Misc
Stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere — HTTP, DNS, tooling, workflows, and assorted rabbit holes.
Format terminal output with tput instead of ANSI codes. Set colors, bold text, underlines, and backgrounds with simple commands in shell scripts.
Build Unix domain socket servers and clients with Python and socat. Access Docker API via UDS, create HTTP servers, and optimize inter-process communication.
Use the colon : command as a no-op in Bash scripts for cleaner debug output with -x flag. Alternative to echo for section markers and comments.
Automate commit message validation with GitHub Actions. Enforce refs and closes patterns to maintain clean Git history and link commits to issues.
Master shell quoting rules: single vs double quotes, backticks vs $(). Learn when to quote variables to prevent spaces and special characters from breaking commands.
Understand how return values work in Bash functions. Learn exit codes, status evaluation patterns, and proper boolean returns with true/false commands.
Fix divergent branch errors with git pull --rebase. Learn when to rebase local commits on top of remote changes for cleaner Git history.
Automatically merge Dependabot pull requests using GitHub Actions. Configure branch protection and status checks for safe automated dependency updates.
View git commit history for a single file with git log --follow. Learn to track multiple files with xargs and concatenate their commit logs.
Run background health checks in CI with nohup and ampersand. Test server readiness with retry loops and automatic cleanup on success or failure.
Why executable scripts shouldn't have extensions. Learn GitHub's scripts-to-rule-them-all pattern for language-agnostic project automation.
Replace which with command -v for POSIX-compliant executable lookup. Learn why command -v is the portable alternative for finding program paths.
Master Git commit message conventions: imperative mood, 50-character subject, proper capitalization. Build coherent project history with consistent formatting.
Prevent shell commands from executing immediately when pasting. Use curly braces to safely paste multi-line commands with hidden newline characters.
Enable Bash strict mode with set -euo pipefail to catch errors early. Exit on failures, treat unset variables as errors, and handle pipeline failures properly.