Rob Allen's DevNotes – Developing software in the Real World

A few Git tips

I don't do that much that's clever with git, but I've found the following helpful. Automatically prune When you do a git fetch or git pull, you can ask it to remove remote tracking branches for a branch that has been removed on the remote by using the –prune flag. This can be automated globally with:

git config --global fetch.prune true

1	git config --global fetch.prune true

and if you only want it for a specific repository, you can use:

git config remote.origin.prune true

1	git config remote.origin.prune true

One line log I… continue reading.

Posted on 30 March 2021 in Development View all 3 comments

OpenConnect on Mac

One of my clients has recently moved to AnyConnect VPN and I've been having routing problems with the official Mac client. As my colleagues on Linux on the project have not had these issues, I investigated and installed the OpenConnect client. These are my notes after scouring the Internet to set it up how I want it. Installation I used Homebrew:

$ brew install openconnect

1	$ brew install openconnect

OpenConnect is a CLI tool. If you want a GUI in your menu bar,… continue reading.

Posted on 23 March 2021 in Computing, Software Leave a comment

Dependency injection in Serverless PHP with Bref

When writing PHP for AWS Lambda, Bref is the way to do it. One thing I like about Bref is that you can use PSR-15 Request Handlers to respond to API Gateway HTTP events as documented in the API Gateway HTTP events section of the Bref docs. The request handler is the same as used in PSR-7 micro-frameworks like Slim or Mezzio and can be thought of as a controller action. As such, it's really… continue reading.

Posted on 9 March 2021 in AWS Lambda, PHP Leave a comment

MailTrackerBlocker

One thing that has annoyed me about receiving email is so-called tracker pixels. These usually 1x1px transparent images that are remotely loaded into HTML email enable the sender to track information about be. A good resource about them is No To Spy Pixels. As such I've tended to run my email clients with remote resource loading disabled, which isn't the best experience as a surprising number of legitimate email even display the call-to-action link as… continue reading.

Posted on 3 March 2021 in Around the web, Software One comment so far

Keyboard control of Big Sur notification alerts

With the release of Big Sur, my scripts for keyboard control of macOS notification alerts stopped working. With a bit of experimentation and help from Google, I have written new ones. Closing an alert To close a notification alert on Big Sur, conceptually we want to press the X button that appears when you hover over it. The AppleScript to do this is:

activate application "NotificationCenter"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "NotificationCenter"
        set theWindow to group 1 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of window "Notification Center"
        # click theWindow
        set theActions to actions of theWindow
        repeat with theAction in theActions
            if description of theAction is "Close" then
                tell theWindow
                    perform theAction
                end tell
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell

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activate application "NotificationCenter"

tell application "System Events"

tell process "NotificationCenter"

set theWindow to group 1 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of window "Notification Center"

# click theWindow

set theActions to actions of theWindow

repeat with theAction in theActions

if description of theAction is "Close" then

tell theWindow

perform theAction

end tell

exit repeat

end if

end repeat

end tell

This is much more complicated than just clicking button 1 of… continue reading.

Posted on 27 February 2021 in AppleScript, Computing Leave a comment

Free ticket to The Online PHP Conference!

I'm very happy to be speaking at The Online PHP Conference this year. As you can guess from the title, this is an online event so is easily accessible right from your desk. thePHP.cc have very kindly made available a couple of tickets to me, so you could attend for free.

Posted on 6 January 2021 in Conferences, PHP

2020 in Pictures

As we reach the end of 2020, I continue my tradition of looking back at my year through the photos that I took as I have done every year since 2009. I have been doing a Project 365 for a good few years which acts as a diary too, so I have the opportunity to appreciate what happened this year in my life. This has been quite a year with the pandemic hitting the UK… continue reading.

Posted on 31 December 2020 in Me, Year in Pictures One comment so far

Add Apple Watch authentication to sudo

Since 1Password added Apple Watch unlock I've wondered if there are other situations when I need to enter my password where it instead require a click of my Watch instead. I recently came across an article about how to make sudo work with Touch ID, which is nice, but my iMac Pro doesn't have Touch ID. I went searching though and found pam-watchid! This is a PAM module for using the Watch – exactly what… continue reading.

Posted on 9 December 2020 in Computing View all 6 comments

Using jenv to select Java version on macOS

When working on OpenWhisk, I discovered that it needed a different Java to the one I had installed. Looking around the Internet, I discovered jenv which shouldn't have surprised me as I use pyenv and I'm aware of rbenv too. As I use Homebrew, these are the commands I used. Firstly install jenv, the latest Java (15 at this time) and any other versions you need. Java 8 and 12 in this example: $ brew… continue reading.

Posted on 2 December 2020 in Java Leave a comment

Installing PHP extensions without pecl in PHP 8 Docker images

UPDATE: Since this was published, PR 1087 has been raised and merged with restores pecl to the Docker PHP 8 images. I discovered recently that pecl is no longer shipped in the PHP Docker images for PHP 8. This appears to be related to the deprecation of –with-pear in PHP core as noted in issue 1029. Consider this Dockerfile: FROM php:8.0.0RC5-cli-buster RUN pecl install mongodb && docker-php-ext-enable mongodb If you build, you'll discover the pecl… continue reading.

Posted on 24 November 2020 in PHP View all 3 comments