Project development infrastructure

[Bill Jackson]

Hey gang,

First, if anyone is paying attention to the checkins, you have seen that I have been making some changes, mostly just to the POM.  I'm trying to get the app to run properly on Tomcat 6, but keep running into little problems that just take time to figure out.  Here's the latest error from the test site, if anyone is interested; I haven't had time yet to ferret out the root cause, but I suspect it is a difference between libraries provided by Jetty and those provided by Tomcat:

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: /WEB-INF/jsp/home.jsp(45,0) Unknown attribute type (java.util.List<net.bigbark.item.Item>) for attribute items.

Second, I have set up TeamCity, a continuous integration (CI) server on the same Tomcat instance: http://haxx.waj3.net/teamcity.  Every time the source is updated -- or when a user with permissions hits the "Run" button :) -- a job builds the application, updates the snapshot war in my semi-public Maven repository at http://maven.waj3.net/ (for the latest orblogs snapshot, just go directly to http://maven.waj3.net/org/orblogs/orblogs/2.0-SNAPSHOT/), and redeploys the application to the test site (http://haxx.waj3.net/).  Another job runs the Maven site plugin (which generates some project information pages) and publishes to http://haxx.waj3.net/devinfo/.

JetBrains has kindly provided an open-source project license for TeamCity free of charge -- which I have yet to actually apply to the server.  :)  Anyway, if you're interested, feel free to create yourself an account and play around.  One of my favorite features is getting build notifications via email and IM on every checkin.  :)

Cheers,
-Bill

[Bill Jackson]

I posted a brief note with a link to this thread on the blog as well, and in the spirit of what I said there, I would like to remind people that we do have a "Getting Started" guide for developers interested in pitching in.  Of course, it could surely use some improvement, so go try it out and let us know what needs fixing -- or request to join the project (by sending me your google ID) and update the wiki yourself!  :)

Also, after my previous post, I checked in some changes to the application code which wire up the Quartz scheduler - that is, the existing feed reader jobs which import entries from other blogs will actually run now!  I just need to fix one or two issues and it should actually work; right now it throws an NPE every time.  :)

-Bill

[Bill Jackson]

Got the feed reader working!  Posted a picture of the homepage with items imported from RSS feeds on my Posterous.  If you like big pictures, go ahead and download it at full size; it's 1424x6191.  :)  Anyway, this should give us a good starting point for really figuring out what feature and UI changes we want to make.  I'll make a copy of what it looks like to the non-logged-in user and post it on the GCode wiki.

Mind you, this is running in Jetty on my laptop; the test server still has the error I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, so if anyone has any ideas about that, let me know.  :)

Cheers,
-Bill

[John Metta]

Bill's right, I know I dropped every ball I was juggling. We (at least
I) need to re-invigorate.

I made the suggestion on Twitter for a code sprint and there seemed to
be some good interest. What's everyone think about making the
development effort more agile? I can't take the lead, since I've not yet
done agile development, but I'm super-interested in learning, and think
it might be a good fit for us.

I think someone else, if possible, should step in as agile lead, but I'd
be happy to organize a scrum, if that's what we need to start. I can
probably make it to a code sprint pretty soon. Given the work that
Patrick has already done, and the recent development by Bill, we might
be up and running with a single sprint.

Let's hear thoughts on this.

Cheers,
-J

[Patrick Lightbody]

I'd love to help. I'm going to be in LA next week, but any time after
would be good for me. Would probably be best to do it in person
somewhere - could we perhaps borrow space at CubeSpace or somewhere
downtown?

Like I said from the start - I can't lead on this but I am happy to
carve out a dedicated block of 3 or 4 hours from time to time,
especially when it means working with some other folks who I can
transfer some knowledge of the codebase to.

Patrick