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2. Project management

Week 1 - 1/26/22

The Start

Created Account on Gitlab, waited for approval. Given permissions. Promptly forgot password and had to reset password. Success. Gitlab is now available. What do I do now?

I’ve had experience with SSH and PGP, so I knew how to create a key pair. So I started there. I used puTTY and puTTYgen to create a key pair for GIT. The below is a picture of the process, not the key.

This is not my key.

Thanks to Dr. Adam Harris’ information and help, and his great tutorial video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= s0d39k-IqN4

I Downloaded and Installed Python, VSCode and Git.

Things Broke.

Python would not work in vscode terminal. Opened second terminal, python worked. Wtf.
Git wouldn’t work in 2nd terminal window, but only in 1st terminal window. Again, wtf.

And insult to injury, when I opened a normal powershell window, it had no problem running git or python. It was only in VScode that I was having these issues.

Well, I've never...

I tried uninstalling and re-installing everything. I tried messing with the paths (even though they were correct?!?) I of course looked through stackoverflow, but most of the answers there was “fix your path.”

Things Un-broke.

Finally, I started going through all the programs on my computer and discovered I had previously installed “mu” and “anaconda” on my computer. I uninstalled these programs, and then reinstalled Python, VScode, and Git, and it seemed like this may have fixed the problem. Only time will tell, but at least now when I type “python –version” in powershell in vscode, it provides the version number of python instead of telling me that python isn’t installed.

Moving On.

  • Installed mkdocs-material, using following commands:
pip install mkdocs-material
pip3 install mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin
cd ..
mkdocs new website (website is local folder name)
cd website
mkdocs serve

  • Made stupid simple changes to webpage. Will add more later. Working with mkdocs is new to me, learning how to write readable website.

  • In order to upload files to the Gitlab repository, I had to install Git. I had to use git config to add my name and email. This was simple enough to fix.

  • Used these two commands in order to add commit, and sync changes to gitlab.

git config --global user.email "email address"
git config --global user.name "Garrett Nelson"

  • Only later did I realize these commandswere in the FabAcademy gitlab README file. But I had created my own repository at first just to try and learn how to use this without destroying anything and so I had not seen this README until after I felt I knew what I was doing.

  • After this, I was able to actually use git to add, commit, and push my files to gitlab!

  • Synced. The whole “python not working thing” took at least two hours to figure out. This is why I like linux.

  • Realized that I was pushing the files to a different repository, and not the FabAcademy repository… so… I fixed that.

  • If you’re reading this. It worked. If you’re not reading this… well…

  • Oh, and then my local installation of mkdocs and git through the terminal broke. Sigh.

Finally…

After working through the issues I had with Git and VSCode. I finally was able to upload code successfully. Afterwards, I decided to get more into MKdocs, and was able to figure out how to change some colors using the mkdocs.yml.

Figured out where the FabAcademy Mattermost site was (I had lost it.) Thanks to David Taylor. https://chat.academany.org/fabacademy-2022/channels/town-square

And hopefully I can start using this to meet with other FabAcademy students and start picking their brains.

Project Management

For this project, the project management using SVN for design files will be a new experiment for me. I do a lot of design and CAM work, especially for classes that I teach or assist in. A lot of these projects are created in Fusion 360, which has an automatic version control system for each type you save the project. Starting a rough sketch for my final project, I used OpenSCAD because it’s a quick way to use basic shapes for a very quick 3d sketch. I usually just save multiple versions of my design files. I would like to start using software version control to keep better track of design changes.

One thing I know I’ll need to start working on, is a better project management system. Usually, a lot of personal projects I design and build, there are very few time constraints, they are “done when they’re done.” But with all the weekly assignments, I want to make as many of these assignments to be focused towards my final project as possible. I’m going to need to sit down with the schedule and start mapping out each week.

Right now, I have no project management other than GitLab, this website and my notes. I would like to start looking into a better management solution if I can find time.

https://www.mkdocs.org/user-guide/writing-your-docs/

https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/setup/setting-up-navigation/#section-index-pages

Things I did this week.

See Work Log for more information.

  • Set up python on windows (haven’t done this in a while.)
  • set up vscode (first time using it.)
  • set up git
  • learned mkdocs and their system
  • learned some basic markdown
  • created a git repository on FabAcademy’s GitLab
  • create a basic sketch of a digitizer arm with touch probe for final project.
  • Wrote up documentation, notes on the proposed final project
  • wrote this documentation and pushed a new website to git.
  • broke a lot of things, fixed a lot of things.
  • some other stuff.
Last update: March 6, 2022