Present Perfect

A new moap release is out ! This release adds support for Darcs to the moap changelog prepare/commit/diff and moap ignore commands, and generation of iCal data based on the releases in DOAP files.

I've been wanting to add iCal and RSS feed generation based on this for a long time, so I can automatically update feeds when I do a release of any piece of software. RSS feeds are an excellent way to keep updated about project releases. And I like seeing the GNOME iCal spread all over my Evolution calendar.

Now, with Dates getting better on my N800 with every release Opened Hand is rocking out on, I wanted to get the GStreamer releases on there too. It was pretty hard to figure out why Evolution was refusing my ics files when subscribed to on the web. Importing them worked fine. In the end, it turned out I was missing a UID field for each VENTRY. And evolution-data-server-1.8 was telling me so ... on its stdout.

(Sure, it is nice for Evo to be all component-based and stuff, but if the end result is that your code is writing to stdout without anything being connected to stdout - because you are some background server process - then you need a better way to get warnings to the main application. Now the components in eds just litter silly output to stdout, showing that nobody ever sees that stuff because nobody bothers keeping it clean. Like I really need to know what memory pointer the currently selected calendar uses ? Enough ranting though.)

Anyway, now I have lovely Dates showing lovely GStreamer releases. Maybe now I should actually make some !

HELP

I am looking for people interested in making me a nice image or icon. Hey, it works for the Opened Hand guys, why can't I use the intarweb to shake down for icons ?

I am also looking for people to package moap for their favourite distro. Come on Gentoo hackers - be agile ! Come on Ubuntu people - care about maintenance !

Shed bike

This is your opportunity to bikeshed ! I have a quick-and-dirty implementation of an RSS feed feature ready to get commited using templating with Cheetah. Users will want to customize their RSS feeds so allowing them to template the feed makes a lot of sense. I am also planning to get the release mail be templated, and do atom support ,and possibly more stuff.

Cheetah was easy to get started with, in about an hour I had the meat of the feature programmed. I am also going to look at Nevow, just because I am ridiculously reverent of anything Twisted - even though it seems Nevow is more suited for XML-like output.

Here's your chance to bike shed ! Which (Python) template system should I use and why ? Bear in mind that I want to be able to generate at least plain text, HTML, RSS, and Atom. Answers on a post card or in the comments !

A new moap release is out ! This release adds support for Darcs to the moap changelog prepare/commit/diff and moap ignore commands, and generation of iCal data based on the...

This release has been sitting on my hard drive for the last week, waiting for me to find some time to finish it off and send it out.

I'm happy with this release because I finally got to hack on a feature that was in my sights for a while now - replacement of the prepare-ChangeLog.pl script. Not only because it is named terribly or because it is in perl, but also because I think this is a useful feature for us non-emacs users that should be correctly maintained and extended to support other VCS systems.

From the RELEASE notes:

In the days of yore, grandpa used to communicate his hacking results
to other greyed hackers using GNOME's prepare-ChangeLog.pl script.
But grandpa was a lazy typist so he named his copy cl.pl
And grandpa was a Subversion user, so he hacked in some ugly SVN support
in his copy of cl.pl.
And a friend of grandpa was a TLA user, so the friend hacked in some uglier
TLA support in their copy of cl.pl.
And grandpa was a sharer, so all grandpa's hacker friends in the old age
retirement home had a copy of cl.pl, either the one with or without TLA
support, depending on when they befriended grandpa.
And grandpa was a Perl hater, so he muttered in his beard every time he
had to look at the code.
And grandpa had Alzheimer's, so he never could remember to send patches
upstream.

But now grandpa has a grandson, who is still young and naive, and full of
energy, and he decided to carry on grandpa's work. And he implemented
moap changelog prepare, and all was well.
And he added "mcp" as an alias to "moap changelog prepare", in his .bashrc,
and "mcc" as an alias to "moap changelog checkin", and lo! did he go forth
and hack and communicate.

And the young hacker removed grandpa's old cl.pl script from his $HOME/bin
directory, printed the script, folded the papers into a bouquet of flowers
and put it on his grandfather's grave.

More info on the project page.

This release is also the first release to receive an outside patch - from none other than GStreamer's bug master, Tim Philipp-Müller. He earns eternal moap "first patch" bragging rights.

On my wish list: support for other VCS systems, and distro packagers packaging this and putting this in their distros.

This release has been sitting on my hard drive for the last week, waiting for me to find some time to finish it off and send it out. I'm happy...