The process for building debian packages is actually very well documented, though many of the tutorials you will find are aimed at people who are packaging third-party software instead of their own.

Also, I'm running on Debian's Lenny, and I need to produce packages that install cleanly on ...

Exploring zsh features made me want to figure out some of the history-editing wizardry. (Bash has similar history tricks, I just never bothered to dive too deeply into them.)

If you want to experiment with history expansion a bit, you can echo the result instead of executing it:

hostname:~/dir ...

I'll take an array over a giant switch-case statement any day.

1. The array definition will be more compact and easier to see all at once.
2. Defining actions in an array enforces uniformity.
3. You can put checks in the code to automatically verify that the array definition is complete. (I ...

Since the beginning of time, all the cool kids have had really cool shell prompts. It's a great place to display helpful information, and zsh has features that let you have a flexible, informative, unobtrusive prompt.

Set your prompt by setting $PROMPT. If you do PROMPT='foo ', the shell ...

At some point your team is going to be gone. Not all at once (well, maybe, but in that case you won't care), but over time turnover will completely replace your team.

If you are the manager, and you outlast the team, you're going to pay for low ...