IDEA: find by XPath

I like the idea of XPath since I've looked at it over 10 years ago. Today I came across a usage that is über cool. I had the need to find some pattern of data across a bunch of xml files, where a there is a list of maps where the list and maps are marked as read-only like in this example:

<c:list-property name="*" displayName="Installed extensions" readOnly="true" required="false">
     <c:map-property name="*" displayName="Name" readOnly="true">
         <c:simple-property name="module" displayName="Module name" readOnly="true"/>
     </c:map-property>
</c:list-property>

Luckily IDEA offers "Find by XPath"

So I could type in my expression and have it search through the whole project.

This looked good, but did not work. Then I remembered the little 'c:' and clicked on the "Edit context..." button, which allowed to set the correct namespace for 'c:':

Now with the namespace correctly set, the search ran for a few seconds and found the occurrences all across my files. /me is a happy user.

Small Fosdem 2012 review

On the weekend of Feb 4th, 2012 the European (and not only) Free and Open source community met in Brussels, Belgium for FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Developers Meeting).



The following video gives an impression on what FOSDEM is like - and I was only able to capture a tiny part of it.

(original size is 960x540)

I only arrived on Saturday at around noon via train. Stuttgart to Cologne was via ICE and from Cologne on I took the Thalys where I had the luck to get a a first class ticket for the price of a regular 2nd class one; the ticket included free WiFi and free breakfast with croissants, sandwiches and beverages.


I gave a talk on RHQ "Recent and future developments". In the presentation I talked about what we have achieved recently and where we may perhaps go in the future.


(original size is 960x540, here are slides as pdf)

As I had the camera with me, I also recorded a few other talks

• Byteman
• Thermostat project
• IcedTea and IcedTeaWeb

I was lucky to meet with some of the JBoss colleagues, but was not able to make it to the virt sessions and to meet more of the various Red Hat people that were there. Fortunately some of the talks were recorded by the FOSDEM crew and will hopefully be online soon.

FOSDEM is for sure a conference to go to -- and not only because entrance is free and there is beer sold all over the place :)