Installing globally Karma test runner on Debian

I was not able to install Karma test runner for JavaScript on my Debian squeeze. It kept failing with the error message:

npm ERR! System Linux 3.11-2-amd64
npm ERR! command "/usr/bin/nodejs" "/usr/bin/npm" "-g" "install" "karma"
npm ERR! cwd /home/ma
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.24
npm ERR! npm -v 1.3.10
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/karma/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.compat.js
npm ERR! fstream_path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/karma/node_modules/lodash/dist/lodash.compat.js
npm ERR! fstream_type File
npm ERR! fstream_class FileWriter
npm ERR! code ENOENT
npm ERR! errno 34
npm ERR! fstream_stack /usr/lib/nodejs/fstream/lib/writer.js:284:26
npm ERR! fstream_stack Object.oncomplete (fs.js:107:15)

By default, Debian installs node.js with the name nodejs although the usual name for the node command is node. For some reason, this causes an issue with the npm install of karma. I then created a symbolic link node which points to nodejs:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

This solved the issue and I was able to install karma without any problem with the command:

sudo npm -g install karma

Using NuGet with mono on Debian

I tried to use NuGet on my Debian installation and I had several issues to solve. Thanks to this and this link, I was finally able to make it work! Here are the steps:

First install mono with all the SDK:

$ sudo apt-get install mono-complete

Install https certificate so that Mono can trust the source for NuGet

$ mozroots --import --sync

Download NuGet command line bootstrapper (NuGet.exe)

Copy MsBuild dll from Microsoft and put it in the same directory as NuGet.exe. You can find this dll in a Windows OS here "C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\Microsoft.Build.dll" or you can find it in Windows SDK for .NET framework 4.0

Finally, running this command line should show help information

$ mono --runtime=v4.0.30319 NuGet.exe

And you should be able to download any package with

$ mono --runtime=v4.0.30319 NuGet.exe Install Cassette.Web

Debian gem install RMagick

I tried to install RMagick gem on my Debian box and got the following error:

checking for Magick-config... no
Can't install RMagick 2.3.0. Can't find Magick-config in [...]

I installed libmagickcore-dev:

sudo apt-get install libmagickcore-dev

But I still had an error with:

Can't find MagickWand.h

The problem was solved by installing libmagickwand-dev:

sudo apt-get install libmagickwand-dev

Hope that helps!

Debian autotest setup

I spent some time learning Ruby on Rails these days and I had some trouble setting up autotest on my Debian box.
I finally managed to make it work thanks to these instructions.

$ sudo gem install ZenTest
$ sudo gem install autotest-rails
$ sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin
$ sudo gem install test_notifier

And then add require test_notifier/runner/autotest" to the file ~/.autotest