Building a convention for configuration saver and reader module in Python

I maintain several python projects on github and some of them like VTScan has a need for user configuration. Now python has a plethora of ways and standards for parsing of configuration files like json, *.ini files, etc., but there is no standard about where to save them on the...

How to enforce conventional commit messages using git hooks

Conventional git commit messages are not just nice to have but great to have. In fact, once you get to know them, you’ll start feeling that they are essential in any serious programming project. Consider the difference between following two commit messages for instance: git commit -m "added social login...

Package signing in PIP - It works, in a roundabout sort of way

A few days ago, I made this DEV.to post about how Python’s PIP lacks GPG package signing. Well, it turns out that I’m wrong! It does have a package signing process after all, only its one of the most manual, archaic and cumbersome security practices I’ve seen till date. I...

Wordpress to Pelican in 24 hours

Today, I finished migration of my blog from a self-hosted Wordpress site to a statically hosted Github Pages site. For the static site generator, instead of choosing Jekyll which is a hot favorite of rubyists, I went for Pelican instead as I figured my Python skills might be somewhat useful...

Growing intolerance and lack of compassion towards new developers on StackOverflow

StackOverflow is the digital equivalent of the Holy See or the Holy Mecca when it comes to programming. It is that place where developers go visit when they don’t have answers to their coding problems in a hope that the Gods of StackOverflow will help them solve it. But lately,...

A dark day for consumer rights: Right to repair bill killed in Canada thanks to corporate lobbying

When Linus Torvalds wrote the Linux Kernel in 1991 or Ian Murdock first released the Debian OS in 1993, talking about the “openness” of a PC or the “right to repair it” would have been a laughable affair! 8086 was an open standard then (just as standards should be) and...

Foxy firefighters and the clash between individual and collective liberalism

The biggest speculation in the tech industry these days concern net neutrality and the last week was no different. Whilst I’m happy that TRAI is clear on upholding the net neutrality in my own country, India, the clouds of doom could be clearly seen in USA as the FCC is...

Docker trick: running containers efficiently using a bash script

One of the basic problems with running a docker image is that its too easy to spew up multiple instances or containers of the same image. Consider running the following container for instance: docker run -it -e AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="test" -e AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="test" \ --net=host "prahladyeri/testimage:latest" /bin/bash This will start a fresh container...

Performing a little usability tweak on the XFCE window recycler in greybird theme

Xubuntu is my favorite distro, hands down and the default Greybird theme is just wonderful! There used to be a time when I liked Ubuntu-MATE too, but not so much since they took the road to GTK+3! Coming back to the topic, XFCE works great but it has a small...

Linux DIY: Creating a multiboot USB drive with ISO images of multiple distros

Though I’m not a distro-hopper exactly, I keep trying live versions of popular linux distros like debian and ubuntu every now and then, and while I generally use the “dd” command which works right out of the box, today I thought that instead of burning a new ISO image each...