Mac OS X, Parallels & the Back Slash

Yet another short note to my future self:

Running a Mac with a German keyboard layout (likely having the key sequence “7 8 9 0 ß ` <Backspace>” in the top row) and using a Parallels Desktop to run Windows and needing to enter a back slash (\) now & then?

Try the right-hand-side CRTL-ALT + ß (the key with the German ‘sz’ as the primary character).

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osx-gcc-installer or XCode

1. How to remove Xcode completely from your system:

   sudo /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all

   Use at your own risk!

2. Where to get Xcode: The App store: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/
3. OSX-gcc-intstaller: https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer

Addtional info: Another way is to get the “Command Line Tools for Xcode” at https://developer.apple.com/downloads/ (which requires an Apple developer account).

Happy hacking!

Show the full path in Finder

As described over at “Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard) Configuration Tips” you can configure Finder to display the full path to the currently displayed folder by using this (in a terminal of your choice):

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Change back to the default (of the default) using ‘NO’ instead of ‘YES’. Apparently this works in Leopard (or later) only.

Get Going with Git

While still in the process switch ing from Subversion to Git, here are a few helpful links I found:

• How to set up a git server – one way to to it, by CommonThread
• Toolman Tim explains another way to serve git repositories (for those an a Mac)
• Another hint is available at Apple’s Support Site.
• Additionally you might need to chmod a+rx ~ and chmod a+rx ~/Sites (if Sites is where you put your stuff)

Once up and running there’s of course github, gitcentral and gitorious. For hosting open source projects currently github seems to be the choice, but in case you prefer not to share stuff (just yet) gitcentral offers free (as in no money) hosting of private projects using free (as in open source) software.

Syntax Highlight Code with TextMate in HTML

Andi Schnacke describes how to to generate HMTL to display syntax highlighted code from within TextMate. The short version:

Bundles → TextMate → Create HTML from Document

Strange I didn’t notice before.

Safari 4 – Tabs Moved Back

It has been noted at other places: The tabs in Safari 4 appear in the very top of the window, where you’d display page information and could CMD-click to see the browsing history. And you could easily move the window with a click ‘n drag. That space is now (mostly) occupied by the tabs. To go back to what it used to be previously just do this (at your own risk):

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

There you are, the tab are back just above the content (where I think they belong anyway).

Things We Do, But Shouldn’t

I regularly fire up the same applications: TextMate, a browser or two, mail programs, iTunes, a shell, irb and others. Now, while Quicksilver is excellent for firing up applications (and a lot of other things), I’d still be busy typing and/or mouse-pointing and clicking. And doing that is boring, cumbersome and not what I like to do anyway. I shouldn’t (have to) do it. And, in fact, I don’t. A little bit of Ruby code will do it:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
%w( <full_application_paths_go_here> ).each{ | app | system "open #{app} &" }

Replace <full_application_paths_go_here> with a list of space-delimited full application paths, save it into a file (in ~/bin presumably), make it executable and there you go. Actually, the language doesn’t matter at all here. The only thing that does matter is to fire up the applications.

Starting all most used applications is now just a few key strokes away. There’s certainly a very similar way to do this on other *nix OSes and Windows.