Looking forward to the v0.15 release
The release cycle for v0.14 ended up being quite long for a variety of reasons, and though I accomplished most of my goals for the release (adding git support, improving the nautilus extension), there is always more to do, more functionality to add and more bugs to fix.
Our next release
Since I started working on this project (2+ years now), there has been a subtle pattern to our releases. v0.12 was a complete rewrite of the original framework along with a bunch of new functionality, and v0.13 added onto it, filling out the functionality and fixing bugs. v0.14 was similar to v0.12 in that it pushed some boundaries by adding git support, and I think v0.15 should continue the pattern by filling out the existing functionality and not doing anything too ambitious. I originally had planned on adding support for another VCS in v0.15, but instead it will be used as a stepping stone for v0.16.
With that said, here is roughly what I’d like to accomplish for v0.15 (subject to changes of course):
- Add a recursive/asynchronous status monitor to the Nautilus extension
- Add RabbitVCS menu items and emblems to the Gedit file browser plugin
- Convert all dialogs from glade to gtkbuilder
- Refactor VCS abstraction code to make it easier to add new VCSs and UIs
These may or may not get done for v0.15 but these are goals.
Looking for contributors
While I will continue working on RabbitVCS for the forseeable future, and I do get occasional help from Jason and Juan, it would be great if more people would contribute to the project, even if in small ways. If you know python and can spare some time, check out our issue tracker and see if you can fix a bug or implement a feature request. If you don’t know python but you know some other language, maybe you can work on a new client, like a Windows shell extension, a Mac Finder extension, a KDE extension, or a standalone application for accessing RabbitVCS functionality. Or if you don’t want to do any programming, you can help keep the website/documentation up to date, manage our translations, or triage bug reports. You can go as big or as little as you want with your contributions. I look forward to hearing from you!
Adam
If you need any web development done, I’d more than happy to help out.
The kind of web stuff we need help with is stuff like maintaining the wiki and making sure the information is correct. Also, the download/install instructions probably need some work. On a similar vein, we don’t have any kind of tutorial or handbook for how to use RabbitVCS, so something like that would be great as well. There isn’t much need for hard-core web application development type stuff, unless you have ideas that would improve the project.
Well I’m not very good at writing documentation and I’d much prefer to be writing code. I guess it’s about time for me to learn python, then I could help out with the Ubuntu side of things. ;)
Adam, I could contribute writing an user manual or tutorial, you can integrate into RabbitVCS installation like any other software help and publish like an online manual too. I have some experience in SW development, but nor for Linux/Gnome. There is some specification or tool to write user manuals for Gnome?
That would be great! GNOME has a new set of tools for documentation called Mallard and you might want to look into that. The other (preferred) option is to implement the documentation in the wiki. The wiki is public (for logged in users) and easy to use. I would get started there.
OK Adam, I will see both variants. What is the set of tool you use for develop RabbitVCS: rabbitvcs-core, nautilussvn, etc.?
Offering C#/.net capability, although I don’t know that it’d be useful. One area I’d like to see improvement on is patching and merging.
[…] Those of you who haven’t tried Rabbitvcs lately will be glad to know that since version 0.14.1.1 things became quite stable and Nautilus now stays responsive while the plugin checks for changes in the background. In fact, the v0.14 release cycle ended and the RabbitVCS developer posted a roadmap for the v0.15 cycle which includes: recursive/async status monitor for Nautilus, RabbitVCS menu items and emblems to the Gedit file browser plugin and refactor VCS abstraction code to make it easier to add new VCSs and UIs. He needs some help with all this so if you can, help him out! […]
Another idea is if people are interested in helping to market RabbitVCS that would be wonderful. If someone wants to create tutorial/showcase videos or take screenshots, I will post them to the website.
[…] Not just for SVN / Nautilus RabbitVCS has most of the TortoiseSVN features and nicely integrates into the GNOME desktop thanks to a Nautilus Extension and a Gedit plugin for easy access to everything you need. Further more, even though its main page doesn’t mention this, RabbitVCS is not just for Nautilus / SVN! It works with GIT (starting with version 0.14, released on January 4th, 2011) too and it also has a Thunar plugin so you can use it under XFCE too. Those of you who haven’t tried Rabbitvcs lately will be glad to know that since version 0.14.1.1 things became quite stable and Nautilus now stays responsive while the plugin checks for changes in the background. In fact, the v0.14 release cycle ended and the RabbitVCS developer posted a roadmap for the v0.15 cycle which includes: recursive/async status monitor for Nautilus, RabbitVCS menu items and emblems to the Gedit file browser plugin and refactor VCS abstraction code to make it easier to add new VCSs and UIs. He needs some help with all this so if you can, help him out! […]
I’m wiling to see what I can do about the screencast.
If you have any specific idea’s, please reply to this comment.
[…] Those of you who haven’t tried Rabbitvcs lately will be glad to know that since version 0.14.1.1 things became quite stable and Nautilus now stays responsive while the plugin checks for changes in the background. In fact, the v0.14 release cycle ended and the RabbitVCS developer posted a roadmap for the v0.15 cycle which includes: recursive/async status monitor for Nautilus, RabbitVCS menu items and emblems to the Gedit file browser plugin and refactor VCS abstraction code to make it easier to add new VCSs and UIs. He needs some help with all this so if you can, help him out! […]
Until you guys add in the support for gvfs mounted locations you are seriously just playing around, this has been an issue in your tracker for almost 2 years, this is completely unusable for most developers until you get this sorted. Whats the hold up? Can you at least update the ticket #158?
This project has very limited human/time resources and we all have our own priorities. The good news is that we are free to use and modify and I would heartily accept patches that provide this functionality.