techpolcook

Update de trackerwidget v1.11

2010-04-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

This is a bug release. Trackerwidget can now handle projects set as https.
You can find it here

TrackerWidget version 1.1

2010-03-04T04:07:00.000-08:00

I just uploaded a new version of trackerWidget. It uses the API v3 now from pivotal. And has 2 main new features:

Users can now choose the owner of a story (it updates dynamically according to the project)
Multiple file attachment is now possible, with a drag and drop on a button.

There are also some minor improvements. The new version can be downloaded here. Please let me know if you need some other features, and I'll see if I have time to include it.

TrackerWidget on GoogleCode

2010-02-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

As requested by Andre Brunetta, I released TrackerWidget as Open Source at Google Code. Any contribution to make this little widget better is welcome.
The project tree can be found here.

Concrete5: a promising CMS

2009-12-09T06:20:00.000-08:00

I recently had to develop very quickly a WebSite for my company after years of happy outsourcing. So I started to investigate a little bit to see if there was something new in the world of open source CMS.
In the past I worked with Mambo/Joomla, always hated it (how come you HAVE to include in an xml a list of all the files you use in a theme ????), I was once quite an advanced user of Typo3 but the last version needs php > v5.2 and I've had some performance issues with moderate traffic.
Drupal doesn't provide front end editing and the mix of Backend/Frontend in the same interface resulted very disturbing to me. I didn't investigate any further but I think the custom theming is a pain in the ass too.
Desperate, I finally clicked on a banner and reached the site of Concrete5.
The front page screencast looked promising, I installed it, started to experiment and got very disappointed by a 50% of 404 error when I was checking out, or trying to edit pieces. I found very little bug info (and none useful) about that problem so I dropped it and kept searching for my dreamed CMS without any success.
I woke up the next day with an obsession: if there was so little entries about that bug, it must have been something I did myself ! So I reinstalled it and it started to work like a charm.
I am not sure about what I did the first time but I think it's because I deleted the root page and replaced it. It could have something to do with the changed id of the root page.
Since then I am a very very pleased Concrete5 addict. As the site states, its a mix between an idiot proof easy to use CMS and a full MVC Php Framework.
The front end editing is amazingly helpful for my client but the most interesting part is the programming. You can start Theming after 5 lines or reading, adding modules, integrating your own external app, developing reusable custom components, modifying existing core modules are very easy to get a grip on.
There are some cons like the thinness of the documentation, especially the API, the automatic inclusion of the some js code you might not want but the overall is great.
I hate tutorials - they always insist on simplistic concepts and fly over the hard parts - so I will post here some small hints that took me a couple of hours to discover and might be useful to other programers.

Php script trac2tracker

2009-11-05T06:35:00.000-08:00

This is a small script that exports the data from Trac into Pivotal Tracker. The file has to be edited and the "configuration part" changed to suit your settings.
It has some limitations :

Adding accepted stories is not currently supported by Tracker's API
The story title cannot be searched so the deduplication is made by updating the keywords field in the original database (optional)
It is not possible to set the note author's name. So Trac comments authors are lost
I didn't get the logic with story types and the estimate field. I had to set it to 1 if the story is not a bug otherwise I got error.

You can download it:

Here

Please let me know if it was of some use and of modifications/improvements to this script.

Widget for Pivotal´s tracker

2009-11-03T04:37:00.000-08:00

After years of searching for a good Software Project manager, and trying a lot (the free ones mostly but some unfortunately bought) I finally reached Pivotal Tracker and got immediately interested by its first sight simplicity hiding a very powerful PM that suited perfectly our needs.

I am not a dogmatic Agile programming fan but some of its concepts seduced me, I got interested in GTD methogology , but I found it too personal to be suitable for a team and I was looking for something like a mix of both.

Tracker is flexible enough to let you use it from a simple todo list to a big agile project without ever upsetting you with the usual Error: required field empty (except when you don't enter the story name, but I can live with that). The account setup was immediate, the help page very clear, and they have an API based on REST that accesses directly the database and allows you to virtually do anything.

I got so sure of my choice that we immediately started to develop a couple of tools:

1/ to ease the process of story upload (stories are similar to tasks or tickets in other PMs)

2/ to help us migrate from our current PM: Trac

For #1 as we are mostly based on Mac OSX, we developed a very simple Dashboard widget that can be downloaded

here

We are currently working on the migration script that I will upload here when it will be ready, in a couple of days.