Members: Owen, Con, John, Ed, Dave L, Glenn, Rob, Royce, Julien

Acting Coordinator: Owen

Coding Group Report 2005-06-14

This will be the first report from this group since the announcement that operational groups are being re-formed.

Acting co-ordinator of the group is Owen Courtis.

Volunteer Activity.

Several volunteers have recently come and gone. There is one possible new volunteer who will be available in the near future (after some exams are dealt with).

There hasn't been any constructive output from lately acquired volunteers and I have some concern about the chances of gaining any from future participants. This is based on my experience so far and the comments coming from the FreeGeek coders group. (See http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Rethinking_Coders) Progress at FreeGeek using volunteers has been very slow (glacial is the term they use).

With volunteers I have dealt with there has been none at all, for a range of reasons, (including them leaving again almost immediately). The thing is that there is a lot more work in coding than anyone, including programmers, recognises. Previous and current volunteers are only offering a day a week of work or less and it is taking me more than this to keep up the admittedly limited rate of progress we have at the moment.

I recommend that we offer places to coding volunteers on the basis that they are volunteering for a minimum of 12hrs/week of work. Not that they have to attend for this time, but spend this time on jobs for CBV. I cannot see them being any use with less than this. The loss of production from the time it takes me to supervise them would probably be as greater or greater than that gained from what they did.

Let everyone read the freegeek link quoted above. It should make it clear that running such a group is no piece of cake.

New Resources.

CBV finally has a version control system. It is Subversion, software that is touted to be the new improved CVS. This installation is an essential first step in allowing co-ordination of work between a group of coders. Another necessary step will be training people in how to use it. This process will be helped by the availability of documentation online. (See http://svnbook.red-bean.com )

I will be putting out a brief HOWTO Subversion for new coders.

The server for source code is called ada on the internal net. At the moment the repositories are accessible through port 81. So internally to check out code the command will be:

$ svn checkout

http://ada.cbv.prv:81/svn/cairo

To access it as a remote user, first execute the following:

ssh -L 8181:ada:81 @cbv.dynamic.studio442.com.au

then you can checkout code thus:

$ svn checkout

http://localhost:8181/svn/cairo

There is also a coding issues tracker application Trac, which also lives on ada. This would be the most convenient access method for browsing code. From within the link is

http://ada.cbv.prv/cgi-bin/trac.cgi.

For remote access: ssh -L 8080:ada:80 @cbv.dynamic.studio442.com.au and go to

http://localhost:8080/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

Projects.

Kylie has asked that a set of projects be listed, that possible volunteers be attracted. Here is a possible list for discussion.

Database Projects
1. Group applications interface (in hand)
2. Including inventory of special hardware items in the database.
3. (Later) Inventory of common hardware items in database
4. Monitoring Human resources via database: scheduling, activity tracking. (Some preliminary analysis has been done)
5. Web interface for basic statistics - eg monthtly production.
6. Database backup and version control of organisation model.
Network management
1. Install network monitoring app that will publish stats. through simple html interface.
2. Setup secure port forwarding in iptables on toast to allow access to coding resources on the internal net without needing accounts on the firewall. Necessary to allow outsiders to participate in coding group.
Other
1. Develop toolkit for creating demos and tutorials on os applications using code from X screenshot capturing software combined with Qt toolkit animation widgets. (Not high priority)
2. Groupware/Electronic whiteboard app to facilitate CBV group activities.

Owen Courtis (acting coding group co-ordinator)