steam-shell

sTeam GSoC 2016 Windup

(ˢᵒᶜⁱᵉᵗʸserver) aims to be a platform for developing collaborative applications.
sTeam server project repository: sTeam.
sTeam-REST API repository: sTeam-REST

An overview of the work done by ajinkya007 during Google Summer of code 2016 with FOSSASIA on its project sTeam.

The community bonding period saw the creation of a docker image and a debian package for the sTeam server. The integration of the sTeam shell into vi, improvements in the export and import to git scripts, user and group manipulation commands, sending mails through the commandline, viewing logs and the edit script modifications were done subsequently. The later part of GSOC saw that the sTeam-rest repository was restructured, unit and api-end point tests were performed. The new web interface developed was tested.
The code written during this period by me and siddhant was merged and the conflicts were resolved. The merged code was tested thoroughly as no automated test integration tool supports pike programming language. Documentation was generated using Doxygen and deployed in the gh-pages of the sTeam server repository.

A trello board was maintained throughout the course of GSOC 2016.

Trello Board: sTeam

Accomplishments

Issues Reported and Resolved

A list of tasks covered and all the Pull requests related to each:

Tasks Issue PR
Make changes in the Makefile for installation of sTeam. Issue-25 Issue-27 PR-66 PR-67
Edit script modifications Issue-20 Issue-29 Issue-43 PR-44 PR-48
Indentation of output in steal-shell. Issue-24 PR-42
Integrate steam-shell into vim or emacs. Issue-37 Issue-43 Issue-49 PR-41 PR-48 PR-51
Improve the import and export from git scripts. Issue-9 Issue-14 Issue-16 Issue-18 Issue-19 Issue-46 PR-45 PR-54 PR-55 PR-76
Create, Delete and List the user through commandline Issue-58 Issue-69 Issue-72 PR-59 PR-70 PR-78
Sending Mails through commandline Issue-74 PR-85
Generate error logs and display them in CLI Issue-83 PR-86
Create a file of any mime type from command line. Issue-79 PR-82
Add more commands for group operations. Issue-80 PR-84
Add more utility to the steam-shell Issue-56 Issue-71 Issue-73 PR-57 PR-75 PR-81
Restructure the sTeam-rest repository List of Issue’s List of PR’s
Write test cases to test sTeam-rest api List of Issue’s List of PR’s
Create a debian package and a docker image for easy deployment Create docker image Docker Image
Document the work done Issue 149 sTeam Server Structure, sTeam Server Documentation
Test the web-interface ✓ ✓

Commits Merged

During the course of GSOC 2016, work was done on the sTeam and sTeam-rest repositories.

1. The work done on the sTeam repository.

We have combined all the work into two branches for the ease of creating a debian package. The commits made by me in each branch can be seen here.

2. The work done on the sTeam-rest repository

The push request’s sent for the issue’s are yet to be merged in the main repository. The list of PR’s for the sTeam-rest repository.

sTeam-rest PR’s

The weekly blogs

The blogs summarizing the work done during the week were published on my personal website. These can be found on Weekly Blogs
All the blogs can also be found on the Fossasia blog.
The list in reverse chronological order is as follows.

Scrums

Scrum reports were posted on the #steam-devel on irc.freenode.net and sTeam google group. The sTeam trello board also has everyday scrum reports.

Further Improvements

  1. sTeam command line lacks the functionality to read and set the object access permissions. sTeam function analogous to getfacl() to change the sTeam server object permisssions.
  2. sTeam debian package for easy installation of the sTeam server. The debian package is yet to be fully packaged.

Special Thanks

  • I would like to thank my mentors Mario Behling, Hong Phuc Dang, Martin Bahr, Trilok Tourani and my peers for being there to help me and guide me.
  • I would like to thank FOSSASIA, sTeam and Pike Community for giving me this opportunity and guiding me in this endeavour.
  • I would also like to thank Google Summer of Code for this experience.

Feel free to explore the repository. Suggestions for improvements are welcomed.

Checkout the FOSSASIA Idea’s page for more information on projects supported by FOSSASIA.

Continue ReadingsTeam GSoC 2016 Windup

steam-shell: Two processes in one terminal

Community bonding period turned out to be quite fruitful I got to know my community really well and not only that I also solved quite a number of issues which helped me understand the code base. Daily scrum meetings played a very important role in making us work professionally and cover some substantial work. Official coding period began on 23rd May and I was all set for the challenges and the sleepless nights to come. Here I will be discussing the tasks I covered in my first week.

As suggested by my mentors I had changed my plans a bit by moving the work on edit command before implementing the TLS layer on COAL. I started small by fixing the edit command. The edit command opens the specified file in vi/vim/emac. In vi and vim the editor was misbehaving and not letting us work on the file. I took up this as my first task for Google Summer of Code 2016. This helped me understand steam-shell and applauncher, which is used to load the editor, in detail. Vi and vim editors have an advantage of letting the user edit the file in the same terminal window.

Looking at the issue itself it was not possible to do any kind of backtracking. The vi editor was just throwing rubbish on the screen when the user attempted to type anything.

overlapping process
vi editor showing the garbage and the steam-shell command

At first I was under the impression that it was a problem with the editor itself. I even tried approaching the vi.stackexchange.com , where the vi developers could help me. However all this was in vain. After a lot more forensics and re-reading the code multiple number of times I realized two process were active and sharing the same terminal space. How did I come to this conclusion? Well it was a very minute detail that I noticed. While in the vi editor window, with the document open and the editor throwing garbage at you when you press the up arrow the editor clears some area and show the commands executed on the steam-shell. This can be seen in the above image

This simply meant that both the process for steam-shell and the vi editor was running and sharing the same terminal space. The solution was quite simple. Just called editor→wait() to suspend the calling the process till the called process was over.

Continue Readingsteam-shell: Two processes in one terminal

More about sTeam’s command line interface

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,

 

steamshell2.png

steamshell3.png

steamshell_edit.png

 

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.

Continue ReadingMore about sTeam’s command line interface

Improve the command line tools of the sTeam collaboration platform

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.

Continue ReadingImprove the command line tools of the sTeam collaboration platform