software development

How to override and share git configuration options between multiple directories »

If you’re getting “Invalid HTTP_HOST header” errors in a Django application, you probably need to tweak your Nginx configuration. In this post, I’ll explain why this happens and how to properly fix the problem without causing more damage. »

A friend of mine asked for my help to find the cause of a bug he was seeing in a complex Python class he was writing. The class was supposed to raise an exception when a certain method was called but the unit tests were not picking up that exception. I have to confess I was a little stumped at first but simplifying his code to the bare minimum made the problem more evident. »

Now and then someone asks my opinion on what is the best way to deploy code to a server. There’s a lot to be said about this subject, so I usually end up disappointing the inquirer because I rarely have a simple answer for them. Like so many other things in life, the best way to do it depends on the exact situation. The scale you’re operating at, the type of servers you use, the type of application you’re deploying, the level of security required, the infrastructure you’re using, etc. »

Today someone asked for my help to undo a git push --force that messed up his production server by overwriting the master branch with something that wasn’t meant to be there. My first advice would be to not deploy to production servers by manually running git pull or git push, but that’s another story and I briefly mention it in my post on basic rules for software deployment. So how would you solve the situation? »