Most interesting links of July

Recommanded Readings Martin Fowler, M. Mason: Why not to use feature branches and prefer feature toggles instead, when branches can actually be used (video, 12min) – feature branches are pretty common yet they are a hindrance for a good and stable development pace due to “merging hells”. With trusted developers, feature toggles are a much

Experiencing JSF 1.2: Good but Needs a Framework

I’ve got an opportunity to experiment with JSF 1.2 while preparing a lecture about DbUnit Express and test webapp for JSF EL Validator. Same as JSF 1.1, it’s much easier to use than the low level, too HTTP-ish servlets but still it is not flexible enough and usable per se, it is absolutely necessary to

Simple Logging HTTP Proxy with Grinder

Sometimes I need to observe HTTP communication between my and another machine. I usually use Eclipse’ integrated TCP/IP monitor for it’s simple and does its job well but today for a large response it just displayed “The HTTP content is too large to display.” so I started searching for alternatives and found the Grinder TCPProxy,

Having Database Test Ready in 10 Minutes with DbUnit Express

Update: The project has been renamed to dbunit-express. DbUnit Express is my wrapper around DbUnit that intends to make it extremely easy to set up a test of a code that interacts with a database. It is preconfigured to use an embedded Derby database (a.k.a. JavaDB, part of SDK) and uses convention over configuration to

Ivy: Retrieve Both .jar And -sources.jar Into A Folder – Note to Self

After some experimenting I’ve found out how to tell Ivy (2.2.0) to retrieve also .jar with source codes into a folder: Ivy.xml: The important thing here is the second artifact line with type and classifier sources and extension jar. Ant: Notice the second retrieve line – the type is set to sources and we’ve changed

Going to Present “Programmer’s Survival Kit: Code Injection for Troubleshooting” at JavaZone 2011

I’m going to hold a lightning talk called Programmer’s Survival Kit: Code Injection for Troubleshooting at JavaZone in Oslo in September. This presentation is aimed at giving the participants the knowledge of code injection that they may (or I should rather say “will”) need and at persuading them that learning basics of code injection is really