tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89419832012-02-16T20:39:26.246+01:00Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-30078112799956742612011-11-13T19:00:00.001+01:002011-11-22T08:09:38.040+01:00

Recently I've performed the upgrade of Ruby on Rails which we use in Checkvist project from 2.3 to 3.1. There were tons of issues I've had to overcome, some of them I share here, may be they could save someone's time.  First, upgrade or not upgrade? This is a tough question. Upgrading of a non-trivial project may take several days, and at the end you may get a system which performs worse than

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-16104393504760636522011-06-13T16:19:00.005+02:002011-06-24T14:46:31.759+02:00

Lately, I've been trying to fix a memory leak in TeamCity. After a long investigation, I found out that DOM elements on the page remains in memory even after a simple construct like: element.on("click", Prototype.emptyFunction).stop(); This code adds a fake event listener on a element and immediately removes it (all using Prototype javascript library). I.e., after executing the code and

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-20328079648159628002011-02-13T11:30:00.005+01:002011-02-13T12:01:20.621+01:00

Checkvist service was unavailable since Feb, 13 04:13 UTC till 07:40 UTC.The total downtime was 3 hours 27 minutes. Users couldn't see/modify their information, but no data corruption occurred.We are sorry to everyone who was unable to access their data during that time. We've already taken some measures to prevent such problems in the future, see more details below.What went wrongOn Saturday,

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-15169373058757299672011-01-28T20:36:00.005+01:002011-01-28T20:49:41.177+01:00

Again, about fighting with Javascript errors.I've just found out, that Opera browser in some situations provides the most detailed information about javascript errors. At least Opera 11 is rather good.Compare the error reporting in various browsers (all on Mac):FireFox 3.6.13+FireBug 1.6.1 - didn't report the problem, neither in FireBug console, nor in FireFox javascript errors window.Chrome 8.0

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-79682407789346368852010-11-05T09:31:00.009+01:002010-11-05T16:31:50.083+01:00

This is a short story I want to put down for those who face the same problem.In Checkvist project, there is some not very trivial AJAX code. We use Prototype javascript library for AJAX handling. Prototype allows to specify error dispatcher for AJAX javascript errors, and as a fallback solution, I set window.alert() to report errors.Several days ago I got a bug report related to list deletion

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-29439235125045623292010-05-16T15:47:00.000+02:002010-05-16T11:14:01.273+02:00

One of the great approaches to developing usable software is to actually use the product you're working on. It is often called "eating your own dog food". The benefits are obvious - you have clear source of the requirements and priorities - because you're your own customer. A lot of good books for entrepreneurs like "The Art of the Start" or "Rework" promote this approach.But there is a

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-18689297541735658902010-04-21T20:18:00.002+02:002010-04-21T20:21:49.454+02:00

Hello,I've decided to sum up the most interesting (from my personal point of view) new stuff in TeamCity 5.1 release. I started writing this post in text, but decided that a form of outline is more suitable for that. So here is the outline I've prepared using Checkvist:So please, grab it and use! TeamCity Professional Edition is free. TeamCity Enterprise for OS projects is also free.And there is

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-51769321982723564312010-03-12T22:08:00.003+01:002010-03-12T22:33:42.003+01:00

The latest released version of scriptaculos (1.8.3) has a really old memory leak. In short, Autocompleter creates a lot of event handlers and never removes them. Given that Checkvist will use tag autocompletion rather intensively, I've decided to fix this problem. My solution is attached to the issue at the lighthouse and also available in my fork of scriptaculos.May be this fix will be helpful

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-29473285805067445262010-03-08T15:35:00.005+01:002010-03-08T17:38:35.010+01:00

I've been spending some time writing tag support in Checkvist, and decided to share a bit of related JavaScript code.The idea is to allow adding tags with smart syntax: when you write "Call Bob regarding new furniture tomorrow #home" Checkvist will create a task "Call Bob regarding new furniture" with due tomorrow and with tag #home.The additional nicety could be the tag completion after the '#'

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-55184804609438143582009-08-22T08:56:00.004+02:002009-08-22T09:07:44.226+02:00

After a long silence, we've finally released Checkvist Pro plan. The detailed post about this is available.With this release, I've also upgraded Rails to the version 2.3.3 and migrated Mysql database from MyISAM to InnoDB engine (because we've had problems with data consistency when transactions were interrupted).So far so good, performance haven't become worse. And I'm pretty satisfied with

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-75228303233972091492009-04-12T19:45:00.004+02:002009-04-12T20:01:01.701+02:00

I decided to migrate Checkvist to new and fresh Rails 2.3 (or 2.3.2, to be more specific).I cannot say I really need features from 2.3, but I think it worth using the latest release (especially given that I already had to patch my Rails 2.2.2 installation to remove some bugs from it). As usual, the migration turns to be an adventure: Change all tests which extend Test::Unit::TestCase and use

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-68242481791929724002009-03-18T10:29:00.003+01:002009-03-18T10:47:58.641+01:00

Monit is a great tool to monitor various UNIX-like services and to take appropriate actions when they fail. And I've been using it with a great success to monitor Checkvist server. But, as with any tool, there are some issues. I've spent some noticeable time trying to figure out why monit's command line actions do not work. All of the start, stop, restart actions did nothing. Monit's log didn't

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-56941168162198410282009-03-13T18:50:00.004+01:002009-03-18T12:24:14.686+01:00

Recently I've created a twitter account with basic purpose to provide some support for JetBrains TeamCity and Checkvist.Many JetBrainers actively twit and provide product support as well.Today, you may find twitter account for most JetBrains products: IntelliJ IDEA Resharper RubyMine TeamCity dotTraceThese accounts a pretty new, but in the long run you'll find a lot of interesting stuff in these

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-69538702753308252072009-01-09T21:15:00.003+01:002009-01-09T22:17:43.794+01:00

I've spent several hours trying to setup and run windows mobile emulator (we're working on mobile UI for Checkvist), and here is the essence of my experience:Don't try to run this emulator under Parallels / Mac OS if you need to get a working network under the emulator. This is due to the fact that emulator uses Virtual PC functionality for setting up network, and it is not compatible with

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-8246048744509882412009-01-09T20:43:00.004+01:002009-01-09T21:14:56.727+01:00

Currently, I'm using nginx web server for the Checkvist project. And have the following definition for the access log format (from The Rails Way book): log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request ' '"$status" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';Today I decided to create a quick and dirty

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-3213535021012193152008-11-30T20:58:00.007+01:002008-12-03T19:10:19.967+01:00

I'm working on two projects: TeamCity - a rather popular continuous integration and build management server, and Checkvist - a simple and fast online outliner with task sharing and keyboard navigation.I use Checkvist to plan my work on TeamCity, and recently I got a chance to use TeamCity to assist Checkvist development.TeamCity recently reached its next milestone - 4.0 release. One of the

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-37400749305267755562008-08-03T19:33:00.005+02:002008-08-05T20:07:51.518+02:00

We've finally decided to open public registration for our pet project. This is an online task management service, similar to those already available on the Web (like RTM or todoist). What's the difference? We're trying to make a tool which allows Work fast. From the very beginning, we strive to provide usable keyboard navigation around checklists. Work together. You can share a checklist, add

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-25932363978916856212008-04-28T11:42:00.000+02:002008-04-28T12:48:01.018+02:00

TeamCity team has decided that it might be a good idea to have an own "unofficial" developer blog. It's a kind of experiment, because most developer's time is spent on, well, developing. But sometimes it is enticing to share some ideas, findings, tell about a feature which will be available in the next EAP build. And this stuff may be too "unofficial" and personal to go to the main product

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-75462634335862481422008-04-22T21:29:00.003+02:002008-04-23T09:58:54.478+02:00

If you create a link with javascript handler, and href attribute doesn't matter for you, do not use # as the value of the attribute. This results in page scrolling to the top of the page in MSIE. Instead, use value like javascript:// - this is safe and most browsers will ignore it. And this is what you want when you have an onclick handler, isn't it?Update: I was pointed out, that if javascript

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-87644551938736796642008-02-24T12:47:00.011+01:002008-02-24T20:11:56.395+01:00

A short prelude.I'm developing a small checklist application, to study ruby/rails and to play with various Web 2.0 UI patterns. And to get a tool which will help me to organize all my todos.On the checklist screen I have, guess what - list of tasks, the checklist is comprised of. On some actions (like completing a task) the tasks are updated incrementally (with plain Javascript), on some actions

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-42289969560346557922008-01-12T16:38:00.000+01:002008-01-12T18:47:12.703+01:00

This feature is particularly useful, if you have lengthy builds.With most continuous integration tools, one have to wait until build is finished to get notified about test failure. TeamCity can send notification right after test failure, before build completion.Scenario Developer commits a change Build is started A test failsNotification "Build is failing" is sent to the developer and to other

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-19840631777470832892007-12-06T11:11:00.000+01:002007-12-07T00:36:20.767+01:00

I am one of the TeamCity developers so you can surely consider my opinion to be biased. But I am speaking here of a typical problems that any of you can experience and will try not to brag about my product too much ;-)I'm a software developer. And though TeamCity is not an individual tool like IntelliJ IDEA, I'd like to present TeamCity features which ease my life as a software

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-40799834954280593122007-10-04T10:28:00.000+02:002007-10-04T10:42:19.270+02:00

This is just a small note for someone looking into a similar problem. I was implementing keyboard navigation with explicit scrolling using scrollTo method, and found out that in IE I cannot get correct values for element position on the page. I use Prototype and it's Position.cumulativeOffset method (which, in turn, uses offetTop/offsetParent properties of the element). Position calculation

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-1327098898137639222007-09-09T12:47:00.000+02:002007-09-10T12:55:55.862+02:00

I’ve found that parameters passed to rake tasks in the form “name=value” are converted into the environment variables. This magic is done by rake itself when parsing command-line parameters. It has an interesting consequence – you can run some db-oriented rake tasks for any of your ruby on rails environments. For instance, to migrate your production database to the latest version you can run:rake

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8941983.post-16337740033829650862007-03-01T14:15:00.000+01:002007-03-01T15:23:34.659+01:00

I'm really excited how TeamCity EAP program works. Using our discussion forum, people report bug, problems, enhancements, features, ask for and got real help. We're trying hard to answer all questions and requests, and though it takes noticeable time, it's worth doing it.One small example.Some time ago we got a message from Jacques Morel regarding support for third-party reporting tools in

Kir Maximovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11739397709323043771noreply@blogger.com0