The intended “searchQuick” (sQuick) is an application to enable a user to search a set of books or texts, like an encyclopedia, or some other topical book collection offline built in the open source platform Pharo 4.0.
As the rudimentary structure of the application is sewn up, embellishment of GUI and rigorous testing are the major part of course of action.
On eMBee’s ( +Martin Bähr ) suggestion to build up an accordion widget to display the search results, various trials were conducted to design a similar one in Pharo.
The task of developing the accordion widget in Pharo was achieved using Expander Morphs. Looping through the search results array, a #newExpander: was added in each #newRow: of the modal built.
A challenging chore was to add a scroll-able content on the click of the desired search result expander. Sundry experiments with #newLabel: and #newText: in #newScrollPaneFor: {i.e. adding text model and labels in scroll pane} had no effect. Eventually, #newTextEditorFor: did the trick and the desired look was created.
Next on the cards is putting up sQuick for automated build on the CI Server, as suggested by +Sean DeNigris for its various advantages which include:
Improvement of product quality
Acceleration of compile and link processing
Elimination of redundant tasks
Minimization of ‘bad builds’
Have history of builds and releases in order to investigate issues
Save time and money – because of above listed reasons.
For simplicity, Build automation is the act of scripting or automating a wide variety of tasks that software developers do in their day-to-day activities including things like:
compiling computer source code into binary code
packaging binary code
running automated tests
deploying to production systems
creating documentation and/or release notes
UPCOMING:
To achieve Build Automation for sQuick, I have already registered on CI and configured sQuick.
Next endeavor is to look into the red signal in the build evaluation.
Stay tuned for more….Post any queries, will be happy to help 🙂
This post will take you through some interesting work that I have been doing for my project under FOSSASIA. This project is being done under the google summer of code platform. I have been working on various code scripts as my project is all about improving the tools of the sTeam collaboration platform. But this particular script is a command line interface that I am thrilled to work on.
If you are not familiar with what sTeam is, you can look it up here, sTeam
Let me start with how sTeam originally works for any user. This picture will give you a clear view about it.
If you are new to the sTeam platform, this script will take you through the sTeam commands and the interface, also making sure, you have fun in the process. It lets the user play with sTeam and get to know more about how it works. One other interesting concept that we have tried to integrate here is that of MUDs(Multi user dungeons/dimensions). Some of you may already be familiar with the concept of MUDs( others, please look it up here MUD). We have tried to bring the MUD kind of experience to this sTeam interface (like I said, thrilling!).
I have seen people go through a lot of tutorials on git, and the commands(sometimes complex) through which it operates, and yet, people have difficulty learning it. What if it had a MUD type of interaction, which would just let you type “create file” “commit file” “get commit content” “upload file” “rename file” “goto repo”, etc. Wouldnt it be much easier that way? Well, sTeam is going through all the extensive tool development so that it can make a user-friendly interaction. Here are some screenshots of this interface,
This interface is under heavy development and plans to make sTeam more and more interesting for its users. If you have any questions on sTeam, please feel free to contact me, or join us on our daily scrum meetings on IRC (#steam-devel) or join #fossasia and ping us with a question.
If you are looking for a open source project and want to contribute to FOSSASIA, Please have a look at FOSSASIA labs.
Time has has flown by. It feels like yesterday when we started working and now we’re half way through the GSoC project time already.
But I must say that it has been really lovely working with such awesome people. We are working really nicely as a team. The project that we’re doing ‘Open-Event’ is also going to help so many organisers. It would take away so much burden off of the organisers head. I mean the biggest worry for the organiser is to get the info about the event to the people and get them excited through the medium of the apps like the web-app and the android app and the pain of finding a developer who is worthy enough and then pay a lot to get the app ready in time. All of this is taken care off by our project. It’s cool, right?
Anyway, We have already done the basic stuff in the app and made it operational but yeah now I am working on some other necessary stuff like notifications, bookmarks etc. and Rafal is working on login and stuff to keep the editing rights with the owner only. Arnav is also working on the UI of the app and he has made the app totally on material UI using Bootstrap material. So has rafal on the server frontend.
All of us also had a hangouts call to discuss the future of the project and how we’re going to proceed. Unfortunately rafal couldn’t make it. We discussed about how we’re going to get ready for the final events. So the conclusion was to get 3 environments ready : Staging, production and development, So that we can develop cool new features without harming the work that has been accomplished. So this will be like keeping an alpha, beta and stable version for the server.
At the end I must say that I have learned a lot as well as enjoyed by working on this project and I am sure that ther’s a lot of learning to do in the future as well. Adios !!
So, while I was browsing through various developments in Pharo, I came across a very eye-catching paper on Bootstrapping Reflective Systems: The case of Pharo .
For beginners, Bootstrapping is basically the process of writing a compiler or an assembler in the source programming language in which it is intended to compile. Applying this technique leads to self-hosting compiler that proceeds without external input.
Though, I am still a newbie and in the process of grasping all this ingenious stuff.
But I am sure that this paper ( Poli12-BootstrappingSmalltalk-SCP ) by G. Polito , S. Ducasse , L. Fabresse , N. Bouraqadi , B. van Ryseghem would make for an interesting read.
Do scan through it and post below your ideas and queries !
The Event Organizer application has already the basic features and we can move to apply more advanced feature. But let explain me, what me and my friends have done recently.
Our application is already able to manage conferences and events. An owner can edit and change events in the way he/she wants to. And we have two version of this app for websites and for mobile phones(Android). The orga serv which I prepared share Json API to both Android and Web app. I guess it is really comfortable solution because it enables to share date between web and mobile app. Our app’s template style is based on material bootstrap, the same is used by Arnav in his application. It is very flat design.
First Version of Open EVent Menu Bar
What I really like during this term is daily scrum, where we can share what we have already done, what are we going to do next, and what were the obstacles. Because of it, we can easily be in touch and avoid duplicating our work. We can also discuss and quickly choose the most useful solution. Duke and Mario accompany us and as always were ready to help with any trouble.
Arnav and Manan also organized a conference on their university. Many students were invited and discussed about taking part in open source projects. I regret not to having taken part in it, but India is so far from my country, that I could not get there.
I hope that the starting up part of this project will be also so developing and exciting, and we will finish it with a huge success. And all of us will be very proud, learn many new things, and improve our experience.
In the nearest future Arnav, Duke and me are going to create three environments: staging, production, and development. It helps us to organize our work. I am sure that we manage to do it.
Ok, so stay tuned. “Show must go on”! We don’t stop working! 😉
This post aims to provide a basic overview of what PharoLauncher is and give a step-by-step approach on how to use this application of great advantage.
Overview
Pharo is an open source implementation of the programming language and environment Smalltalk. Pharo is not Smalltalk. Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired.
Pharo offers strong live programming features such as immediate object manipulation, live update, and hot recompilation. Live programming environment is in the heart of the system. Pharo also supports advanced web development with frameworks such as Seaside and more recently Tide.
The official Pharo website defines it as: ”Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language and a powerful environment, focused on simplicity and immediate feedback (think IDE and OS rolled into one). ”
Pharo relies on a virtual machine that is written almost entirely in Smalltalk itself. Pharo environment is its own little world, designed around a conception of a computer with a minimal operating system and populated with living objects. A Smalltalk implementation is composed of an image (binary code), a major source file and a ‘changes’ file. The image is called Virtual Image (VI) because is independent of the platform you use for running Smalltalk. Smalltalk systems store the entire program state (including both Class and non-Class objects) in an image file. The image can then be loaded by the Smalltalk virtual machine to restore a Smalltalk-like system to a prior state.
As Pharo is open source, it growing rapidly owing to the contributions of people all around the world. Each day we have a new update of the image of Pharo which makes it cumbersome to keep track of updates. It becomes quite a task when one has to download a new image seperately each he/she plans to work on something having the latest issues fixed, new features added etc. That’s where the PharoLauncher comes in the picture. Pharo Launcher, a cross-platform application that
lets you manage your Pharo images (launch, rename, copy and delete);
lets you download image templates (i.e., zip archives) from many different sources (Jenkins, files.pharo.org, and your local cache) and create new images from any template.
The idea behind the Pharo Launcher is that you should be able to access it very rapidly from your OS application launcher. As a result launching any image is never more than 3 clicks away. “PharoLauncher” is useful to a user who develops and needs to constantly switch between images. PharoLauncher is also a very handy tool to download specific image update versions if you want to reproduce or fix Pharo bugs.Pharo Launcher is a Pharo-based application allowing you to manage a list of images (download, rename, delete) and switch between them without aditional tools.
Downloading/Installing PharoLauncher
As discussed earlier about the rapid evolvement of Pharo , kindly check out http://www.pharo.org/download to get the latest download/install instructions for Pharo Launcher.
If you don’t have the add-apt-repository command, install the software-properties-common package and try again. If you are on a server (no GUI), you can get a Pharo Virtual Machine by installing pharo-vm-core.
On Ubuntu, the Launcher is installed as /usr/bin/pharo, so you can type the following command on the terminal to start the Pharo Launcher.
Launch the Pharo launcher image using the platform-specific VM. The image below depicts how a PharoLauncher looks like when it is opened.
The screen displayed initially has been divided into two parts.
The left part ‘Existing Images’ displays the images already created by the user. Initially after the installation the left side with local images is empty. Whereas the the right side is the ‘Templates’ section which displays the image templates from various resources available for download from the internet. The ‘Existing Images’ section has 3 buttons : Launch, Delete and Refresh. The ‘Templates’ section has 2 buttons : Create Image and Refresh.
At the bottom of the launcher we have the buttons for quit and settings.
Select the image you wish to work on from the list and the sources provided in the ‘Templates’ section and download it. For instance you can download “Pharo4.0 (beta)” from the options provided which is the latest image as of today. By clicking on the ‘Create Image’ button at the top right corner.
Note that also the images from contribution CI are available. So you can easily download “Artefact”, “Moose”, … images according to your choice.
It will download the image into a specific directory somewhere in your users home directory. Each image gets an own folder. Use the “Show in folder” menu item to open this location.
The location of the images can be changed through the ‘Settings Browser’ option located at the bottom-right corner. Go to the ‘Open Settings’ > ‘Location of your images’. Now enter the desired path in the place provided as shown in the figure.
After ‘Creating an image’ , a dialog box appears which asks you to give a name to the image as shown in figure below.
After entering the suitable name , the image is displayed in the ‘Existing Images’ section.
To launch the image, simply select your option and click on the ‘Launch’ button located at the top right corner of the ‘Existing Images’ section and voila ! You have the pharo image of your choice running with the name of your choice.
First of all, I really thank Google for organizing such an event for students in the summer and I am fortunate to be a part of such a program. I would also like to thank FOSSASIA for accepting my proposal for the project and for providing me with the experience of working with them.
When you see your name on the list
Name on the list? Google’s server being stacked up with lots and lots of request, Students impatiently clicking the refresh button to see whether their names are present in the list, a lot of students, a lot of projects, and suddenly, that one refresh, when the list loads with the projects matching the student names. (CTRL+F) ”Trilok Tourani” and there it was,
Organization : FOSSASIA
Project : Improve the command line tools of the sTeam collaboration platform
Student : Trilok Tourani
Mentors : Martin Bahr(Working mentor) , Chris Angelico, Aruna Herath, Markus(Backup mentors)
Status : Accepted
Dumbstruck for a minute, but when it hit me, that I got selected, the happiness was beyond what I had expected. I went on the IRC and thanked my mentors. All I knew was I had a project in hand and a long way ahead to perform beyond their expectations.
About the project
What is sTeam?
sTeam is a collaboration platform which helps people to share their documents, chat with them, have a look at their virtual workarea, and ease the sharing/developing in big groups. You can also look at the current development on the sTeam web interface here. It is still in the development phase, so please feel free to provide us with any ideas to improve. To know more about sTeam, please visit societyserver.
sTeam is completely built on pike programming language. To know more about pike programming, please visit Pike. If you already know about pike, and are good at it, please visit Fossasia’s IRC channel #fossasia and ask for tasks/bugs on this project to solve right away. If you are looking for something other than sTeam, FOSSASIA has a wide range of projects in various fields, and also welcomes any new project ideas.
My part of the project
I would like people to know the kind of work that I am doing currently for sTeam and show them how interesting it is to develop for it.
My project is to develop the command line tools to ease the work for the developers, and people who choose to work with command line, over a web interface.
These tools include,
Exporting your documents to your Github repository with just a command.
Importing document from Github right into sTeam for people to see.
A easy to use debug client that helps you while developing for this platform, or to see the various documents/containers you have in which room, move them, copy them, use them, all with commands similar to the Linux command line.
A way of to edit your documents directly with command line editors, without having to go to the web, type in the url, clicking on a document, and then finally editing it.
Chat with your friends/group members over the IRC.
and more being added to the list….(Please contact us if you have any)
These tools are already built up, but with more development, they will be very efficient and easy to use commands which a normal user can type in and get things done, and this is where my part comes in.
For some of these tools, which are already built, some development is needed. While some other tools, I have to develop by myself and enhance the command line usage for sTeam.
These are few of the commands with their screenshots to help you understand exactly what these tools are meant for,
The sTeam debug client
The editing documents client,
and edit the document in a simple command-line editor (used vim here),
Exporting documents from sTeam to git (version-wise)
Importing documents to sTeam from git (version-wise)
If you really like what I am doing, or are interested in developing for sTeam, please join our IRC channel #fossasia or join fossasia@googlegroups.com .
If you are looking for some other project, FOSSASIA has a lot of projects to be worked on. Please visit FOSSASIA for more info.
The intended “searchQuick” (sQuick) is an application to enable a user to search a set of books or texts, like an encyclopedia, or some other topical book collection offline built in the open source platform Pharo 4.0.
After indexing the content and the next task that was covered was searching for the user input string. The #queryString: does a fantastic job as of now.
The search results were printed in a scroll-able pane by iterating through a loop so as to cover each and every existence of the desired string. The search results window also enables the user to view the content of the chosen file.
Search Results Display
Acting on the suggestion of my mentor, I have also loaded the Pharo image with text versions of large books (Thank You Project Gutenberg 🙂 ) to test the working of the search function.
UPCOMING
GUI Modification
Integrated Exhaustive Testing
Addition of help/tutorial
PS: The GUI of the application is under constant evolvement, Kindly ignore the poorly structured window 😛
Stay tuned for more… Post any queries , will be happy to help 🙂
I have used Django framework so far, but because of my participation in Google summer of code. We decided to use something new. It was Flask. And Now I want to share it with you.
It is a microframework, which allows us in really short time create a nice app. I’d like to share my experience in this area to teach you how you can create an app. You will have a possibility to add, delete and update posts.
First of all you need to install flask framework via pip in your command line:
pip install flask
Next step it will be prepare a files structures
My structure of files looks:
forms( will contain all form objects in our case only post form)
templates will contain all app views(listing posts and possibility to create post)
We want to manage posts, so we have to define database model Post in app.py. I only defined title and text fields.
Next step will be create a routes. The main purpose of routes is to recognize urls and execute actions. We need four methods to display list of posts(index), delete post(delete_post), add post(new_post) and update post(edit_post)
That’s all to run your first posts application. Additionally I attach link to project on github, where you can trace whole project code.
Last week grand prize winners from FOSSASIA and other organizations that participated in Google Code-In 2014 attended a trip to the US accompanied by a guardian and a mentor. The grand prize trip is the crowning activity of Google Code In, the program organized by Google with the aim of introducing pre-university students to open source. I was fortunate enough to take part as the mentor representing FOSSASIA.
The trip kicked off on the evening of the 7th June with a ‘meet and greet’ at the hotel lobby. Stephanie Taylor and Mary Radomile from Google OSPO welcomed us. I met Namanyay Goel and Samarjeet Singh, the two winners from fossasia, and a bunch of other winning students and mentors. Groups of students were quick to engage in lively discussions, It was hard to believe that most of them met for the first time. I was glad to learn that both our winning students enjoyed the contest as much as I did. At the end of the two hours both students and mentors were holding on to some rewards from Google. As I was tired from the long flight I bid everyone an early goodbye to get a much needed sleep.
I met Namanyay and Samarjeet, Grand prize winners from FOSSASIA.
The next morning we met in the hotel lobby again. We were to spend the day in the Google headquarters in Mountain View. The San Francisco traffic delayed our buses a bit but we arrived at the Googleplex to a pleasant breakfast. In the morning we listened to talks from Engineers of Google projects Ara and Tango. A series of interesting questions from an enthusiastic audience followed each talk. Chris DiBona, the director of the Google OSPO presented winners their awards. After a lunch where students got to enjoy with Googlers from their respective countries, we were back for more talks. The one from Google’s rapidly evolving self driving cars, caught a lot of attention. We also got to visit the Google visitor center, where we met famous giant Androids, and to the Google store, where everyone bought a bunch of souvenirs to take back home.
Third day of the tour was the ‘fun day’. Each of us were to choose between visiting the Alcatraz island which was the home to the historic federal prison, the Exploratorium, a science and arts museum and a segway tour around San Francisco. About half of the group and I picked segways. We rode the brilliantly engineered machines around the city while our guide entertained us with interesting facts about the city. It was a novel experience for everyone. The three groups met for the lunch and set off to see the famous Golden gate bridge, where we spent the afternoon. A Yacht course across the San Francisco bay, during which we sailed under the Golden Gate, completed a day filled with amazing memories.
The final day was spent in the Google office in San Francisco. We got to listen to a talk about YouTube, which again followed some interesting questions and answers. Carol Smith introduced GSOC, the Sister program of GCI, to the students. Each of the mentors gave a brief introduction to their organizations. We were officially announced that GCI will continue in 2015 as well. The students presented Stephanie with a handmade thank you card inscripted by all of them, which I thought was pretty cool.
The trip was filled with both information and fun. It indeed was a Grand Prize. I hardly know how to thank Stephanie and co. for everything.
I hope, irrespective of being probably the best in their age, in their field, the winning students would stay humble and hungry for new knowledge. Looking forward to GCI 2015.
I met Namanyay and Samarjeet, Grand prize winners from FOSSASIA.
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