Cormoran Development Blog

Finalist in the VI CUSL

2012-04-27T21:41:00.000+02:00

I am really happy to announce that Cormoran project has been selected as a finalist of the VI CUSL along with three other projects: Nela, Daf-Collage and GeoTask.

Awards will be announced in the final phase of the contest, that will take place on 10 and 11 May in Seville, Spain. These days participants will present their projects to others participants and assistants. I will use my presentation to talk about the beginning of the project, how it is developed and the future plans for the project.

~~The final phase schedule will be published in a few days.~~ UPDATE: The final phase schedule is already published.

Finally congratulations to the other finalists. See you there!

Cormoran 0.1 is out!

2012-02-19T02:27:00.000+01:00

We are so happy to announce that the first Cormoran version has been released in last hours! You can read the release notes for this version.

Also there are a basic tutorial to getting started with Cormoran.

Next week we will start planning the roadmap for version 0.2.

Finally thank everyone who made this possible :)

Continuous integration with Travis

2012-02-13T18:30:00.000+01:00

We recently started using Travis CI as continuous integration server for Cormoran. Travis is a distributed build system for the open source community used by projects like Ruby, Rails, Rubinius, Rubygems and a large number of open source projects.

Travis is integrated with GitHub and supports various programming languages like Ruby, Node.js or PHP. Although Travis doesn't support Python language it's possible to use it with Python projects. Here's how to do it ;)

First of all you need to sign in through GitHub and follow the getting started guide here. In the third step you need to create a .travis.yml configuration file to tell Travis how to build your project. This is an example of the structure that must have.

language: python
before_script:
    - virtualenv cormoran_env
    - source cormoran_env/bin/activate
    - pip install nose pyhamcrest pydoubles coverage

script:
    - python setup.py develop
    - nosetests tests/unit

There are only three sections: language, before_script and script. The first section tells Travis the programming language of the project. We use Python, although is not supported, to pass travis-lint check.

The next two sections are a set of shell commands to build the project. The before_script section is executed before main script and script is the main script to build your project. We basically create a virtual environment and install the dependencies and then build project and run tests.

That's all! We already have our continuous integration system.

Travis CI Documentation

Cormoran 0.1 Roadmap

2012-02-11T19:18:00.001+01:00

This week we had been working very hard to have as soon as possible an usable version of Cormoran. There are only a few pending issues to release next version. You can find the roadmap here.

Hopefully next week we will announce the Cormoran 0.1 release :)

The CUSL and Twitter! (social #cusl)

2012-02-06T20:52:00.001+01:00

In this year's CUSL edition has been added a new option in the projects data. Now, in addition to the blog, the RSS feed and the project code, you can add a twitter account for your project.

I think that is a great idea of the contest organizers. Any free and open
source project needs build a rich and plural users community, and social networks are a good place to do it. Everyone working in open source projects know how difficult is to keep a project alive and we must take advantage of the social networks.

To keep up of participant projects news we've created this twitter list with all available projects accounts here. Members of the list are updated regularly to not miss anything :)

Still do not have a twitter account for your project? So what are you waiting for? Create an account and follow our list of participants!

Cormoran in the 6th CUSL

2011-12-01T20:40:00.001+01:00

We are so happy to announce that the Cormoran framework has been accepted to participate in the 6th edition of the Concurso Universitario de Software Libre.

In the previous edition the project receives few awards and special mentions, but one year later we're back with fresh batteries and new challenges for the future of the project.

Hey! You can follow closely the development of the project on this blog or via our RSS. There will be news soon!

Happy Hacking!

Build API documentation using Sphinx

2011-05-01T13:09:00.003+02:00

According to its website, Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation.

Install Sphinx
To install Sphinx in your Unix system use your distribution default installation mechanism or run the next command as root user.

# easy_install -U sphinx

Setting up documentation sources
To document a project using Sphinx we need to create a conf.py file which contains configuration options to build the documentation. We can create it automatically running sphinx-quickstart.

$ mkdir docs
$ cd docs
$ sphinx-quickstart

The sphinx-quickstart command asks you some questions about configuration, be sure to say yes to the autodoc extension.

Document your project
Now you have a conf.py and index.rst files in your docs directory. You can leave both files unchanged and start documenting your project API. For example, document the Cormoran cache module using autodoc:

$ vim cache.rst

And now run sphinx-build as follow to create html documentation:

$ cd ..
$ sphinx-build -b html docs _build

To explore the newly generated html documentation got to _build directory and open index.html.

To see a complete tutorial for documenting using Sphinx, go to its online tutorial.

Example
The Cormoran API documentation is a great example of this tutorial.

Special mention in the 5th CUSL #cusl5

2011-04-30T12:08:00.001+02:00

On April 27 were announced the 5th CUSL finalists and the Cormoran project has received a special mention. This is another great news for the project and we are very pleased to achieve this result.

The news has publicized the project on the Internet in portals like barrapunto.com and genbetadev.com.

Congratulations to all finalists and good luck in the final phase in Granada!

Cormoran brand design

2011-04-21T17:49:00.000+02:00

The project has new image!

You can find Cormoran design at http://cormoran.nhopkg.org/brand (svg and png files).

This is one of the largest external contribution to the project. Thanks to Jose Miguel Pulpón for his great work.

Cormoran was second in the Madrid CUSL

2011-04-21T14:25:00.000+02:00

Last Friday was the final phase of the local CUSL of Madrid, in Vicálvaro, where Cormoran is involved. It was an interesting event where participants presented their projects and were announced the winners of this year.

There I had the opportunity to present the project to other participants and organizers. I also met and shared views with the attendees. You can download the presentation from here.

In addition, the Cormoran project won the second prize! Really significant for the progress of the project.

Finally, congratulations to the PirannaFS project for its first place in the contest.

Cormoran project presentation in Madrid

2011-03-27T12:49:00.000+02:00

On April 15 at 10:00 will start the final phase of Madrid local CUSL. I will participate in this event by presenting the Cormoran project.

In the following link you can see the whole program.

http://madridonrails.com/modules/?r=events/view/Concurso-de-Software-Libre

At 11.00 Cormoran presentation begins. Of course, anyone who is interested in the project are invited.

Cormoran between the ten most active projects in the forge

2011-03-27T12:36:00.000+02:00

Today, the Cormoran project is the 6th most active project in the RedIris forge.

Here is a screenshot of the feat.

Thank you very much to all who follow the project ;)

Expanding the Cormoran community!

2011-03-20T01:47:00.002+01:00

The last week I added the Cormoran project to two open source and free software famous portals: The Python Package Index and Freshmeat.net.

The Python Package Index is the official third-party software repository for the Python language, a good place to distribute and promote projects like Cormoran. The second portal, Freshmeat.net, help software users to keep track of software releases and more interesting stuff about projects.

But the big news this week is: Cormoran has been added to Softpedia's database of software programs for Linux (here). Without doubt, a turning point in expanding the project :)

Happy Hacking!

Cormoran development documentation

2011-03-09T21:22:00.001+01:00

Overview

Cormoran is an Object-Relational Mapper and persistence framework written in Python. Its main goal is to speed application development and data access from database.

Cormoran is an alternative to existing persistence frameworks in Python. They usually slow run applications, especially web applications, where speed is an important point.

Cormoran will be open source and free software released under the GNU GPLv3.

Development

Cormoran is divided into two parts. The first is the persistence framework. The second is the abstraction of various types of persistence mechanisms (databases, files, ...).

The persistence framework has a core class called \emph{Store} that maintains connections to all the persistence mechanisms and performs the process of persistent objects. Store contains \emph{Cache} and \emph{Transaction} systems.

The main persistence system are relational databases using \emph{Structured Query Language}. In the future, other persistence mechanisms will be added (NoSQL, XML, ...).

Here you can see a class diagram of the Cormoran package and the relational databases abstraction.

Roadmap

Here are the phases of the Cormoran development.

Milestone 0.1

Persistence Layer

Backbone of the persistence layer (Store).
Cache system.
Transaction system.

Object-Relational Mapper

Relational database abstraction.
Structured Query Language compiler.
Basic CRUD behavior.
SQLite backend.

Documentation

Document Cormoran API using Sphinx.
Write a complete Cormoran tutorial.
Develop and publish performance tests against other persistence frameworks.

Release 0.1.x series

Release 0.1 version.
Fix bugs.

To see the complete document in PDF format, follow the link (mirror).

Cormoran supports the candidature!

2011-02-23T18:28:00.000+01:00

Cormoran project supports Free and Open Source Software Community as a candidate for the Prince of Asturias Awards 2011 in the International Cooperation category.

Back to development

2011-02-02T20:56:00.000+01:00

After a few weeks without progress on the project we return with renewed strength to continue the Cormoran development. Over the next week we will publish news about the project (a final roadmap) and we will update the code repositories and the forge. In two weeks we expect to release the first version of Cormoran.

Once released the first version of Cormoran we will focus on adding more features, document the project, brand design, create tutorials and screencasts and publicize the project.

Thank you and happy hacking!

Cormoran in social networks

2010-11-14T11:49:00.000+01:00

You can follow the progress of the Cormoran project through social networks.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cormoranproject
Identi.ca: http://identi.ca/cormoranproject

You can also join our IRC channel at #cormoran (freenode.net) using your favourite desktop client or your web browser here.

Welcome to Cormoran project

2010-10-20T14:08:00.001+02:00

This is the first post of the Cormoran development blog. Cormoran will be a very fast and lightweight Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) written in Python.

Currently, it accessed a large number of information stored in databases and is necessary to make this process as quickly as possible. This data access is done through applications, and its development is slowed by differences between database engines and the need to learn an additional programming language (SQL, for example).
At this point an ORM accelerates development of applications using databases, but slows the access to information. In general, an application developed with an ORM is several times slower than the same application running SQL directly. For this reason, the Cormoran project aims to improve the speed of execution through a simple and powerful framework and the optimization of different database engines.

Cormoran will be an open source software released under GNU GPL license.