Last week you heard me announce that Bart and I recorded Taming the Terminal instalment 40 of n. That’s a very normal thing for us to do. But now that Taming the Terminal is a book, there’s a whole lot more that goes on. Helma did her magic programming dance and produced revision 1.3 of the Taming the Terminal book over on Github which produced all of the various versions we talked about. But how does that new book chapter get to you?
The most reliable method requires you to have a Github account, but it’s easy and free. Once you have a Github account, navigate to github.com/bartificer/taming-the-terminal . In the menus to the right of the Taming the Terminal repository name, you’ll see a dropdown for notifications. Select the dropdown and choose Releases Only. This will trigger an email sent to you and from there you can go to the Releases and download the latest version. I wish there was an easier way, but you’re all nerds or at least aspiring nerds, so getting a Github account is right up your alley!
Apple Book Store Version
If you downloaded the book from the Apple Book Store directly, it doesn’t appear that you get any kind of notification. It also depends on the platform you’re on (iOS vs. Mac) whether going to the Book Store and searching for Taming the Terminal will even tell you that it’s new. One OS did for me, but the other did not, and I don’t remember which one did!
The clumsiest and yet easiest way I found to get Chapter 40 added to the book was to delete the book from your Apple Books library and do a new download. That stinks if you had notes you’d taken in the book though. I’m hoping that I’m wrong about this and I missed some very obvious notification or button you can push. If anyone saw an easier way I’d sure like to know about it!
The way to tell for sure if you got the latest version from the Apple Books Store is that the new version of the book has a snazzy redesign to the Taming the Terminal Logo made by Steve. Bart suggested that the bezeled edges were looking long in the tooth so Steve redesigned it to have a nice flat look to it. I always liked the original but when he showed me the new version I loved it.
All Other Versions are linked on Podfeet
All of the other versions,(including the one that works in Apple Books with the audio player Apple won’t let us put in the Book Store) are always up to date on podfeet.com/tttbook. Helma helped me figure out how to create evergreen links so that they will always point to the very latest and greatest version from Github. While these are the latest versions, you’ll never know that a new version is there! If I think of a way to do that I’ll be sure to make it happen.
Bottom line is that there’s new Taming the Terminal goodness and it’s the end of the miniseries within a series all about tmux!