2. Beanstalk
If you’re programming anything of value you need version control. Sure, you may not have to worry about anyone else destroying your code, but there are countless ways that you can subvert yourself. Maybe you’re trying to refactor your code and it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped, so you need to go back to a prior version. Maybe you delete a file and realize after the fact that you really did need it. Maybe your hard drive dies and you lose everything. Who knows. One thing I do know? Version control will save your arse. Thankfully the good, fine folks over at Wildbit have this fancy application called Beanstalk that’s free up to 100mb. That’s a darn lot of code.

Oh, and as a nice bonus, Beanstalk integrates with FogBugz. Just includes [BugzID: 12345] in your commit message, where 12345 is your FogBugz case number, and your commit message will show up in FogBugz. Sweet!

3. NautilusSvn
If you’ve worked with Subversion on Windows then you probably know that there’s this nice application called TortoiseSVN. It integrates right into the Windows shell allowing you to do a checkout/update/commit/etc. with a simple right-click. I was missing that functionality on Ubuntu, until I found a great little application called NautilusSvn that does the same thing for the GNOME desktop. After installing it you’ll see little helper icons next to each file/directory indicating if the file matches what’s in the repository. That makes it incredibly easy to visually see what you’ve changed and what needs to be commited.

I figured I’d be a bit more intelligent about this and set up an Ubuntu instance on VMware on my Windows box and run couchdb off of that (at least for my initial development work). There’s a free book called the Ubuntu Pocket Guide which has a great chapter (pg. 15) on setting up Ubuntu on a virtual machine. It even gives you the files you need to set it up. Pretty sweet.

However, if you’re going to use it, here are a couple tips:

1. The default behavior of VMware is to display a small bar at the top of the screen that allows you to minimize or close the window. That’s cool, but it gets in the way any time you’re trying to do something at the top of the screen. Which is all the time since Ubuntu has it’s own bar at the top of the screen. If you want to disable VMware’s bar, find the preferences.ini file (it should be at C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\VMware\), open it with a text editor, and add the following line at the end:
pref.vmplayer.fullscreen.nobar = "TRUE"

To break out of full screen, you simply press Ctrl + Alt.

2. Ubuntu periodically feels the need to do a system beep. And by periodically I mean every startup. You might not think that’s such an annoyance unless you happen to wear headphones. In which case your eardrums will shatter every time to start up Ubuntu. If you’d like to avoid that scenario (highly advised), find your .vmx file (e.g. ubuntupocketguide.vmx), open it with a text editor, and add the following line at the end:
mks.noBeep = "TRUE"

Your eardrums will thank you.