Moving to Mac: SVN, Redux

For all of you following this, keep in mind that I’m considering the baseline standard to be TortoiseSVN. I like how it works, so everything else is being compared to a high standard.

So, it turns out that scplugin doesn’t work well. After using it once, it promptly forgot my login information, with no obvious way to reset it.

I’ve been using svnX for a few days now, and I really don’t like it. It tries to dumb SVN down for you, which turns out to be more confusing than anything.

Getting desperate, I promptly downloaded RapidSVN, SVN Finder Scripts, and Syncro SVN.

I promptly un-installed Syncro SVN when I realized it wasn’t free, since I still had free alternatives out there to evaluate.

The SVN Finder scripts worked, though I like visual feedback while the actions are running, rather than just a confirmation box when it’s all done. That was, however, my only complaint. You just select whatever you want to run SVN commands on, and then select the command from the AppleScript menu. Watch the webcast on the site for more information.

RapidSVN seems to be the winner for me. I like it’s built-in browser, and the ability to selectively check-in files. After I wired it up to DiffMerge via the instructions on the RapidSVN site, everything started running smoothly. I’ve used it for about a a day now, and am not suffering from the instant dislike I had with svnX.

I’ll let you know if I end up switching again.

Moving to Mac: MySQL

Ok, first off… MySQL folks, please get that next release out as soon as possible. It sucks that MySQL won’t start automatically. Now that that’s out the way…

The MySQL GUI tools are, well, just like their Windows counterparts. They work, more or less, and get you by. On the PC, I used SQLYog. It’s a great tool that does great things. For the Mac, I found Navicat. It seems to do everything I needed it to, which includes basic structure edits, import, export and moving of data/structure across hosts. It also has niceties of some more advanced programs, including scheduled backups, GUI builders, and so on.

I think I’ve found a winner, and it turns out that for those of you stuck with Windows, you can get a version for that OS too.

Moving to Mac: FTP

On my PC, I used to use LeechFTP, and more recently moved over to FileZilla. The main reason I used these programs over WS-FTP was because so many times when I was pushing files, I was pushing lots and lots of tiny files. These programs were multi-threaded, so they would upload a dozen files at the same time, cutting down the upload time by leaps and bounds, since it took longer to open & close connections than it did to actually transfer the file in most cases.

I tried FileZilla on the Mac, but I can say it’s just a port from the Windows version, and a poor one at that. It looks and feels clunky, and still has all the issues the Windows version has.

I then moved over to Transmit. It still has the same key feature I needed (multithreaded uploads/downloads), plus a whole lot more, including interesting features like Amazon S3 support, sync, Mac OS integration (Dock, Automater, etc), tabs and server to server transfers. Give it a try, you won’t be sorry.

Moving to Mac: SVN

I loved TortoiseSVN. I miss TortoiseSVN. I’ve found a great tool for the Mac that does a very poor impression of TortoiseSVN, but is still useable. scplugin is a Finder contextual menu item that exposes most SVN commands. It’s worked like a charm, so far.

Wanting to also see some GUI stuff, I downloaded svnX, which is a great tool, also. The combination of the two I think will suit me just fine.

Yes, I have subclipse installed, but just like on Windows, I don’t like using it. The only reason it gets installed is so .svn directories don’t get copied over as assets when I compile my Flex projects 🙂

Moving to Mac: ColdFusion 8.01

Since my original Moving to Mac post, Adobe was kind enough to throw me into the ColdFusion 8.01 pre-release program. A quick download later, and I got to run the installer. Not only was the install process about 10x faster than my last CF8 install on Windows, but the process *after* the install, the loading screen you get the first time you try to go into the cfadmin, was only up for about 5 seconds before it was done. I remember on my Windows 2003 quad-core Xeon server it took what seemed like 5 minutes.

The even better news: The installer just *works*. It detected my default OS X Apache install, got the connector all wired up properly, and it’s lightning fast. Great news for everyone else thinking about switching to a Mac / Leopard!