Yesterday one of our developers messed up our git repository pretty badly. We only noticed the problem after other people had pulled, committed & pushed, updated their topic branches, etc.

To make things worse, this developer was in Bangalore and it was quite difficult to figure over the phone what had been going on. All this was going on while about 30 other developers worked on. It took me a while to guess the past, but in the end I was able to fix the repository and colleagues from Germany and India reviewed and checked everything was OK.

In case you are interested, the easiest solution was creating a new branch from the latest not broken commit + cherry picking the good commits + merging back into master.

For some reason, I couldn’t but think of Toni Braxton‘s Unbreak my heart. Here comes my own rendition, “Un-merge my branch”:

“Un-merge my branch”

Don’t leave me in all this pain
Don’t leave me out in the fail
Come back and bring back my codeline
Come and take these changesets away
I need your rights to push it now
The conflicts are so unkind
Bring back those commits where you coded side-by-side with me

Un-merge my branch
Say you’ll code me again
Undo this havoc you caused
When you pulled in the code
And reverted out my line
Un-do these changesets
I tried so many patches
Un-merge my branch
My branch

Take back that bad commit good-bye
Bring back the joy to my repo
Don’t leave me here with these changesets
Come and cherry-pick this line away
I can’t forget the day you merged
Pull is so unkind
And coding is so cruel without you side-by-side with me

Un-merge my branch
Say you’ll code me again
Undo this havoc you caused
When you pulled in the code
And reverted out of my line
Un-do these changesets
I tried so many patches
Un-merge my branch
My branch

Don’t leave me in all this pain
Don’t leave me out in the fail
Bring back those commits where you coded side-by-side with me

Un-merge my branch
Say you’ll code me again
Undo this havoc you caused
When you pulled in the code
And reverted out of my line
Un-do these changesets
I tried so many, many patches
Un-merge my

Un-merge my branch oh admin
Code back and say you commit it
Un-merge my branch
Sweet admin
Without you I just can’t code on
Can’t code on…

It still needs some rhythm and metric work, but I’m not a musician. Volunteers for singing it? 🙂

FOSDEM ended yesterday and here I am sitting at Charleroi Airport (also known as “Brussels South”, quite a misleading name given that it’s 80 Km from Brussels).

I have already passed all controls, check-in and everything. While I wait for boarding, I am watching the shameful spectacle of airport personnel (let me reiterate that: airport personnel, not Ryanair’s) enforcing RyanAir’s 10 Kg cabin baggage limit. According to RyanAir, they want to minimize the weight the plane carries to use less fuel. So far, so good.

Here is what I have seen: people who do not carry any baggage (very few, they have probably checked it in because it exceeded size or weight), people who are below the 10 Kg limit and people who are way over it (and have been told to check luggage in). I am OK with those cases.

There is still a fourth case: people who are slightly over 10 Kg.

I’ve seen a woman whose bag was 10.15 Kg to be told to pay 20 EUR to check her bag, or go back to the RyanAir desk to check-in the bag. She opened her bag, took a scarf, put it on and now the bag matched the weight limit.

Yes, RyanAir is charging 20 EUR/Kg for hand baggage from 10 Kg on. What a rip-off.

A couple of East-European girls were about 1 Kg in excess each. They put a couple of extra jumpers on and now baggage was under 10 Kg.

Many people were about 1 Kg in excess. When they were told their suitcase better got lighter or pay 20 to 40 EUR. Most of them just took something (camera, food, slippers, whatever) and put in the pockets of their coats. Fortunately, RyanAir is not charging for body and clothes weight (yet?).

In all those cases the plane will end up transporting the same weight and RyanAir won’t get one more dime, so why RyanAir? Why are you such a shameful company? Why are you enforcing ludicrous and pointless policies? Don’t you know after passing the control everybody just put everything back into the suitcase? Of course you do.

So after watching this ridiculous spectacle go on for a while, I had a devious idea: let’s organize a fat people conference and fly them all over to and from using RyanAir. Further, all of them should carry exactly 10 Kg hand baggage.