aTech Media Blog

New in codebase: new activity feed, improved changeset highlighting...

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:57:00 +0000

This week we’ve pushed a couple of interesting new updates to codebase.

New Activity Feed

One feature we find most useful is the activity feed which includes useful news about new changesets, tickets and deployments as well as other useful information. We’ve now re-designed the feed as well as changed the way it works behind the scenes to speed things up when browsing.

Improvements to changeset browsing & viewing

The diff viewer now highlights the difference between single-line changes.

When displaying a list of changesets, we’ve decreased the size of some, less important, changesets.

Support for displaying submodules in the tree browser

Something we forgot from the first version of codebase was support for submodules. We now highlight submodules in the tree browser with an alternative icon and display a page with the submodule information (including the URL to the repository and commit ref). Also, if the repository is hosted on codebase or github, we’ve included a link to the web-based version of the repository.

Other Minor Updates

We’ve also made a couple of other minor tweaks:

Added a list of repositories to the right bar of the project dashboard
Minor bug fixes with the source & changeset browser interface
Minor changes to the post receive hook payload, full details in the knowledge base

A little update on codebase

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:44:00 +0000

This time last week we released codebase into the wild and started accepting signups and since then we’ve been working hard on improving the app, the gem and the documentation.

The most significant update this week has been the finialisation of the API and it’s associated documentation. The documentation now contains all the details you need to start working with the API.

We’ve also made a significant update to the gem (now at v2.0.5) which improves the error reporting when a deployment is automatically tracked. The previous version used to report success regardless of any errors which could have occurred at the server (access denied, validation errors etc…), however the new version will report any failure with a debug output however it will not halt the deployment. We’d suggest upgrading to the latest version of the gem at your earliest conveinence as it also adds some minor bug fixes and a debug command for use when reporting problems:

sudo gem update codebase-gem --source=http://gems.codebasehq.com

Just this afternoon, I’ve published a quick guide about how to deploy your rails application with Capistrano, Git & Codebase. Why not take a look if you’re new to capistrano, git or codebase deployments?

codebase is now in public beta!

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:16:00 +0000

codebase was released as v1 back in July to a small number of beta testers, and since then we’ve been working hard on adding new features requested by our testers, and fixing any bugs we’ve found along the way. We’re really pleased to announce the launch of our free public beta.

codebase brings together git source control, issue/ticket management & deployment tracking. If you find yourself managing multiple software projects and need a central place to organise
your code – codebase is the solution for you! The list below is just some of the great features we’ve included:

Manage multiple projects and code repositories within your account
Easily see what’s been going on with an easy to follow activity stream
Browse all your source code and files with our attractive, syntax highlighting code browser
Review your changesets with full diff viewer and browse historical versions of every file
A complete ticketing system with direct integration with your repositories
Track your projects’ progress by defining milestones & version targets
Using the codebase gem, easily track each and every deployment you make to your servers
Easily allow any codebase user access to your projects & repositories
Publish a publically readable CHANGELOG for any repository within your account
Use the codebase gem for direct access to ticket information from your local shell

You can now signup for your own codebase account and start trying
out these features for yourself. Head on over to our website for full details or checkout our quick screencast (MOV, 27MB)

If you have any support questions please don’t hesitate to drop us an email or pop into our campfire live chat. We’d also love to hear any suggestion you may have so why not take a look at our feedback forum and post away.

Just published the latest Codebase RubyGem

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:38:00 +0000

I’ve just finished the very initial work on the latest RubyGem for codebase. This gem is a massive improvement from the last which only had very basic features. The new gem features a couple of great timesavers as well as recipes required to track your deployments with Capistrano.

Key Features

Return a complete ticket list (to the shell) for the branch you are currently working on
Output all the information about a specific ticket
Show all the comments for a named changeset
Easily open up areas of the web interface with a single command
and more.

How to get it

Take a look at our knowledge base article for full instructions but

sudo gem install codebase-gem --source=http://gems.codebasehq.com

should get you on your way.

As always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to drop us an email or post over in our feedback forum

Codebase version 2 is live!

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:04:00 +0000

We’re really pleased to be able to announce the launch of codebase version 2. Codebase was released as v1 back in July and since then, we’ve been working hard on adding new features requested by our beta testers and fixing any bugs we’ve found along the way.

Earlier today, we finished and deployed the latest version of the app and upgraded your existing beta account so you can take advantage of all the new great features we’ve added. The list below is some of the new things we’ve added:

Create multiple repositories within a single project
Assign multiple SSH public keys to a single user account
Add comments to a specific changeset
Greatly improved milestone & version management with improved tracking of milestone completion and linking to repository branches
Setup codebase to send information about your pushes using post-receive hooks
Improved ticket update e-mail notifications – now includes more information about changes
Re-designed login & user registration
Import your repository from an existing subversion repository (still in alpha testing but live)
Speed improvements and enhancements to the entire web interface

As well as these updates, we’ve also removed the ‘public projects’ feature – we decided we would specialise heavily in providing a great private repository and workgroup service rather than trying to cater for open source or other public repositories – there are other services which already offer excellent open source hosting.

Important Compatibility Notice: if you have git repositories cloned from the previous version of codebase you will need to update your remote URL within your repository configuration file to reflect the changes we have made to the repository addressing when adding the multiple repo feature. Take a look at our quick guide for information about how to update this.

Why not login to your account and have a look around? We’d love to hear any suggestions, comments or questions you may have so why not take a look at our feedback forum and post away.