------art_2583_20070762.1207147248883
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 11:55 AM, ara howard <ara.t.howard / gmail.com> wrote:

>
>  punch is a k.i.s.s. tool for tracking the hours spent on various
> projects.
>  it supports logging hours under a project name, adding notes about work
>  done during that period, and several very simple reporting tools that
>  operate over a window of time.
>


Nice project Ara! I think this will be real useful. I have yet to find a
time tracking system that I like, but the interface you mentioned looks like
a winner.

One question/enhancement idea - assuming that we are working on one project
at a time (otherwise we're double billing), can we simplify the interface so
that once we punch in with a project name, that we can log to that project
without having to specify the project name again.

So basically you'd do something like

punch in projectname
punch log 'my log entry for that running project' # last project is assumed
punch out # you already support this I believe

and maybe punch in would support the last project idea, assuming that one
will go in and out of a project many times, so if you don't specify assume
the last project again

punch in # assumes last project
....

Seems like maybe your interface could support both ways (explicit or
implicit project name specification) based on the number of args passed in
or if necessary we could use an option like:

punch in --last # punch in for last project used
punch log --last 'entry for the same project I last used'

Maybe if we have this default project idea for all commands then it should
always echo out what project it is going in so you know for sure that you
had the time going into the right bucket. I think this is true for punch out
currently, but punch in and punch log don't currently do this.

It would probably be nice to have an informational method like

punch last # tells you what projectname is the default last project



Finally, I had a little trouble with install on windoze (yeah, I wish I
didn't have to use it either)

I got the following errror

C:\Documents and Settings\jbarczewski\Desktop>punch help list
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in
`gem_original_require': no such file to load -- chronic (LoadError)
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in
`require'
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/punch-0.0.2/bin/punch:308
        from c:/ruby/bin/punch:16

Installing chronic with gem install chronic fixed that


Also then hit another error

c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/punch-0.0.2/bin/punch:313:in `expand_path':
couldn't find HOME environment -- expanding `~' (ArgumentError)
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/punch-0.0.2/bin/punch:313
        from c:/ruby/bin/punch:16


Maybe for windows you could check for USERPROFILE if HOME is not set??

I worked around by setting HOME variable to be the value of USERPROFILE and
things worked fine.
USERPROFILE  :\Documents and Settings\jbarczewski


Thanks for all your work and for sharing this with the community!

Jeff

-- 
Jeff Barczewski, MasterView core team
Inspired Horizons Ruby on Rails Training and Consultancy
http://inspiredhorizons.com/

------art_2583_20070762.1207147248883--