You are here

debugging, git docs, cold fingers

I'm a great fan of the git version control system. It needs more documentation, so I've been trying to help. Actually their real problem isn't so much lack of documentation--almost everything is documented somewhere. But existing documentation isn't really organized to give a clear path from newbie to proficient user. So my latest project has been to put together a comprehensive user manual. It's an interesting challenge to figure out how to organize stuff into logical sections in a way that's readable from start to finish without requiring forward references, while also being usable for the more likely case of someone skipping ahead to find what they need for the job at hand.

The current attempt is really rough, with some parts not proofread and other parts just cut-and-pasted from existing documentation with minimal editing. But it's starting to get there, and hopefully I'll be able to get more people to pitch in soon.

Anyway, so when I wasn't being social that's what I spent a lot of my time on over the weekend. I also tried to debug a subtle problem that causes NFSv4 to fail when run with encryption turned on. With some help from git I found a change to the crypto code that appears to have triggered the problem, but it's not code I understand very well yet. I also managed to find a simple test that reliably triggers the problem. These problems are always tricky, though, because one of my main debugging tools (wireshark) is hobbled by the encryption.

I rode into work this morning with temperatures in the teens. It wasn't too bad--my one problem as usual is that I can't find mittens that reliably keep my fingers protected in this cold. At every red light I drop the handlebars and make my hands into fists inside the mittens.

My toes and forehead were suffering a little too. Maybe I should stop by Bivouac on my way home for some mitten and balaklava shopping.