Effectif Development

I’ve been trying to persuade git-svn to work properly with Rails plugins that have been installed via svn:externals. Whilst working out how to do it I stumbled across several great articles, but I couldn’t get any of the solutions presented to work perfectly. Samuel Tesla’s article is especially informative, but for a long time I couldn’t stop git-svn from trying to commit Git metadata back into my Subversion repository…

After a bit of head scratching I got it sorted, and wrapped the process up in a little utility called git-me-up.

I used to work for a company that was in the business of deploying laptops running Linux into hospitals. We automated the installation of these laptops to such a degree that all we had to do build a new laptop was unwrap it, plug it into an ethernet network and turn it on. We used PXE boot and our own bespoke deployment system to achieve it. It even supported deploying automatic configuration updates over a mobile phone connection, while the laptops were in a different country.

It never seems to be worth going to the effort to setup a tool like puppet when configuring a new desktop computer, a virtual server to run your blog, or a VPS for a small client who is keen to keep the budget down. But why should automation be expensive?

If you like the idea of an automated server build on the cheap, read on...