The KForge Project

KForge 0.14 is out. Get it via the download page:

http://www.kforgeproject.com/download/

Or direct from

http://www.kforgeproject.com/files/kforge-0.14.tar.gz

Changes

• Ensure admin pages at /admin/ and not just /admin/model/.
• Set zip_safe to False in setup.py to avoid problems with apache/modpython.
• Brought guide completely up to date.
• Ensure access control works with Apache 2.0 and not just 2.2.
• Alphabetical sorting of projects and persons.
• Removed redundant variables from configuration file.
• Updated docstrings for plugins to include full installation instructions.

About KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

For more information see the about page: http://www.kforgeproject.com/about/

KForge 0.13 is out. Get it via the download page:

http://www.kforgeproject.com/download/

Or direct from

http://www.kforgeproject.com/files/kforge-0.13.tar.gz

Changes

• KForge runs on a single virtual host and can be mounted off the site root using uri_prefix (ticket:44)
• Simplified installation process using setuptools (ticket:30 and ticket:41)
• Fix bug whereby non-authorised users could issue post requests (ticket:38)
• Time zone for internal time stamps now set correctly (ticket:42)
• Support for trac >= 0.10 (ticket:39)
• Refactored and improve test process.

About KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

For more information see the about page: http://www.kforgeproject.com/about/

All features planned for this release are now fully implemented and we’re busy polishing the docs (UPGRADE and INSTALL especially), squashing bugs and testing in preparation for a release some time next week (fingers crossed).

The next KForge release has now been scheduled for the start of July:

http://p.knowledgeforge.net/kforge/trac/milestone/v0.13

A full list of proposed tickets for this release can be found linked from that page. Any comments or suggestions, then please post a comment either here or on the mailing lists.

With the latest release we’ve received quite a bit of feedback and one of the main things people have been saying is that they’d like the installation made easier (and/or better documented). We’re all too aware of the need to make it easy to get up and running quickly and we’ve have tried to simplify things as much as possible. One of the difficulties is that KForge intentionally focuses on reusing other tools extensively. This means there are quite a few dependency issues that can catch people out. One good suggestion we’ve had is to prepare a proper deb package for those on debian and ubuntu. One difficulty even with this is what we include. Some people just want subversion and trac, others just the wikis and wordpress. Do we just put everything in or do we ship a core version and leave it up to admins to install the extra plugins as and when they need them?

After nearly six months of work KForge 0.12 is out. Get it via the download page:

http://www.kforgeproject.com/download/

Or direct from

http://www.kforgeproject.com/files/kforge-0.12.tar.gz

Changes

• Wordpress and Mailman plugins (ticket:23 and ticket:34)
• Better integration of main KForge system with subsystem applications such as trac (ticket:7)
• Massive speed improvements in access to site and services (~10x)
• ‘Remember me’ support when logging in (ticket:19)
• ‘Forgot password’ support (ticket:26)
• Support for databases other than postgresql including mysql
• ‘Notify’ plugin to notify system administrators of events such as user registration and project creation
• Substantial set of usability improvements to the web interface
• Factor out core code into a separate reusable package named ‘domainmodel’

About KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

For more information see the about page: http://www.kforgeproject.com/about/

Over the weekend we deployed the first 0.12 release candidate onto http://demo.kforgeproject.com/. In the process we immediately discovered one bug which hadn’t been picked up because it only affects upgrades of existing installations rather than new deployments. Thankfully the bug is very minor and is easy to fix — just use revision 67 of domainmodel rather than the current head version (revision 77). So, after a week or so of further testing the code should be solid enough to be officially released, and we can then look forward to a brand v0.12 of KForge which adds (among other things):

• A Wordpress plugin
• A Mailman plugin
• Massive speed improvements of site and services
• Remember me when logging in

With the release of v0.12 back in July we noticed some significant slowdown in the speed of access to various services, most noticeably subversion and trac (several users also commented on this). After a bit of playing around we tracked this to the authentication code for services. After a bit of serious refactoring[^1] in August we reckoned to have improved performance by an order of magnitude. Unfortunately due to commitments elsewhere and illness our planned release in September never came so the code still was sitting in trunk.

However, since we use the KForge code to run http://www.knowledgeforge.net/ we’ve been affected by this issue as much as anyone (a exemplary case of ‘eating our own dog food’). So in the end we bit the bullet and deployed v0.12dev (trunk) on http://www.knowledgeforge.net/ to see what would happen. Our rough guess based on the refactoring turned out to be about right: on a small repository update times improved by an order of magnitude (~65s to ~6s) — note that these figures depend not only on the size of the repository but the number of users and projects you have in your KForge installation.

Thus, in summary:

• The issues fixed in trunk and will be in v0.13 release due later this month or early next
• If you can’t wait for the stable release you could upgrade to trunk (which is pretty stable) — if you want to do this I suggest asking for guidance on the mailing list

[^1]: specifically: http://project.knowledgeforge.net/domainmodel/trac/changeset/47 and following changesets

We’ve been making a lot of progress on trunk since our last stable release (KForge 0.11). The main focus has been on focusing out core code into a separate package named DomainModel (python package: dm). This refactoring has become increasingly necessary as the core KForge code has started to be reused in other projects such as CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network). With this refactoring complete it is now much easier to reuse core components and the clean separation of code is also making testing easier.

KForge 0.11 is out. Get it via the download page:

http://www.kforgeproject.com/download/

Or direct from

http://www.kforgeproject.com/files/kforge-0.11.tar.gz

Changes

• system administration interface at /admin/
• complete rewrite of web interface code to be simpler and cleaner
• expanded and improved documentation
• dav access fully functional and fixes to access control: ticket:11, ticket:8, ticket:15, ticket:16
• command line interface rewritten and centralized in kforge-admin
• support for trac >= 0.9 (while maintaining support for trac 0.8)
• improved logging for development and sysadmin purposes
• other minor fixes/improvements: ticket:1, ticket:5, ticket:3

About KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

For more information see the about page: http://www.kforgeproject.com/about/