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Posted on 08 August 2025

Git from src on Debian

Most linux distros have git packages available, but many are not the latest version. Due to this, and the fact the ones on Debian are often quite far behind, I like to build git from src. This is how we can do it...

Posted on 20 June 2023

Custom docker image in AWS ECR used in GitHub Actions

Running a test suite in your CI pipeline is critical but I was recently tasked with getting a test suite running without having the luxury of using database factories or seeders for a variety of reasons. Another approach which I decided to use, was to pre-seed a database with test data and create a custom docker image.

Posted on 26 August 2022

Moving from GitLab pipeline to GitHub Actions for CI/CD

I've been using my self-hosted GitLab instance for my git repos and pipelines for 5 or so years now, but things have changed and I've decided I no longer want to run my self-hosted instance any more. It's purely for hobby/self projects and only accessed by myself, however, one bonus of this is that I also self-host a dockerised GitLab runner that performed all of my CI/CD duties, including the deployment stage, which is the important part.

Posted on 29 April 2021

Integrating HaveIBeenPwned into Laravel Fortify

The HaveIBeenPwned service provided by Troy Hunt contains a whole trove of breach information. It enables you to look up single email address, whole domains and whether a password has been seen in a data breach, for example. It's the latter one that we're interested in for this feature. Let's implement this using the icawebdesign/hibp-php framework-agostic composer package.

Posted on 21 October 2018

PHP, Docker, Xdebug and the missing local variables

I've made a switch in the last 12 months to use Docker as my local development environment for my PHP applications. One of the greatest modules for PHP IMHO, is Xdebug. Many moons ago, I used to frantically hack in var_dump(...); exit; calls to see what a particular variable, object, array, etc contained.

Posted on 02 December 2017

GitLab CE, Docker, PHP7.1, Laravel 5.5, SQLite CI pipeline

I've been using my self-hosted GitLab instance for my git repos and pipelines for 5 or so years now, but things have changed and I've decided I no longer want to run my self-hosted instance any more. It's purely for hobby/self projects and only accessed by myself, however, one bonus of this is that I also self-host a dockerised GitLab runner that performed all of my CI/CD duties, including the deployment stage, which is the important part.

Posted on 08 July 2017

WoSign / StartCom SSL certs soon to be worthless in Google Chrome

"Beginning with Chrome 61, the whitelist will be removed, resulting in full distrust of the existing WoSign and StartCom root certificates and all certificates they have issued," O'Brien said. "Based on the Chromium Development Calendar, this change should be visible in the Chrome Dev channel in the coming weeks, the Chrome Beta channel around late July 2017, and will be released to Stable around mid September 2017."

O'Brien advised sites still using certificates issued by WoSign / StartCom to "consider replacing these certificates as a matter of urgency to minimize disruption for Chrome users.