Re: Solon project

[Henrik Ingo]

Hi all

How are you doing? By now you have probably realized the true nature
of this project: A lot of challenges in installing both Liquid
Feedback and Helios, and hopefully a bit less with Solon itself.

I just want to offer some encouragement on this point: This is very
much what real life is about: very little actually writing code, very
much troubleshooting and integrating existing software written by
others. When I was integrating the V8 JavaScript engine into Drizzle I
remember I once spent several hours reading V8 header files to find
out how to properly handle multi-threading, and in the end the
solution was to add a single line of code, which took one minute to do
and commit.

Like I said last week, while the Liquid Feedback installation is quite
complicated, it is actually well documented and you should be able to
make it work by carefully following the instructions.

I installed Helios Voting yesterday and unfortunately can't say the
same about that one. I've committed a 13 point errata on how to
actually install Helios. Hope this helps if you were in trouble:
https://github.com/henrikingo/solon-voting/blob/master/docs/helios-install-howto.md

As for Solon, I hope the Readme works for you and if not, ask on the
mailing list.

**

I wanted to ask if you want to have a Skype call again tomorrow, at
the same time as last week? Or do you need more time before there is
something to talk about?

Also, please join the mailing list at:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/solon-voting
I would prefer we have all communication there, as is appropriate for
any open source project.

henrik


On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 1:58 PM, Henrik Ingo <henri...@avoinelama.fi> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Here's a summary of our kick off call today:
>
> Project scope:
> 3 independent student projects. Deadline is end of March, this still
> leaves some time to write and submit the coursework. Estimated working
> time is ~2 hours per day.
>
> First tasks are to install each component and prepare a Virtualbox
> image that everyone can use as working environment. We will create 3
> separate images, one each for Liquid Feedback, Solon Voting and Helios
> Voting.
>
> At the same time, everyone should think of, and write down, proposals
> for what you want to do during the 2 month project. Probably you
> should start with some "practice project" first to get more familiar
> with the code base. For example, creating some installation script,
> example data or such is usually a good first task to "tame" some new
> software and is also useful later on in the project.
>
> As overall goal I would say the goal for us is to take the "dummy"
> backend that is there in Solon now, and replace it with Helios. When
> thinking of what each of you want to do, you should think of some sub
> task that gets that done.
>
> My next tasks is to write a blog or two about Helios and how to
> integrate it with Solon.
>
>
> We can/should use the solon mailing list for all email discussion:
> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/solon-voting
>
> You can also ping me on Skype, but mailing list is good because then
> everyone benefits from the discussion.
>
> You of course also need to create an account on github so that you can
> push your code and sende merge requests.
>
> Let's agree to do a Skype call again next Tuesday, 3:30 IST and 12:00
> Helsinki time.
>
> henrik
>
> --
> henri...@avoinelama.fi
> +358-40-8211286 skype: henrik.ingo irc: hingo
> www.openlife.cc
>
> My LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=9522559



--
henri...@avoinelama.fi
+358-40-8211286 skype: henrik.ingo irc: hingo
www.openlife.cc

My LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=9522559

[Henrik Ingo]

Let's do that. The LF installation really takes time and there's
nothing we can do about it. So let's skip Skype calls tomorrow and
just let me know per email how you are progressing. Once you've
installed it, you should of course spend a bit of time also on the fun
part: Create user accounts for yourself and make some mock elections
so you get an understanding of how the system actually works.

henrik

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Abhishek Jatram
<abhishek...@iitbhu.ac.in> wrote:
> First of all ,I would like to thank you for sharing your experience.
> It was not as easy as it looked to install Liquid feedback. We tried
> 2-3 days for installing liquid feedback, but could not patch it
> successfully.
>
> We had already spent a lot of time in installing debian, we
> went low-on-energy while installing Liquid feedback, and are still
> working on it.
>
> We were actually facing many problems with the installation,
> and your advice on trying it out with patience has eased us out.
>
> So I would request you to provide us with some more time. We
> would give you more update on our work in 2-3 days and accordingly
> decide when our next skype call should be.
>
> Thanking you,
>
> Abhishek Jatram
> Shubham Gupta
> Abhay Jain

[Henrik Ingo]

Btw, you mention installing Debian.

Are you aware that there are ready-to-go Vagrant / VirtualBox images available:
http://www.vagrantbox.es/

So basically you can just do:
vagrant box add debian-squeeze http://..... and it will download a
debian image for you.

henrik

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Abhishek Jatram
<abhishek...@iitbhu.ac.in> wrote:
> First of all ,I would like to thank you for sharing your experience.
> It was not as easy as it looked to install Liquid feedback. We tried
> 2-3 days for installing liquid feedback, but could not patch it
> successfully.
>
> We had already spent a lot of time in installing debian, we
> went low-on-energy while installing Liquid feedback, and are still
> working on it.
>
> We were actually facing many problems with the installation,
> and your advice on trying it out with patience has eased us out.
>
> So I would request you to provide us with some more time. We
> would give you more update on our work in 2-3 days and accordingly
> decide when our next skype call should be.
>
> Thanking you,
>
> Abhishek Jatram
> Shubham Gupta
> Abhay Jain
>

[Henrik Ingo]

As a followup to main own email:

Turns out there is a helios branch on github where the installation
procedure is brought up to date and much simpler. You should join the
helios mailing list to read about it:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/helios-voting

henrik

[abhay jain]

Hello sir
Sir  I have installed liquid feedback and all its components
successfully according to the guidelines on liquidfeedback.org
and I have also applied the patch to it.
As I have installed both liquid feedback frontend and core,but I
amnot able to figure out how to run liquid feedback and conduct
mock elections.
In solon ,when I was trying to start the webserver using
su www-data -c 'python solon_server.py'
I got some error that said the attribute listen is not associated with
application.So ,I googled it and found out the application has not got
attribute listen intornado version 1.1 which is currently installed in my
system,but is present in v 1.2.So I tried to install tornado v 1.2 but in
v 1.2 I am getting different errors regarding application.listen.

further while insalling helios when I am trying to initialize the postgresql 

database schema using "python manage.py syncdb" I am getting 

an error that manage.py file does not exists.

thanking you
sincerely yours

[Henrik Ingo]

Hi Abhay

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 6:36 PM, abhay jain <abhay.ja...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello sir
> Sir I have installed liquid feedback and all its components
> successfully according to the guidelines on liquidfeedback.org
> and I have also applied the patch to it.
> As I have installed both liquid feedback frontend and core,but I
> amnot able to figure out how to run liquid feedback and conduct
> mock elections.

So let's stop here first: If you forget Solon, are you able to launch
Liquid Feedback frontend, make it connect to the PostgreSQL database,
log in with your web browser, and create new units, issues, etc?

Even with the patch applied, the default setting is to run Liquid
Feedback voting exactly as the unpatched version. So your first step
should be to just try to use Liquid Feedback in the standard way.

> In solon ,when I was trying to start the webserver using
> su www-data -c 'python solon_server.py'
> I got some error that said the attribute listen is not associated with
> application.So ,I googled it and found out the application has not got
> attribute listen intornado version 1.1 which is currently installed in my
> system,but is present in v 1.2.So I tried to install tornado v 1.2 but in
> v 1.2 I am getting different errors regarding application.listen.

Please always copy paste the exact errors.

> further while insalling helios when I am trying to initialize the postgresql
> database schema using "python manage.py syncdb" I am getting
> an error that manage.py file does not exists.
>

Please join the Helios mailing list and follow the new installation
instructions posted a week ago by Stephane and Ben