Tag: development

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Apache Allura is an open source repo/project management system

Apache Allura is an open source implementation of a software “forge”, a web site that manages source code repositories, bug reports, discussions, wiki pages, blogs and more for any number of individual projects.

Source: Apache Allura™ / Wiki / Home

Looks like it could be a good alternative for folks looking for something that is not Github to help manage code and projects. Written Python, uses MongoDB as its dbm, search is SOLR powered.

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Gerrit is a web-based code review tool built on top of the git version control system

Gerrit is intended to provide a light weight framework for reviewing every commit before it is accepted into the code base. Changes are uploaded to Gerrit but don’t actually become a part of the project until they’ve been reviewed and accepted. In many ways this is simply tooling to support the standard open source process of submitting patches which are then reviewed by the project members before being applied to the code base. However Gerrit goes a step further making it simple for all committers on a project to ensure that changes are checked over before they’re actually applied. Because of this Gerrit is equally useful where all users are trusted committers such as may be the case with closed-source commercial development. Either way it’s still desirable to have code reviewed to improve the quality and maintainability of the code. After all, if only one person has seen the code it may be a little difficult to maintain when that person leaves.

via Gerrit Code Review – A Quick Introduction.

This is like something that may be worth doing to help make sure at least one other person is looking over code before it gets committed. Deploying code that only one of us has ever seen is a bit of a problem around here especially when it fails.

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Git Large File Storage Extension Allows for Better Versioning of Large Files

Git Large File Storage (LFS) replaces large files such as audio samples, videos, datasets, and graphics with text pointers inside Git, while storing the file contents on a remote server like GitHub.com or GitHub Enterprise.

via Git Large File Storage.

This could represent a solution not only for projects with large media assets, but also for doing things like keeping database dumps within a project. There is an API that lets you build a backend so you don;t need to use Github. The Reference server that uses the API is at https://github.com/github/lfs-test-server.

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Facebook releases Augmented Traffic Control, an open source tool for simulating network conditions

Augmented Traffic Control (ATC) is a tool to simulate network conditions. It allows controlling the connection that a device has to the internet. Aspects of the connection that can be controlled include:

bandwidth, latency, packet loss, corrupted packets, packets ordering

In order to be able to shape the network traffic, ATC must be running on a device that routes the traffic and sees the real IP address of the device, like your network gateway for instance.

https://github.com/facebook/augmented-traffic-control

This tool should be useful to anyone building an app on the network. CALI could use this to test behavior of Lessons on a bad connection, something we’ve been thinking about recently.

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Use Personas to Make Websites Better

The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative user research and web analytics. Remember, your personas are only as good as the research behind them. Effective personas:

  • Represent a major user group for your website

  • Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups

  • Give a clear picture of the user’s expectations and how they’re likely to use the site

  • Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality

  • Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values

via Personas | Usability.gov.