export GIT_PS1_SHOWDIRTYSTATE=1
export GIT_PS1_SHOWSTASHSTATE=1
export GIT_PS1_SHOWUNTRACKEDFILES=1
export PS1='\[\033[1;37m\][\[\033[1;32m\]\u\[\033[0m\]@\h\[\033[0m\] $? \[\033[1;34m\]\w\[\033[0;35m\]$(__git_ps1 " %s")\[\033[1;37m\]]\[\033[0m\] '

Take a look at the following picture to see how it works:

or check the video on youtube.

The number between user@host and the current working directory is the exit status of the most recently executed command (or pipeline). This is great because you don’t have to type echo $? everytime you want to find it out. The __git_ps1 magic will print git branch name if you are inside of the git repository. Furthermore it will add special characters indicating the state of the repo: % – untracked files present, + – new files added, * – some tracked files changed, $ – there is something in the stash (see git stash --help). Pretty cool, right?

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/my/special/librarypath:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

This allows linker to find the needed libraries, even if they are not located in the standard directories (which are defined by /etc/ld.so.conf). At first, this seems OK, but it creates one problem, though. When the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH was empty before the assignment, the new value ends with a colon. When we run the program wrapper, linker splits the variable into substrings and ends up with one empty path. This indicates to search for libraries in the CURRENT working directory, which can cause problems or even a security threat.

So, what’s the correct way of defining the library path? Of course, we could check if the variable is empty before the assignment like this:

if [ -n "$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" ]; then
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/my/special/librarypath:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
else
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/my/special/librarypath"
fi

but there is one neat shell trick we can use (should work on all POSIX shells). The description says:

${parameter:+word}
Use Alternate Value. If parameter is null or unset, nothing is substituted, otherwise the expansion of word is substituted.

In the end we have:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/my/special/librarypath${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"

which is not much longer than the line we started with, but does the assignment correctly. (The first colon belongs to shell syntax, the second one is a part of the value being appended).

[stick@spectra 0 ~] ls -F
Applications/  Documents/  google.txt    reverse-ssh*
Desktop/       Downloads/  public_html/  work/       

[stick@spectra 0 ~] ls -AF
.0verkill             google.txt              public_html/
.adobe/               .grails/                .pulse/
.android/             .gstreamer-0.10/        .pulse-cookie
Applications/         .gtk-bookmarks          .pyhistory
.AtomicWorm/          .gtkrc-2.0-kde4         .qt/
.bash_history         .gvfs/                  .rawstudio/
.bashrc               .hplip/                 .recently-used
.bouml                .htoprc                 .recently-used.xbel
.boumlrc              .hugin                  .repoconfig/
.bzr.log              .icedteaplugin/         reverse-ssh*
.cache/               .inkscape/              .rnd
.cddb/                .inputrc                .rpmpatch_macros
.cedega/              .IntelliJIdea80/        .rpmpatch_rpmrc
.civclientrc          .IntelliJIdea8x/        .scummvmrc
.civserver_history    .irssi/                 .signature-gk2
.config/              .java/                  .signature-gmail
.crack-attack/        .JxBrowser/             .signature-suse
.cxgames/             .kde/                   .skel/
.darkplaces/          .kde4/                  .Skype/
.dbus/                .kderc                  .smc/
.designer/            .kinorc                 .springrc
Desktop/              .ktorrent.lock          .sqlite_history
.directory            .lbrc.conf              .ssh/
.dmrc                 .lesshst                .strigi/
Documents/            .links/                 .subversion/
Downloads/            .liquidwarrc            .teeworlds/
.dvdcss/              .local/                 .thumbnails/
.eclipse/             .loki/                  .thunderbird/
.emacs                .macromedia/            .ufrawrc
.esd_auth             .mc/                    .ultramixer/
.fbhighlevelshistory  .mcop/                  .vendetta/
.fbhighscores         .miro/                  .viminfo
.fblevels/            .mixxxbpmscheme.xml     .vimrc
.fbrc                 .mixxx.cfg              .VirtualBox/
.fontconfig/          .mixxxmacros/           .vlc/
.fonts/               .MixxxMIDIBindings.xml  .vnc/
.fonts.conf           .mixxxtrack.xml         .w3m/
.gajim/               .mozilla/               .Wammu
.gconf/               .mplayer/               .wapi/
.gconfd/              .mysql_history          .windows-label
.gegl-0.0/            .mysticmine             .wine/
.gem/                 .netxrc                 .winetrickscache/
.gimp-2.6/            .nexuiz/                work/
.gitconfig            .ooo3/                  .Xauthority
.gnome/               .opera/                 .xim.template
.gnome2/              .osc_cookiejar          .xine/
.gnome2_private/      .oscrc                  .xsession-errors
.gnupg/               .profile                .y2usersettings
.google/              .psi/
.googleearth/         .psql_history

Out of 148 entries in my $HOME, there are only 12 of them I really want to see! How much nicer would it be, if it looked like this:

[stick@spectra 0 ~] ls -AF
Applications/  Documents/  public_html/    .signature-gmail
.config/       Downloads/  reverse-ssh*    .signature-suse
Desktop/       google.txt  .signature-gk2  work/

This is very simple to achieve, if only applications followed the XDG Base Directory Specification. Unfortunately, lots of them don’t. When you start using the following piece of code in your new awesome applications:

config = getenv("XDG_CONFIG_HOME")
if (!config) config = getenv("HOME") + "/.config"
config = config + "/my_awesome_app"

instead of the old-school one:

config = getenv("HOME") + "/.my_awesome_app"

users will gain two great advantages with nearly no extra effort:

• trying application without overwriting the existing configuration

  XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/tmp/ my_awesome_app

• maintaining multiple configurations of the same application

  XDG_CONFIG_HOME=~/.config/awesome3 my_awesome_app

So, please, don’t ignore the ugly duckling called $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, I’m sure it will mature into a beautiful swan.

I was playing with the rounded corners and I like this feature a lot, but I also hit one problem (in all 3 engines). When you use the border-radius with an img element, the image is drawn above the border, so it isn’t rounded (left example). Fortunately, the effect could be easily achieved by rounded div, setting its dimensions exactly to the image size and using the image as the div‘s background (right example).

<img style="border: 2px solid black; border-radius: 30px; -moz-border-radius: 30px; -khtml-border-radius: 30px; -webkit-border-radius: 30px;" src="presov.jpg" />	<div style="border: 2px solid black; border-radius: 30px; -moz-border-radius: 30px; -khtml-border-radius: 30px; -webkit-border-radius: 30px; width: 180px; height: 240px; background: url('presov.jpg');" />

Update#1: I reported the issue to Gecko, KHTML and WebKit bugzillas.

Update#2: Dave Hyatt closed the WebKit bug with the comment: “This was fixed recently.” \o/

tasks := $(shell seq -s ' ' 1 `cat commands.txt | wc -l`)

all: $(tasks)
    @echo Done

%:
    @echo `sed '$@!d' commands.txt`
    @eval `sed '$@!d' commands.txt`

This expects you had the file commands.txt prepared, which contains one command per line. If you want to call the same command over and over again, just replace commands.txt with values.txt and eval with the command you want to run.

Using this approach you can limit both the number of concurrent jobs: make -j 5 and the maximum load: make -l 2

Others ideas were to use the shell with & and wait, or to use the following one-liner:

while sleep 1; do [ "`ps ax | grep your_cmd | wc -l`" -gt 6 ] || your_cmd &; done

but I really like mine solution the most