of hudson. When configuring the job in hudson you simple add a new “Build a free-style software project” job. Add SCM information – and than add some build steps. I had to use two:

python setup.py clean --all
python setup.py build
coverage erase
nosetests --with-coverage --cover-package=<your packages> --with-xunit
coverage xml

And a second one:

#!/bin/bash
pylint -f parseable <your packages> > pylint.txt
echo "pylint complete"

Both are external scripts. Now in the post-build section activate the JUnit test reporting and tell it to use the **/nosetests.xml file. Also activate the Cobertura Coverage report and tell it to use **/coverage.xml. Finally activate the Report Violations – and add pylint.txt in the right row.

Configure the rest of the stuff just as you like and hit the Build button. Thanks to XML the reporting tools written for java can parser the output generated for your Python project. Now you have nice reports from a Python project in Hudson!

A more detailed and great article about this topic can be found here.

Call graphs for python

September 9th, 2010 • 1 Comment

I’m a big fan of reporting be it reports form automated builds, coverages, API documents etc. To evaluate the python code I’m currently working on I needed Call Graph for Python. After some searching and testing I found this package to be most convenient: http://pycallgraph.slowchop.com/

P.S. If you are running Ubuntu (or similar) a sudo apt-get install python-pycallgraph will install the package. To create the graph simple call: pycallgraph –include=<whatever you need> <your app.py>

A future for the world?

September 6th, 2010 • 1 Comment

Welt mit Zukunft Cover

Franz Josef Radermacher’s book about the current world situation with financial crises, natural disasters and exceeding resources not only describes the current and upcoming problems but also provides solutions towards what he calls an “eco-social market economy”. Beside the fact that the book is well written and quite short compared to the message it delivers, a good overview of what goes wrong and a possible way of solving it is presented. Only critical point would be that it doesn’t describe how we can get there. Still and definitely a book which you should read.

It describes that current established system can not solve the issue – needed is system which controls the free markets and ensure the social liability of our communities. Taxes on resources or a Supervisory Associations for financial markets which approve products before they can be sold are just one step in the right direction.