After some small googling, I figured out that the most cool feature of the SVN properties is to ensure that if you check out something from repository, you’ll get the line endings you need.

“In other words, if a user on a Windows machine checks out a working copy that contains a file with an svn:eol-style property set to native, that file will contain CRLF EOL markers. A Unix user checking out a working copy which contains the same file will see LF EOL markers in his copy of the file.”

Quote from: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch07s02.html#svn-ch-7-sect-2.3.5

So, this is client config. That means YOU have to make sure that you add your files with the correct properties. Let’s assume you want to add a file named test.txt. You would do:

svn add test.txt

After adding you need to perform:

svn propset -R svn:eol-style native test.txt

to set the properties correctly.

Having that beeing said. most people will complain now that this is a difficult task and very error proven. Well it is. But you don’t have to take care if you are sure that only one operating systems (means: one development enviroment)  is set up. This is true for most projects I guess.

If it is NOT the case, you can force your developers to create a default config setup. On windows it just some entries in the registry (please try this, I am not using windows for open source stuff anymore), on Mac OS X and Linux the file ~/.subversion/config must be edited.

In my case, this did do the trick:

[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes

[auto-props]
*.java = svn:mime-type=text/plain;svn:eol-style=native
*.css = svn:mime-type=text/plain;svn:eol-style=native

or at least mostly.  SVN told me, after I wanted to change properties to native, that my css files were binary, which this wasn’t the case, of course! I couldn’t change it, until Sebastian Bazley came up with the following:

svn pl -v

showed:

Properties on 'maven.css':

  svn:mime-type

    application/octet-stream

He further told me to do:

svn pd svn:mime-type maven.css

And that was it – SVN is forced to use mime type I want.

Last but not least, here is the link to the apache recommendation or SVN config.

/Volumes/ANDREW

as expected, but rather:

/Volumes/ANDREW 1

which gave me hell when running my Junit Test for Apache Commons Compress due to the space in the harddisks name. I was wondering why OS X created the name ANDREW 1. Looking with my bash into /Volumes i recognized that there already was a folder with the name ANDREW. This happened cause when I removed the disk i started eclipse and the IDE couldn’t find a specific folder. Instead of telling me that, Eclipse simply created the folder. This could happen since the /Volumes folder has write access to everybody on OS X.

I deleted the unnecessary folder. After that I disconnected and reconnected my harddisk named ANDREW. The mountpoint was correct again and life is going normal

Solution is to edit the following file:

$ vi configuration/.settings/org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs

Just switch:

SHOW_WORKSPACE_SELECTION_DIALOG=false

to:

SHOW_WORKSPACE_SELECTION_DIALOG=true

and the workspace selection dialog should appear again. This gives you the option to choose another workspace.

For several reasons I had to format this one in NTFS and most of you know that this is a total game over for my Mac. Mac cannot access this format safely. There are other options to access NTFS from a Mac, for example Paragons software, but really, I don’t trust those geek software in that case too much. Hej, this is my data! My music! My life!

Then I came to Parallels Desktop, a Virtual Machine Player (and Creator) which is known as well integrated into the mac enviroment. And yes, it really is! I was never so surprised by any kind of software like I was here. Parallels makes you feel 100% integrated on both sides! With Tiger I cannot use all features, for example this Bootcamp stuff, which allows to play with your VM on a native speed level. However, for me it’s enough to see my windows apps looking like mac apps and that I can drag and drop between Finder and Win Explorer as I want.

Back to NTFS. I plugged in my NTFS drive but couldn’t create any folder on it nor could I copy a file. After some curses I figured out that I have mounted my 2Big Triple as a Network Storage, not as a local harddisk. Of course as a network harddisk I would need write access within mac, so I had to mount this drive directly to Parallels. This is easy under normal cirstumances. You can do this on the right bottom of the Parallels window, or, if running in coherance mode, from the menu bar “devices”. Simply choose one of the devices which you want to plug directly to your Windows.

I did so, but failed. The reason is beeing shown in the Device Manager of Windows. My USB Hub didn’t get any driver. I double clicked that b**** and told it to update the drive. No problem for windows since everything was prepared on the update site. After the install I had a locally plugged Harddisk – and know I can access to my NTFS harddisk from my Mac, ah, Windows, damn Macdows without any problems.

Great stuff, that Parallels. I will track this software for sure.

As i thought a little more, I remembered of my performance issues with GarageBand, as my compositions grew and used lots more of EXS instruments. Now I am sure that performance issues come from unsufficient memory. 1 Gig of RAM is too less for more than 6 software instruments, esspecially there are EQ tunings on em.

This issues and of course my thoughts about an upgrade to Logic 8 brought me to this post, where the guys explained in detail how to open the Mac Mini and upgrading the RAM.

Well, I did so and succeded

The post above is excellent written. Upgrading is really easy, just do it. Just one thing is to remember: if you have an Intel Core Duo you CANNOT have more RAM than 2 Gigs. You have to use 2x 1 Gig of 667 Mhz SODIMM (= notebook ram!). If you use more RAM, the screen will stay black and won’t even hear the chime.

Just the Intel Core 2 Duo seems to support more than 2 Gig. Officially it is said by Apple that a Mac Mini supports 3 Gigs. In fact I heard about people using more than 3 gigs with success. Just take a look at the performance benchmark.

So, please check out which mac you have. You can do this easily in the System Profiler (click the apple – about this mac icon).

I own now more RAM and yes, my Logic is working much better. I have nearly no performance issues anymore. I really would like to have a trial version of Logic 8, but unfortunatly Apple isn’t offering such a thing. Bad luck. I guess I will stick with Logic 7 a bit longer and enjoy my new RAM.

Normally I am working with OSX 10.4 means Tiger. I am composing ideas usually with GarageBand 3 and then, when the idea envolves, switch over to Logic Express 7.3 where I work out everything. GarageBand is a very useful tool to quickly record ideas when they come up and I cannot live without this. Well, actually I could, but my life is easier with GarageBand.

When I fired up the iLife08 Version of GarageBand 4.1.2 everything looks familiar. There were no surprises, never. At the start screen is a new button which invites you to create a “Magic Band” song or something like that. I really didn’t understand what this crap is. It’s a bit like a computer game without sense. Choose your style and you see a stage with several instruments on it. Click again and you have some fitting loops in your player. Well, don’t know why one should consider this useful. So, my choice is to ignore that “new feature”.

The first new feature I saw was that “arrangement” bar on top of my tracks. It makes it possible for me now to arrange several parts of my song and give it a name. Means: I mark a part of my song and name it “chorus” or “middle part” or whatever. Later I thought I can easily copy the whole part and drop it whereever I want. Well, not true. I just can move the whole collection around, but copy and paste is not possible. This makes the feature nice but doesn’t help in praxis. I really would like to copy past and then modify some parts. I hope that one improves. I read later that apple states that this feature works with copy and paste, but at least I couldn’t figure out how. That’s not what I expect from my Mac!

One cool new stuff is the extension of the automation features. Similar to old garageband where you could draw your panning and your volume for each track, you are now able to draw EQ and echoes too. Thats a very nice one, I like it! I really could use a feature where I can connect my own automation tools, but I guess this will stay future.

Multi-Take recording. Well THIS one is really great and is a feature I really have missed in Logic Express. But since I record all my instruments in Logic Express and just do some demo voices in GarageBand I will not buy Garageband 4.1.2 only cause of that.

Visual EQ. OK, nice to have. But again, I didn’t miss that since I have own plugins for the job or use Logic Express. However, it’s comfortable and useful. But not the feature that gives you the urgent need to upgrade.

Sooooo… OK. What’s new also?
You have the chance to burn a CD directly out of GarageBand. Well, I couldn’t do this since MacBook Air doesn’t have any CD-R drives or burning utilities. I guess It will work.

The LCD is a bit more comfortable. But nothing new here.

Instruments are strange. The laptop was preinstalled, but some of the instruments where missing. When clicking on the light grey instruments, GarageBand is telling me that it searches the instruments in the net and that I need 1,2 GB on space. What the heck? I didn’t try that out any further. If Apple really thinks I want to download 1.2 gig – no guys, are you kidding me? As I allready told you, I have no CD-Rom so a download is the only chance I have. Bah!

At least, I tried out if I can open a GarageBand 4 song with GarageBand 3 – it failed, of course. The import of a GarageBand 4 song into Logic Express 7.x fails too, of course.

Finally I am not very impressed by the new GarageBand version. If I would upgrade I get a multi-take feature and a nice arrangement tool, which doesn’t work at first glance. Automation is a bit cooler, yes. On the other hand my new GarageBand songs are not compatible with the products Logic Express 7 and not with older GarageBand versions. Means I would have to upgrade to Logic Express 8. And, hell, my Mac Mini which I use at the moment has not enough RAM memory for that version, so I would have to buy new Garageband, new Logic Express and a new Mac.

Really… not worth for me. I stay at Tiger with GarageBand 3 and Logic 7. These features are not enough. And if I would upgrade – I surely would leave GarageBand completly and use Logic 8 instead, since this has been enhanced visually a lot. So…. no go for GarageBand 4.

This morning i had a reinstall and decided to put all that space consuming stuff on my external harddisk. If you want to do like i did, i recommend you about 300 Gig space on a Mac OSX journaled filesystem. I had a FAT32 on my mac to get on it via Windows too, but this harddisk is not always activated when i need it. I have to make a harddisk check to activate it, which is quite uncomfortable. I guess you don’t want to have that problems with your instruments.

However, having your instruments on an external disk is straightforward. Please note, my volumes name is FELIX, replace that name with whatever you call your harddrives.

LOOPS
I created the folder:
/Volumes/FELIX/audiolib/loops/Apple Loops/Apple

With my Finder I clicked at “Macintosh HD”, where my loops are currently installed. Switch further to
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple
and copy all that folder in there to your new Loops-Folder (and delete the old content). You can do the same with “iLife Sound Effects” if you want. Cause you instrument installer indexed all that loops, you have to go to:
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/
and delete all txt files in there (maybe three or four or simliar- depends on how much Jam Packs you installed, i guess). Start up GarageBand and open you Loop-Browser. It will tell you that you don’t have any Loops installed. Open your finder with your new loops-place, drag the folder where all subfolders with instruments are and drop the into your loop-browser. GarageBand does the rest for you.

INSTRUMENTS
It’s a similar process for your instruments. I created:
/Volumes/FELIX/audiolib/instruments
Then i copied everything from /Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library to this folder. I emptied the Instrument Library Folder. Please note: if you have some stuff allready installed in you new folder (FELIX in my enviroment) pleas copy carefully. OSX will delete old stuff when you just copy folders, and this is not what we want. In this case you have to copy manually file for file. And: you’ll need your superuser password for this action. If you don’t have any yet, open a terminal:

> sudo su

This will ask you for a password. By default you have none. Press enter. If you are in without error message, do this command:

> passwd

and get a new password. By the way, you should do this ALWAYS, it’s a bad idea not to set a superuser password – everybody can login and manipulate your computer this way.

Before you do that, of course i cannot give any guarantees. And please note, i have some kind of bug with my method, if you know how to fix that, let me know. All my instruments are now in the same JamPack, which may be a result of my heavy metal copy actions

When you next start up GarageBand i tells you that it has no Instruments installed. There is “Choose” Button where you can point to your new Instruments folder.

COMPOSING
When I started I didn’t know anything about creating music alone. In fact, i was alone, nobody of my former friends could tell me how to start. In 2006 I bought Magix Music Maker; this was a frustrating piece of software. Once I had something one could name a “song”, I couldn’t develope it the way i want. You are built in a golden cage; everything simple and well designed, but you have not the chance to do something which the developers have thought of. Well, only good thing was that I felt that i -could- do it: I could compose songs.
In 2007 i bought my Mac Mini; a new life started, everything is simple, well designed and ready to use. I will not leave my Mac again, I love it. Included was a programm called GarageBand 1. I started it and recognized quickly that this easy-to-use programm could help me with making music. GarageBand 1 didn’t have any support for a “virtuall keyboard”, so i bought a keyboard from M-Audio. It’s connected via USB, quite simple, ugly, without dynamics keys, but usefull and cheap when you just work with midi files. With that equipment I composed my first songs. However, i quickly switched to GarageBand 3, cause this is so much more comfortable. I bought some Jam-Packs and then I had everything I wanted. BTW, if you are thinking you set up your Mac Mini and off you go- wrong. The Mac Mini has NO cable slot for microphone in. You need to get a soundcard for that. I bought a simple Hercules USB-Soundcard for 30 euro. That was enough for my tests.
Later I bought Logic Express, but it was hard to learn. I learned how to use it, but the MIDI editing stuff is uncomfortable. I used it a while for mixing, but had to learn that my money was wasted. I was happy that I didn’t bought Logic Pro which is much more expensive.

RECORDING
After the MIDI editing, I figured out that my sounds are OK, but I need real, analogue instruments to make my music work. I put in my bassguitar into the Hercules card. It was OK for a try-out but I recognized that this isn’t enough for a professional CD. Later i bought a Phonic Firefly 808 and yest, this hardware is so great- smooth integration into my mac, works perfectly with Core Audio on Mac OSX 10.4.x. Very fine- I started to record.
This was easier with Logic Express; you can record tasks here, one loop over and over again, and at the end you choose the very best and off you go. With GarageBand you have to click “start” for every loop. Well, in the latest GarageBand version this feature is integrated, but I didn’t want to buy it. Maybe the next version; this one has to less features which are of interested of me (who to hell wants a virtual band??).
However, cause Logic Express is so ugly and hard to handle, I used GarageBand again to record.

MIXING
For mixing, GarageBand is very very hard to use. You simply cannot have exact positions, cause everything is to small. Logic Express is perfect for mixing. It also offers the possibility with lots of AU-Plugins, which are usefull this task. I used Logic Express, opened my GarageBand songs and everything worked out well. I made some of the standard-errors a beginner makes, but cleaned that out half a year later.

MASTERING
Mastering- a new field for me. I learned that WaveLab is one of the best pieces of software, but I didn’t want to buy that for a important but short task. GarageBand has some features in this direction, but it looks very gory and low level- I really don’t understand what they want us to use here. However, Logic Express is of course possible. You have to construct your enviroment, and all that just for improving your song. Next problem: you cannot have multiple songs open, which is great for a beginner. However, I remembered Audacity, and thats it! Easy to use it was, and it could integrate all my Logic Express Compressors, Eqs etc. pp. At the end I mastered everything with this great and free Open Source tool.

FAZIT
At the end is clear, a combination of all that tools is the very best for me. My CD sounds great- ok, professional people may have their problems, but the rest will enjoy it like I do. I read very often about “use that, that is cool” and figured out, that this idealism is not worth to speak of. All products have there pros and contras. For a small production, this all is perfect. You don’t need expensive stuff. Just ignore all the “pros” out there or the “semi-pros” who try to tell you that you ONLY can have fun with the most expensive product. They are lying- it’s possible to have professional products without stealing software. I guess, it all depends on your quality and your ears.