Stefaan Lippens' webface

Finally! I found how to get the keyboard shortcut for code completion working in Eclipse on Mac OS X. At work, on Linux, I use CTRL-SPACE all the time in Eclipse. Unfortunately that did not work on my MacBook: CMD-SPACE triggers the spotlight search widget and CTRL-SPACE is tied to the Quicksilver launcher in my case.

Inkscape and the Gimp are trusty tools in my daily tool box for various vector and bitmap image editing. Being open source applications, they have firm roots in the Linux world, but luckily they are also available for Windows and Mac OS X. No wonder I have them installed on my MacBook too.

The problem

On OS X, Inkscape and the Gimp are not completely native applications, but they depend on X11.app. This extra layer makes the user experience unfortunately less streamlined than with native applications. Especially the keyboard interaction of an out of the box setup can be clunky.

I spend a lot of time on the (bash) command line in (Linux and OS x) and it's always good for productivity to have your favorite set of shortcuts, aliases, perferences, predefined (environment) variables and such at your fingertips. You know, all the stuff that lives in .bashrc, .profile, .vimrc, .git, etc.

I have access to several systems (at home, at work, remote servers, etc) and from time to time I'm sitting behind a system that doesn't know my preferences yet. I considered using some sort of version control system to "synchronize" these preference files between my setups, but (apart from the practical hurdles) it generally seemed overkill, especially since each setup can have its own peculiarities and customizations.

So, mainly for my own reference, I'm keeping an list of the most important general stuff here. Be welcome to cherry-pick (or suggest additions).

Reminder to self: how to set up a virtual host for localhost webdevelopment on OS X with MAMP

1. DNS setup: add an entry for the local domain name in /etc/hosts, e.g.
   

   127.0.0.1     foo.localhost

   and flush DNS cache with
   

   dscacheutil -flushcache

2. Apache config (/Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf): add a virtual host entry like
   

   <VirtualHost *>
     ServerName foo.localhost
     DocumentRoot /Users/eddywally/Sites/foo/localhost-dev/drupal
   </VirtualHost>

   and restart webserver, e.g. with
   

   /Applications/MAMP/bin/apache2/bin/apachectl restart

3. Connect to http://foo.localhost:8888 (don't forget the nonstandard port number, unless you configured MAMP to use standard port 80).