RabbitVCS

A long standing bug in nautilus-python has caused problems for Fedora 64 bit users (and others) wanting to use RabbitVCS.  When nautilus-python is loaded, it loads the python shared object library that is in /usr/lib.  However, some 64 bit distributions put their python library in /usr/lib64, and nautilus-python isn’t smart enough to deal with this correctly.

This was actually fixed in the recently released nautilus-python 0.6 series, but existing distributions will generally not upgrade to major new releases (0.5 to 0.6), so the fix would only apply to new distribution releases.  Fortunately, there has just been a new nautilus-python release in the 0.5 series (0.5.2) which fixes this bug and a few others, and I believe Fedora will upgrade to it, making it available for all users.

Once the nautilus-python Fedora package is upgraded, we will release a 64 bit RPM for RabbitVCS.

The result of several months of hard work is coming to fruition today as we release RabbitVCS v0.13!  This release brings about some pretty important changes to not just RabbitVCS itself, but also to how we distribute and think of RabbitVCS.  Indeed, one of our early goals with this project was to not be tied to one file manager, or even to be tied to any file managers.  And I believe we are starting to see the fruits of that ambition in the v0.13 release.  Not only do we have a new and improved Nautilus extension, but this release also introduces a Thunar extension, a Gedit extension, and an improved command line tool.

Changes in RabbitVCS since v0.13 beta:

• (r2240) Fixed exception in Gedit client after activation
• (r2241) Checkout should be more flexible with the arguments it accepts
• (r2242) Make sure dialog responses line up with expectations
• (r2260) A different signal is required for gtk submenus
• (2261) Applied patch from sipych to fix multi-byte char sequences in the log dialog
• Some code cleanup and miscellaneous

Changes in RabbitVCS since v0.12:

• Improved context menus and selection functionality in most dialogs
• Massive overhaul in generating context menus
• Added a “Changes” dialog to view changes between revisions
• Added a “Check for Modifications” dialog to check for remote changes
• Added a repository browser
• All text views will provide a spell checker (if gtk.spell is installed)
• All tree views for files will show icons next to the file name
• Improved Diff/Compare functionality
• Modified the Properties dialog to allow editing revision properties
• Added functionality to the Annotate dialog to export to a file
• Countless bug-fixes and small improvements

Changes in RabbitVCS-Nautilus since v0.12:

• Improved status checking and emblem support, should be much faster now
• Added a Property Page

Changes in RabbitVCS-CLI since v0.12:

• Improved the handling of arguments.  Type “rabbitvcs -h” to get help or “rabbitvcs <module> -h” to get help.

Addition of RabbitVCS-Thunar:

• Adds the RabbitVCS context menu and a property page to the Thunar file manager.  This requires the new thunarx-python bindings, which are available from our downloads section.

Addition of RabbitVCS-Gedit:

• Adds the RabbitVCS menu to the main menubar and adds menu items to each source views’ context menus.

Addition of RabbitVCS-NautilusOld:

• Provides an extension that is compatible with older versions of Nautilus (< 2.22).

Homepage:
http://www.rabbitvcs.org

Download RabbitVCS v0.13 at:
http://wiki.rabbitvcs.org/wiki/download

Note: You will have to download the rabbitvcs core files (rabbitvcs-core-0.13.tar.gz) as well as the front-end-specific tarball (i.e. rabbitvcs-nautilus-0.13.tar.gz).

Note 2: Our Ubuntu packages no longer support Hardy (8.04), so users should either upgrade or use the tarballs for installation.

Although we are still finishing up our v0.13 release, our next big development push is adding support for Git and other version control systems to RabbitVCS.  But before we do that, I thought it would be nice to get an idea of what people are using on a day to day basis.  This poll allows you to select up to three options, so please do so and tell us what you’d like to see us support.

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After approximately four months of development, the RabbitVCS v0.13 branch is ready for regular people to start testing and abusing.  This release brings about some pretty important changes to not just RabbitVCS itself, but also to how we distribute and think of RabbitVCS.  Indeed, one of our early goals with this project was to not be tied to one file manager, or even to be tied to any file managers.  And I believe we are starting to see the fruits of that ambition in this first beta release.  Not only do we have a new and improved Nautilus extension, but this release also introduces a Thunar extension, a Gedit extension, and an improved command line tool.

As this is a beta release, you should expect bugs and other issues to crop up, not only with the program, but also with our new packaging system which separates our front-ends (extensions) from the core.  We expect to have distribution-specific packages ready this weekend, but you can start testing with the tarballs that have been released.

Changes in RabbitVCS since v0.12:

• Improved context menus and selection functionality in most dialogs
• Massive overhaul in generating context menus
• Added a “Changes” dialog to view changes between revisions
• Added a “Check for Modifications” dialog to check for remote changes
• Added a repository browser
• All text views will provide a spell checker (if gtk.spell is installed)
• All tree views for files will show icons next to the file name
• Improved Diff/Compare functionality
• Modified the Properties dialog to allow editing revision properties
• Added functionality to the Annotate dialog to export to a file
• Countless bug-fixes and small improvements

Changes in RabbitVCS-Nautilus since v0.12:

• Improved status checking and emblem support, should be much faster now
• Added a Property Page

Changes in RabbitVCS-CLI since v0.12:

• Improved the handling of arguments.  Type “rabbitvcs -h” to get help or “rabbitvcs <module> -h” to get help.

Addition of RabbitVCS-Thunar:

• Adds the RabbitVCS context menu and a property page to the Thunar file manager.  This requires the new thunarx-python bindings, which are available from our downloads section.

Addition of RabbitVCS-Gedit:

• Adds the RabbitVCS menu to the main menubar and adds menu items to each source views’ context menus.

Addition of RabbitVCS-NautilusOld:

• Provides an extension that is compatible with older versions of Nautilus (< 2.22).

Homepage:
http://www.rabbitvcs.org

Download RabbitVCS v0.13 Beta at:
http://wiki.rabbitvcs.org/wiki/download/beta

Update: We have Ubuntu/Debian packages available for the beta now in our downloads section.

Issue Tracker:
http://code.google.com/p/rabbitvcs/issues/list

Big thanks and a great job to everyone on the team and everyone who contributed to this beta release!

Adam Plumb
The RabbitVCS Team

I am happy to announce that version 0.2.0 of the thunarx-python bindings have been released and are available for download.  The big news (and the only news) is that they can now run on any version of Thunar, all the way back to 0.4.0, so you don’t need to very latest release (v1.1.0) any more.

I’m in the process of getting thunarx-python hosted on Xfce.org, but it is slow going.  I’ll update everyone when this does happen, though.

Get it here: thunarx-python-0.2.0.tar.gz

SHASUM: e5838c597612d90f262add39ceae56dc59ad798b
MD5SUM: 6b6555157888e7dd91a15732b4970642

Git Repository: http://github.com/adamplumb/thunarx-python
Bug Tracker: http://github.com/adamplumb/thunarx-python/issues

With some time to kill before our big v0.13 release, I wanted to see what it would be like to create a RabbitVCS plugin for Gedit.  It turns out, it actually isn’t too terribly hard.  In fact, all I needed to do was implement the Gedit plugin parts and write a new class to generate menus that work with Gedit.  Currently, the plugin has the narrow focus of providing menu items for RabbitVCS actions, but in the future it could be expanded to providing a sidebar panel, or more.

Here is a quick demo video showing RabbitVCS-on-Gedit in action!

If you’re interested in running the Gedit plugin, you’ll need to be running up-to-date code from our SVN repository.  The Gedit bits are here.  If you’d like to wait for a release, it will be available for the beta release (coming next week).

I’d love it if someone would like to take over this plugin and really make it something special, as I really just wanted to get the ball rolling and show that it is possible to take RabbitVCS outside of the file manager domain.  If you’re interested in contributing to or even taking over development for the Gedit plugin, send an email to our developer’s mailing list.

Getting RabbitVCS to run on Thunar required me to create python bindings for the Thunar Extension Framework, but that is done now and the thunarx-python bindings are a reality.  I’m in the process of getting the source code hosted on Xfce’s git repository.

With RabbitVCS running on Thunar, we’re a small step closer to one of our big goals, which is to become file manager agnostic.

You can read my post on our mailing list about my trials and tribulations getting this all to work, but RabbitVCS on Thunar is a mixed bag.  On the one hand, I was able to get sub-menus working without having to patch Thunar, but on the other hand, there will be no emblem support for the foreseeable future.  However, one thing that Thunar has that Nautilus does not is a get_dnd_actions call, which asks plugins for menu items for when the user drags and drops an item into a folder. I haven’t implemented it yet, but in the near future this will allow you to move files around in your SVN repository via drag ‘n drop in Thunar.  Also not implemented yet is a property page that reports file status and ownership, etc.  All of that will be ready for the v0.13 release.

For now, I leave you with a short video of RabbitVCS running Thunar.

Get thunarx-python here: http://github.com/adamplumb/thunarx-python.  I’ve made a release, and you can get that in the Downloads section in github.  Currently, the only way to install the Thunar extension for RabbitVCS is to check out the latest code from SVN and run the development install.  Instructions for installing a thunarx-python plugin is available in the thunarx-python README file.  If you’re willing to brave the install, I’d love to hear your feedback!

One of the final pieces of the puzzle for v0.13 is the repository browser, and I am quite happy with it.  Sure, I bailed on having a folder tree view, and there is no drap ‘n drop support for moving files around, but overall I think people will find it very useful when v0.13 is released.

Here is a quick ‘n dirty video I made showing some basic functionality.  Hopefully we’ll have an alpha or beta ready for v0.13 and more people can test the new stuff out.

Do you want to contribute to RabbitVCS, but you want to be in charge of what you’re doing, and you don’t want Jason, Bruce, or myself to get in your hair too much?  Well, one of the great things about RabbitVCS is that we are very modular, and we have grand ideas about what we want RabbitVCS to do, but we just don’t have the time to do it as fast as we want.  Here are some ideas we have for possible sub-projects that Python and C coders can pick up and run with.

Improve the Nautilus extension framework (C Programmers)
The current Nautilus extension framework is quite basic and isn’t really powerful enough for some of the things we would like to do.  The related Python bindings (nautilus-python) would also need to be extended along with it to be useful to us.  Your job would be to write patches for these code bases and possibly become an active maintainer for those projects.  Currently, the nautilus-python project does not have an active maintainer (that I know about)

Create a Thunar extension (C and Python Programmers)
As per our recent name change, our eventual goal is to be file manager agnostic, so RabbitVCS users aren’t stuck with GNOME all the time.  Currently, Thunar has an extension framework that is somewhat similar to Nautilus’s, but they don’t have Python bindings.  Your job would be to create Python bindings for the Thunar extension framework and then port our Nautilus extension code to run on Thunar (should not be difficult).  Or you could just write a C extension and integrate RabbitVCS as much as possible

Create a Dolphin/Konqueror/PCManFM extension (C and Python Programmers)
I don’t know what the current state of any of these file managers are with respect to plugins, but it would be great to create an extension for them.  Like the Nautilus and Thunar extensions, Python bindings would allow you to more easily integrate with our status checker/monitor.  But if you would prefer a C extension we can still integrate with that fairly well.

Create a gedit (or other text editor) plugin (C Programmers, I think)
It should be possible to create a plugin for gedit or any other text editor that puts our main context menu in gedit and launches our ui dialogs.  All it would take is for someone to spend the time getting it to work.

Create a standalone GUI client (Python Programmers)
There are plenty of standalone VCS GUIs out there, but one more won’t kill anyone ;)  Indeed, we could do some pretty cool things with a standalone GUI that we may never be able to do with a file manager extension.  Your job would be to create the GUI (using PyGTK) as you see fit and integrate the RabbitVCS dialogs and other code as much as possible.

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These are just some of the ideas I’ve had.  I’m sure there are other good sub-project ideas, so just get in touch with us and we’ll help you get started!