Software Hints

Here's a list of things I've figured out and found useful while at UBC as a CS grad student. Most hints are generally applicable to all users but keep in mind I'm a Mac OS X user at home with occassional uses of Linux and windows at school and my tips reflect that.

Remote File Backup

I just finished setting this up and its super handy. I don't use CVS but I want a simple way to back up my local edits of documents and code to the safer servers at school. Unison is really simple and it allows syncing between mac, unix and windows machines. Go to the source for the files and full details.

Here's an example profile that I put in my .unison directory. The version used at UBC CS is 2.13.16 so you'll want to install that on your local machine, you can get it here. If you name the profile default.prf all you need to type is unison on the command line. Or unison -auto once you trust it.

	#Local and Remote roots
	root =  /Users/mark
	root = ssh://username@okanagan.cs.ubc.ca/
	       /{full user path}/Unison
	       (all one line)
	#Paths to sync
	path = spattemp/backups
	path = spattemp/writing
	path = Documents/outlines
	path = Documents/Presentations

	#Individual Files
	path = spattemp/spattemp.otl
	path = spattemp/spattempread.otl
	path = RL_Notes.otl

	#Ignore files
	ignore = Name *~
	ignore = Name *.swp
	ignore = Path */bin/*