It was pretty cool to see a bunch of guys who share the same interests take some time on a Thursday to hang out, drink beers, and chat about python, django, zope, and other stuff. After the original talk was over and some of the other lightening talks that succeeded it was over, a couple of things became very clear to me:

• There was a real need to make it easier for system administrators and OPS people to handle the difficult task of deploying and maintaining systems, cloud or not;
• Some of the tools and/or tool implementations presented were being used in an attempt to minimize this pain, but you were still pretty much had no control over what made its way to the systems in the end of the process;

Having been using rBuilder Online to manage and maintain my Transifex Appliance, and being somewhat “spoiled” with the ability of having fine grained control over the entire software stack and having the option of deploying my final “product” on several different cloud environments, I couldn’t help but offer to speak a bit about my experience. I sure hope my impromptu presentation didn’t come across as being “just a sell’s pitch” and I definitely tried my best not to sound like I was selling something. I truly feel that the technology developed here at rPath can solve many of the typical issues that people have getting their product through the many different life cycles and eventually out the door and into the hands of their customers!

Today I started going through Fabric’s documentation and am already making plans to include it in some of the test automation tools we’re developing here!

Anyhow, after my presentation there was a quick intro to epdb, the “Extended Python Debugger”, a very cool python debugger developed by an ex-rPathian and something I use on a daily basis! Turns out that the epdb currently packaged for Foresight Linux was outdated, so I spent a few minutes during my lunch today to update it. If you’re running Foresight, just run conary update epdb=:2-devel or wait for it to make its way to the stable label. If you’ve never heard of epdb, I strongly suggest you give it a try!

From Transifex v8.0 featutes

Now, mind you this is still very alpha code but that is probably a good thing since you can play with it and give your feedback on how to improve it. As always, you can get this in an easy to consume format by using the Transifex Appliance Developer edition… or you can join the Xfce translators who are already enjoying Transifex latest code!

From Transifex v8.0 featutes

I’ve been contributing with translations for the Brazilian Portuguese language for quite some time now, and have been a strong supporter for the Transifex project as well, so I was thrilled to learn they were “working together”! But there is a second reason why I’m mentioning this on my blog:

Turns out that Nick Schermer, maintainer for http://translations.xfce.org, is using my Transifex appliance too!!! Moreover, he chose to use the appliance built from the development branch to get the very latest bits being committed to the development branch of Transifex. It has been a win-win-win (yes, 3 times!) relationship so far for all parties involved, for:

• Xfce gets a ready to run, batteries included, Transifex appliance with all the latest and coolest features without having to build things by hand.
• Transifex gets tons of excellent feedback for this version still in development and work out all the kinks before the next release.
• My appliance has also enjoyed of tons of excellent feedback and is now more robust and ready for consumption.

From Transifex v8.0 featutes

Some of the cool features that you can expect from the next version of Transifex (and that the over 200 registered Xfce translators are already enjoying) are:

• Better support for Lotte, the online translations editor, and the removal of the 100-strings limitation;
• Automatic translation suggestions within Lotte;
• Support for translation teams;
• New timeline history for tracking contributors, teams, and projects activities;
• Top Translators “hit list” for your bragging rights

From Transifex v8.0 featutes

The Transifex Appliance (developer image) has been updated almost on a daily basis, so those out there already using it can keep it updated using the web based appliance management tool or running conary updateall. As always, you can expect a stable release the very same day that Transifex releases the upcoming 0.8 version! I’d love to hear from all of you appliance users out there. Just drop me a line or a comment here and I’ll do my best to improve your experience.

In order to properly answer this question, one must first take a look at what the year of 2009 reserved for this young distribution. Born out of Ken Vandine’s desire to follow the GNOME project as close to the upstream source as possible and introduce all the latest and coolest applications out there to the desktop before anyone else, Foresight was for a while synonymous to bleeding edge Linux done right!

Powered by the revolutionary Conary package management system and a small but talented and determined crew of developers, Ken was able to ship a new version of the distribution the same day that a GNOME release was published, a feat that no other distribution was able to keep up, even those enjoying of large hordes of developers and user base. Foresight was the first distribution to include several trend setter applications out there to the default installation, such as Banshee, F-Spot, Tomboy, Gwibber, Pulse Audio, PackageKit, among many others! And since the distribution followed a rolling release cycle, users did not have to wait for a major release in order to get the very latest bits.

Even if DistroWatch’s numbers weren’t impressive, those who took the time to test drive the distribution fell in love with the community, package selection, and most likely the possibilities that the underlying Conary technology provided for those inclined to do a little packaging or package maintenance. If you were a GNOME user/fan and didn’t mind the small sized, hand picked repository of supported packages, then you’d probably feel right at home! Sure there were KDE, Xfce, Fluxbox, Openbox packages available but those were mostly supported by some of the core users who didn’t mind doing the heavy lifting.

Then came 2009 and with it the major financial crisis the shook many companies around the world, creating a massive layoff wave for most of the first quarter. Sadly, approximately 75% of the active developers that comprised Foresight’s core developer base were part of the many casualties, including Ken Vandine, the heart and soul of the distribution! By late February these developers had already joined the ranks of companies such as Red Hat and Novell to do package and kernel management. Ken himself was quickly nabbed by Canonical to join their Desktop Experience Team, concluding then the completely dismemberment of the seasoned Foresight team!

Deprived of its core developers who were now devoting their time to working for their respective new companies, Foresight’s run at being a bleeding edge distribution and being able to keep up with the release schedules of GNOME (and all of its dependencies) quickly spiraled down toward what looked like certain doom. António “Doniphon” Meireles, second in charge of the distribution and holder of all the knowledge related to how all parts worked together became the sole guardian and maintainer of all packages. Have you ever tried to sync up and maintain all the modules that make up the X.org stack by yourself? How about making sure that every single package in the repository is properly compiled and linked to a newer version of Python?

Unfortunately for many of our loyal users expected point releases stopped from happening on time and deadlines were never met. Having been using Foresight Linux as my primary and only distribution for the last 3 years, I myself started to wonder if 2009 would mark the end of it all.

It took a few months for the remaining developers and users to get over the deep scars left from the massive exodus suffered early last year, but our user base proved to be very resilient and new developers stepped up to fill in the gaps. António was still doing the heavy lifting but this new crop of developers took upon themselves to bring the distribution closer to its former shape.

Slowly but surely milestones were achieved and the development branch eventually caught up with the latest GNOME packages. As of 2 weeks ago the development branch was pretty stable and I believe that only a few minor issues with PolicyKit were blocking a new release. Some massive work has also been done to pave down the way for Foresight 3.0, a major move that will allow for a more modular platform that can be used to derive other distributions, leveraging the flexibility and functionality provided by Conary. Moreover, the “Boots” project was kicked off to bring a Fedora based distribution completely managed by Conary, which should free up the time our developers spend maintaining some of the more complex stacks of the operating system and let them focus on making your desktop “freaking cool!”

So to answer the original question posted by Thilo, “is Foresight Linux dead?” I can gladly say “Far from it!” I predict that the Foresight community will rally together in 2010 to get back to being the most GNOMEic and bleeding edge distribution out there! As the Foresight Community Manager I can honestly say that we have always been and will always be a niche distribution! We don’t have the man power that distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva or OpenSuse have to provide the same level of documentation or user support. We obviously cannot afford to have the same depth of package variety in our repositories or  claim to have the expertise and time to resolve all issues that manage to get filed in our tracking system. But I can guarantee one thing: Foresight is here to stay!

If you want to try a revolutionary package management system and want to be part of a an exciting crew, come hang out with us on #foresight at Freenode. We will help you get started and I promise you that you’ll be able to contribute in no time.

Expect great things from Foresight Linux this 2010!

In the meantime, the appliance seems to be getting some nice and steady traffic, which I suspect will only increase, specially when a new version of Transifex hits the streets.

Last 30 days

One of the cool new features you can expect is the addition of Translation Teams, yet another way to manage who has access to translate your project! Want to play with this new feature and also be the first one to test the new PostgreSQL addition? Download the Transifex Developer Kit today!

So today I built a plain vanilla appliance based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 with just enough operating system and launched it on VMware vSphere 4. I then ssh’ed into this system and ran:

[root@sweet ~]#: conary update httpd
Including extra troves to resolve dependencies:
apr-util:rpm=1.2.7_6-1-1 apr:rpm=1.2.7_11-1-1 mailcap:rpm=2.1.23_1.fc6-1-1 postgresql-libs:rpm=8.1.4_1.1-1-1
Applying update job:
Install apr(:rpm)=1.2.7_11-1-1
Install apr-util(:rpm)=1.2.7_6-1-1
Install httpd(:rpm)=2.2.3_6.el5-1-1
Install mailcap(:rpm)=2.1.23_1.fc6-1-1
Install postgresql-libs(:rpm)=8.1.4_1.1-1-1
[root@sweet ~]# service httpd start
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
[root@sweet ~]# rpm -q httpd
httpd-2.2.3-6.el5

In case you missed it, I used conary to install the httpd RPM and the entire system is being managed by conary but compliant to what rpm expects! Christmas did come early this year!!!

After updating my appliance to run the latest code, I took a stab at trying to add PCManFM as a project and see if I could then work on trunk code. To make a long story short, the code did not play well with subversion repositories with invalid ssl certificates, and it fell flat on its face. A quick look at the Transifex log files via the appliance’s administrative interface, I was able to ping diegobz on #transifex and with a very subtle crack of a whip got him to look into the problem.

We then proceeded to test and validate some of the changes he made on the spot, and once we got it right, I updated the appliance to use the new code. From then on, it was a matter of creating the project:

Add the proper information to pull code from trunk (I set the Root attribute to https://pcmanfm.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pcmanfm/trunk/ by the way):

Configure it for submission directly to the upstream project (I could also have chosen to send it as a patch via email to the mantainer):

And start working on my translations using the handy dandy Lotte editor:

A few minutes later I was submitting away my translation and getting it committed automatically to the upstream project! This is how translations should be done by the way: working directly with the upstream project.

The only time I had to ssh into the appliance and do manual configuration changes was when I entered my subversion credentials for SourceForge (that’s where PCManFM’s code is hosted) into the /usr/share/transifex/settings/80-vcs-extras.conf file. I added the following line and restarted the apache server:

SVN_CREDENTIALS = {’sourceforge.net’: (‘MY_SF_USER_NAME‘, ‘MY_PASSWORD‘)}

Yeah, I shouldn’t have to ssh into the appliance but I have bugged the Transifex guys about this and am trying to convince them to make this part of the project configuration process… It’s only a matter of time ’til they crack!

Anyhow, there’s some pretty cool new features scheduled to come out with the next release, like granular commit access…

… so, if you want to play with the latest Transifex code, make sure to download the Transifex Appliance Devel images and always keep it up to date using the web based administrative interface. If you’ve never used it, just point your browser to the appliance’s IP address but make sure to use https and add port 8003! For instance, https://ec2-75-101-171-187.compute-1.amazonaws.com:8003 *

* don’t bother trying this url for it will be shutdown soon

As always, feel free to ask me anything related to the appliance, and file issues and/or send your thank-you notes to the Transifex guys!

BillReminder with charting support

A huge thanks to nosklo, Patryk, and Toms for their help, and if you’re looking for a young python project to help out, please consider looking at BillReminder!

I’ve heard that when the RedHat developers present new open-source packages to their local Linux User-Group, before the meeting is over one of the Foresight people will have downloaded the source, created a Foresight package, uploaded it to the repository for folks to get, and it will be available for anyone to use. It’s explicitly designed as a package management system with very little overhead to creating new packages.

by BLUG

“What do Moblin, Xfce, Fedora plus a few other projects have in common? They all use Transifex for their translations!”

There’s quite a few other projects out there already toying with Transifex to see if it fits their needs too, which goes to show that the word is getting out about the benefits of using it as a platform for managing translations. I, for one, am very excited to see all the hard work being poured into it coming to fruition! It definitely validates their vision and it definitely must feel really good to work for Indifex, the startup behind Transifex!

I also noticed that my Transifex Appliance project seems to be generating some traffic too, which leads me to believe that people are downloading it (or launching it on Amazon’s AWS) to test drive it without the need of installing all of the moving pieces that are needed to get your environment up and running. For the last 30 days the appliance has been downloaded 421 times, enough traffic to get it listed in the Most Popular section of rBuilder Online!

Shortly before moving to my own house a couple of weeks ago, I started creating a separate “flavor” of the Transifex Appliance project, this time based on the CentOS (powered by Conary, off course!) platform, but trying to unpack our stuff in the new place together with some pretty tight deadlines at work has limited how much time I can dedicate to this enterprise right now. Chances are that soon after Thanksgiving I may get enough free time to get a CentOS-based Transifex Appliance off the ground!