private repos

I think Hall & Oates had a song called Private Dancer.  Nope, just googled it and it's Tina Turner.  Anyway...

Ok, I know github.com is all the rage, but dammit, I'm not ready to share all my hard work with the world.  So I've decided to go private.  This post sums up my sentiments:

http://somatose.com/2011/10/from-github-to-bitbucket-in-60-seconds.html

So we live in a world where people won't pay $7/month if there is a free alternative.  What can I say.  It's a slippery slope, because as soon as I go with a private github repo, then travis ci wants to charge to integrate with a private github repo.  Now it's almost $20 a month!  That's like 4 beers at Great Basin Brewery!

I'm embarking on these projects mostly because I get off on developing, and especially on learning new stuff.  But I also like to control my assets.  I know that listing a public github repo on a resume makes it really easy for a potential employer to look over your "portfolio", but oh well, I'm gonna go with the proverbial "available upon request".

I'd like to get an app on the app store anyway, and let the finished product speak for itself.

As for dev details, I dusted off the Tapster project after having lunch with my friend/former colleague Nick W. last week. It was his idea to mount a phone to a keg and make it do cool stuff to begin with.  That codebase is surprisingly in good shape.  It was my first Android project and I learned quite a bit.  Some things I did different on AR/Trakker versus Tapster:

Tapster:  All external dependencies I went and found the jar file, put it in a libs folder, and checked it into source control
Trakker:  I discovered Maven.  Nuff said.

Tapster: I actually used Dagger for Di
Trakker:  I fiddled with Dagger again and chose RoboGuice because it seemed easier.  Weird when your former self could figure out something your present self couldn't

Tapster:  Wrote my own data access layer in the "standard" Android way.  No ORM tools.  Old fashioned SQL statements.
Trakker:  Went with OrmLite.  Did I mention I hate SQL?

Tapster:  Had my college roommate Big Bill design me a sweet pint glass for an icon.
Trakker:  Still using stock icon.  Need to make pretty.

Tapster:  No CI
Trakker:  Travis CI.  Although, as mentioned above, I am about to turn my workstation into my own CI server and ditch paid services. At least until if/when this turns into more than a hobby.

Learning and experience are awesome.  Want more.

Root

Well, my wife and I had a big week.  Our son was born on Wednesday, Oct 9th, 2013. I took a week off work and I'm hanging out with my son...pretty awesome.  He's laying in his bassinet next to me now as I try to sneak in a little dev time.

My current challenge is that Google Play Services does not play well with the android emulator.  Ok fine, use a physical device for development.  Ok, but when I try to adb to the device and browse to the data folder, I get a permission denied.

So I'm rooting my phone so that I have a nice "dev" device.  It's not my main phone, but it's a Nexus S 4G that I bought off ebay a couple years ago for my Tapster project.

So that's what I'm up to.  Learning to be a dad, and rooting android phones.  We are in week 6 of the NFL season so I would like to get the basics in place and get version 1.0 onto the app store, if possible.

Stay tuned!

The burden of CI

Man, I'm hooked on the ease of Maven dependencies now.  You just add a little snippet of xml and you're golden.  So my new dependencies are google-play-services (for Gcm) and compatibility-v4 (for WakefulBroadcastReceiver).

There is a cool project that will just put these into your local maven repo, so that you can add your little xml bit to pom.xml, it's called maven android sdk deployer (https://github.com/mosabua/maven-android-sdk-deployer)

So, now I'm fiddling with my travis.yml file to make sure that it downloads the proper bits and puts things in the right places.  My unix shell skills are rusty, but i'm shaking off the cobwebs!

Android / Azure

Well, I created a simple azure website and published it out to Azure hosting.  I am able to use PushSharp on the backend to send my Gcm notifications to my phone.  Life is good.

I still need to get the android app to register with Gcm & my server when it starts up.   There is some good sample code available to demonstrate this, so it shouldn't be too much trouble.  The thing I'm struggling with a little bit is understanding Android application entry point.

I have an Activity that is registered to receive share intent from photo gallery.  This is not the same Activity that is marked as my startup Activity.  All the sample code for using GcmRegistrar to set up the client phone with Gcm shows it happening in an activity.  It would seem to make more sense to me to do it in the Application class, as that code seems guaranteed to run everytime, regardless of which Activity is the startup activity.  Anyway, it would probably be better to post this to SO or some place that I can get some help, rather than talking about it in my own private blog that no one reads :)

In non-dev related news:  my wife and I will be go from DINKS (dual income no kids) to parents next week, so that should be an interesting life transition.  It's not a new chapter, it's a whole new book!