Dispatches¶

Python Code Quality: Black, Flake8, and Ruff

Python's flexibility is a feature, but that same flexibility means every team is one undocumented style preference away from a code review thread about trailing whitespace. Linters and formatters exist to take those conversations off the table and keep them there.

Three tools dominate the Python ecosystem today: Black, the opinionated formatter; Flake8, the composable linting wrapper; and Ruff, the Rust-powered all-in-one tool that has become the default choice for new projects. Each takes a different approach to the same goal of keeping Python code clean, consistent, and readable.

This post covers what each tool does, the trade-offs involved in choosing between them, who is behind each project, and why Ruff has become the tool to reach for on a greenfield Python project in 2026.

Configuring the GitHub Issue Template Chooser

When you add issue templates to a GitHub repository, the "New Issue" button no longer opens a blank editor. GitHub replaces it with a chooser: a page that lists each template by name and description and, by default, includes a link that lets contributors skip the templates and open a blank issue. The chooser is useful on its own, but a small configuration file alongside your templates gives you considerably more control over what contributors see and where they can go.

The file, .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/config.yml, controls two things: whether blank issues are allowed, and whether additional links appear in the chooser that point contributors to discussions, documentation, or other resources.

This post covers how the file works, what options it supports, and how I use it across my own projects.

Elevate Your Git Workflow: A Guide to Using pre-commit

Every developer has pushed a commit they immediately regretted: a trailing whitespace violation that failed the linter, a file left with Windows line endings, a secret accidentally included in a configuration file, or a Go source file that was never formatted with gofmt. These are the kinds of issues that are trivial to catch but easy to forget under deadline pressure. Pre-commit hooks are the last line of defense between your editor and your repository, and pre-commit is the framework that makes managing them across multiple languages and projects practical.

This post covers what pre-commit is, why you should consider it in your development workflow, how to get it running on your machine, how to run it in CI, and how to use your own hook repository.

Use Ansible Collections Directly from Source During Development

I've recently been working on writing an Ansible collection from scratch. The collection ships everything in a single repo – the collection itself, example playbooks, roles, and supporting content. As it matured I started running it through Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) alongside local development, and that's when a friction point I hadn't anticipated started to slow me down.

I'd been using a Makefile to build and install the collection locally before testing it. Every change - a tweak to a module, an update to a role - meant stopping, rebuilding, reinstalling, then running the playbook. It was interrupting the flow constantly. But I couldn't just rip that out, because I also needed AAP to be able to pull the collection directly from the repo without a manual build step. I needed a setup that worked for both, without breaking either.

When you use AAP with a project repo that also contains the collection you're developing, you end up with a constraint that makes local development awkward. This post explains the problem and how to solve it.

govm: Switch Between Go Versions Without the Headache

If you write Go code regularly across multiple projects, you have almost certainly run into this situation: one project pins to Go 1.22, another requires Go 1.23, and a third is cutting edge on whatever just shipped. Installing Go manually, updating your PATH by hand, and keeping track of which binary lives where is tedious and error-prone. A version manager removes all of that friction.

govm is a lightweight, open-source Go version manager built by Melkey. It ships both a polished terminal UI (TUI) and a clean command-line interface, installs Go releases directly from go.dev, and uses a shim-based approach to switch versions without touching your shell configuration after the initial setup. It has become a regular part of my toolbox as an open source developer who routinely jumps between Go releases.

Why You Should Pin GitHub Actions to Commit Hashes

If you have used GitHub Actions, you have almost certainly written something like this:

steps:
  - name: Checkout
    uses: actions/checkout@v6
  - name: Setup Go
    uses: actions/setup-go@v6

It works. It is clean. It is also handing the keys to your CI pipeline to a tag pointer that anyone with push access to those repositories can move at any time, for any reason, without your knowledge.

This post covers what is actually happening when you write @v..., why it matters, and how to fix it in a way that is sustainable long-term. No conspiracy theories required: just a clear-eyed look at how Git references work and what a supply chain attack actually looks like in practice.

Automate a Ubuntu Server Daily Build on a VMware Desktop Hypervisor

tenthirtyam/packer-vmware-desktop-ubuntu-daily automates the build of a baseline Ubuntu Server virtual machine on VMware Fusion 13 or later, or VMware Workstation 17 or later, from the latest Ubuntu daily release using Packer and cloud-init.

Run ./ubuntu-daily.sh and the pipeline discovers the current daily ISO, validates the SHA256 checksum, performs a fully unattended installation via cloud-init autoinstall, takes a snapshot, and cleans up. The output is a ready-to-use Ubuntu Server virtual machine, named by build date and architecture, accessible over SSH.

Under That Kind of Sky

The area of South Georgia I came from did not announce itself as haunted. It called itself ordinary. It was made of fence lines, gravel, ditches, heat, livestock, debt, prayer, rust, and long stretches of road that seemed to vanish into weather. Nothing in it asked to be mythologized. Still, looking back, it feels touched by something darker than hardship alone. Not a ghost story exactly, but a place where ruin had a pulse and memory seemed to live in the ground.

Bulk Delete GitHub Actions Workflow Runs

GitHub Actions accumulates workflow run history quickly. After a few months of active development, a busy repository can have thousands of runs: every push, every pull request, every scheduled job. Most of those runs are no longer useful, but the GitHub web interface only lets you delete one run at a time. If you want to clean up a large backlog, you need a different approach.

This post covers a one-liner that bulk-deletes all workflow runs for a repository using the GitHub CLI (gh) and jq.

CODEOWNERS: Automating Code Review Ownership

Most projects have a moment when someone merges a change to a critical file without the right people ever seeing it. Not because anyone meant to skip the review, but because nothing in the workflow made it obvious who should have been asked. A security-sensitive configuration file, a shared library that dozens of services depend on, a public API contract: all of them can drift in the wrong direction when ownership is implied rather than explicit.

A CODEOWNERS file solves that problem. It maps paths and patterns in your repository to the people and teams responsible for reviewing them. When someone opens a pull request or merge request that touches those paths, the platform automatically requests a review from the designated owners. No manual assignment required, no institutional knowledge needed, and no way to merge without the right sign-off if you enforce it with branch protection.

This post covers what a CODEOWNERS file is, how to construct one, and how to use it effectively in your repositories.