Macos

Visual Studio Code is a neat editor with many good functionalities but I especially like the way it shows Git merge conflicts. Instead of a 2-way or a 3-way split it just shows one window with both changes, nicely highlighted with colors and actions.

I like this feature so much I decided to set Visual Studio Code as my Git merge tool for both the command line and Git Tower.

Command line

Using Visual Studio Code as a merge tool for Git when using command line means editing your .gitconfig. You just need to define a new tool called code and set it as the default merge tool.

[merge]
        tool = vscode
[mergetool "vscode"]
        cmd = code --wait $MERGED

If you use Continuous Integration (CI) builds or build your app from the command line using xcodebuild you know that the output is not pretty and not very readable. Reading the build output is important when a CI build breaks, but it is not easy when it looks like this

Many iOS developers were not satisfied with this so the xcpretty project was created. Xcpretty is a fast and flexible formatter that turn the output from screnshot above to this neatly formatted output

One of the best XCode 9 features is the ability to deploy and debug iOS app on your device over WiFi, with no need to have the device connected to you computer by a cable. The only requirement is that the device runs iOS 11.

Setting it up is really easy. Connect the device using a cable like you normally do and go to Window | Devices and Simulators. You will see a new checkbox next to your iOS 11 devices called Connect via Network (see screenshot below), so check it. Now you can disconnect the cable and debug on your device over WiFi, the device has to be on the same network as your computer of course.

When my ISP had a problem resulting in Internet outage for multiple hours and I needed to work, I wanted to tether the LTE connection from my iPhone 6S to my hackintosh running macOS Sierra. It has no Wi-Fi card so the only was was tethering over USB cable.

The whole process should be easy, just connecting the iPhone to the computer with an USB cable and turning on the Personal hotspot in the Settings. The iPhone immediately registered 1 connection, but Internet did not work on the computer, although everything looked fine in System Preferences

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words so whenever I create an issue, a pull request or write a blog post about and application or some visual stuff I include a relevant image. Sometimes an image is not enough and an animation is needed to better describe the issue, or show the content of your pull request.

There are some good tools to help you to create animations like this on both Windows and macOS.