RabbitVCS

Some older distributions, such as RHEL5/CentOS5 and Debian Lenny (and older) just don’t work with the RabbitVCS v0.12 extension code.  One of the problems is that we use code that requires the most recent nautilus-python (the python bindings we use to extend nautilus), and even a relatively recent Nautilus and that code is often not available on older distributions.  In addition, we have several other dependencies in v0.12 that need relatively recent versions to work.

Fortunately, there is a way out.  The NautilusSvn v0.11 extension code is actually quite simple and straightforward, and will work on very old versions of Nautilus and nautilus-python.  So what I have done is set up a second extension folder in our repository called “nautilusold” based on the code from the v0.11 extension, but the nice part is that it connects to all the windows and dialogs in v0.12.  Check out this video of RabbitVCS on CentOS 5.

Right now, this new extension is only available in trunk, and is not packaged, but you can easily install it by replacing the RabbitVCS.py in your extensions folder with the nautilusold/RabbitVCS.py file.  It is as simple as that!

All is not perfect, however.  As you may have noticed from the video, submenus don’t work quite right in older versions of nautilus-python, so all menu items have to be fit on the main Nautilus context-menu.

Also, since this is an entirely separate module from the standard extension code, it needs to be maintained and hopefully improved.  That is why I’m sending out a call to anyone who is interested that we would love to have someone dedicated to maintaining and improving the nautilusold extension.  I’ve gotten it to a good working state, but there is still plenty to do, such as:

• Integrate with our v0.12 translations
• Clean up the menuitems logic code, and possibly figure out a way to use submenus
• Improve the status monitor to remove the need for the “Refresh Status” button
• Figure out how to get our existing nautilus extension to work with older distros so we don’t need this second extension.

If anyone is interested in carrying the torch on, please get in touch and I will be happy to get you started.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 10th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.