GNU MediaGoblin Wiki - User contributions [en]

HackingHowto

2012-09-26T16:21:27Z

Gandaro: It does not solve problems...

= Hacking HOWTO =

== So you want to hack on GNU MediaGoblin? ==

First thing to do is check out the [http://mediagoblin.org/join/ web site] where we list all the project
infrastructure including:

* the IRC channel
* the mailing list
* the issue tracker

Additionally, we have information on how to get involved, who to talk
to, what needs to be worked on, and other things besides!

Second thing to do is take a look at [http://docs.mediagoblin.org/codebase.html codebase chapter] where
we've started documenting how GNU MediaGoblin is built and how to add
new things. If you're planning on contributing in python, you should be aware
of [http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/ PEP-8], the official Python style guide,
which we follow.

Third you'll need to get the requirements.

Fourth, you'll need to build a development environment. We use an
in-package checkout of virtualenv. This isn't the convenional way to
install virtualenv (normally you don't install virtualenv inside the
package itself) but we've found that it's significantly easier for
newcomers who aren't already familiar with virtualenv. If you *are*
already familiar with virtualenv, feel free to just install
mediagoblin in your own virtualenv setup... the necessary adjustments
should be obvious.

== Getting requirements ==

First, you need to have the following installed before you can build
an environment for hacking on GNU MediaGoblin:

* Python 2.6 or 2.7 - http://www.python.org/ (You'll need Python as well as the dev files for building modules.)
* python-lxml - http://lxml.de/
* git - http://git-scm.com/
* SQLAlchemy 0.7.0 or higher - http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
* Python Imaging Library (PIL) - http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/
* virtualenv - http://www.virtualenv.org/
* Python GStreamer Bindings - http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/modules/gst-python.html

=== GNU/Linux ===

==== Debian and derivatives ====

If you're running Debian GNU/Linux or a Debian-derived distribution
such as Debian, Mint, or [http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/478 Ubuntu 10.10+], running the following should install these
requirements:

{{Cmd|sudo apt-get install git-core python python-dev python-lxml python-imaging python-virtualenv python-gst0.10 libjpeg8-dev}}

==== Fedora / RedHat(?) ====

On Fedora:

{{Cmd|yum install python-paste-deploy python-paste-script git-core python python-devel python-lxml python-imaging python-virtualenv gstreamer-python}}

=== Mac OS X ===

On Mac OS X Lion:

Download the Newest Python.

Git is already installed.

Python-lxml: http://muffinresearch.co.uk/archives/2009/03/05/install-lxml-on-osx/ with sudo

Python Imaging Library (PIL): http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/images/installingPIL.html#mac

Libjpeg & Libpng: http://ethan.tira-thompson.org/Mac_OS_X_Ports.html Combo Installer

=== Microsoft Windows ===

''Thanks wctype!''

==== Getting requirements ====

* Python 2.7 - [http://www.python.org/download/ Download] 
* git - [https://github.com/msysgit/git/downloads Download] 
* python-lxml - [http://pypi.python.org/pypi/lxml/2.3.5#downloads Tarball] [http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pil Binaries] 
* Python Imaging Library (PIL) - [http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ Download] 
* virtualenv - [http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenvwrapper-win/1.0.8#downloads Download] 
* OSSBuild project provides reasonably up-to-date binaries of GStreamer - [https://code.google.com/p/ossbuild/downloads/list Download] 
* py-bcrypt - [https://bitbucket.org/alexandrul/py-bcrypt/downloads/ Download] 

----

'''You can help:'''

If you have instructions for other GNU/Linux distributions, Windows, or Mac OS X to set
up requirements, [http://mediagoblin.org/join/ let us know]!

== How to set up and maintain an environment for hacking with virtualenv ==

'''Requirements'''

No additional requirements.

'''Create a development environment'''

After installing the requirements, follow these steps:

* Clone the repository: {{Cmd|git clone <nowiki>git://gitorious.org/mediagoblin/mediagoblin.git</nowiki>}}
* Change directories to your new checkout: {{Cmd|cd mediagoblin}}
* Set up the in-package virtualenv:
(virtualenv --system-site-packages . || virtualenv .) && ./bin/python setup.py develop
* Init the database:
{{Cmd|./bin/gmg dbupdate}}

That's it!

(If you have troubles in the remaining steps, consider try installing
virtualenv with one of the flags --setuptools, --distribute or possibly --no-site-packages. Additionally, if your system has python3.X as the default, you might need to do virtualenv --python=python2.7 or --python=python2.6)

If you have problems, please [http://mediagoblin.org/join/ let us know]!

== Updating an existing environment ==

'''Updating for dependency changes'''

While hacking on GNU MediaGoblin over time, you'll eventually have to
update your development environment because the dependencies have
changed.

To do that, run:

{{Cmd|./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate}}

'''Updating for code changes'''

{{Cmd|git pull -u}}

== Running the server ==

If you want to get things running quickly and without hassle, just
run:

{{Cmd|./lazyserver.sh}}

This will start up a python server where you can begin playing with
mediagoblin, listening on 127.0.0.1:6543. It will also run celery in "always eager" mode so you
don't have to start a separate process for it.

By default, the instance is not sending out confirmation mails. Instead they are redirected to the standard output (the console) of lazyserver.sh.

You can change this behavior setting <code>email_debug_mode</code> to <code>false</code> in mediagoblin.ini

This is fine in development, but if you want to actually run celery
separately for testing (or deployment purposes), you'll want to run
the server independently:

{{Cmd|./bin/paster serve paste.ini --reload}}

== Running celeryd ==

If you aren't using <tt>./lazyserver.sh</tt> or otherwise aren't running celery
in always eager mode, you'll need to do this if you want your media to
process and actually show up. It's probably a good idea in
development to have the web server (above) running in one terminal and
celeryd in another window.

Run:

{{Cmd|<nowiki>CELERY_CONFIG_MODULE=mediagoblin.init.celery.from_celery ./bin/celeryd</nowiki>}}

== Running the test suite ==

Run:

{{Cmd|./runtests.sh}}

== Running a shell ==

If you want a shell with your database pre-setup and an instantiated
application ready and at your fingertips....

Run:

{{Cmd|./bin/gmg shell}}

== Troubleshooting ==

== Wiping your user data ==

You can completely wipe all data from the instance by doing:

{{Cmd|rm -rf mediagoblin.db kombu.db celery.db user_dev; ./bin/gmg dbupdate}}

'''Note:'''

Unless you're doing development and working on and testing creating
a new instance, you will probably never have to do this.

== Quickstart for Django programmers ==

We're not using Django, but the codebase is very Django-like in its
structure.

* <tt>routing.py</tt> is like <tt>urls.py</tt> in Django
* <tt>models.py</tt> has SQLAlchemy ORM definitions
* <tt>views.py</tt> is where the views go

We're using SQLAlchemy, which is semi-similar to the Django ORM, but
not really because you can get a lot more fine-grained. The
[http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/latest/orm/tutorial.html SQLAlchemy ORM tutorial] is a great place to start.

'''YouCanHelp'''

If there are other things that you think would help orient someone
new to GNU MediaGoblin but coming from Django, let us know!

== Showing off your work with PageKite ==

If you're doing development with MediaGoblin, it's sometimes helpful to show off your work to gather feedback from other contributors. A number of the MediaGoblin developers use something called [http://pagekite.net PageKite], which is a fellow free software web service which makes temporarily showing off work on your machine easy. There's a [http://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/UsePageKiteWithMediaGoblin/ tutorial on how to use PageKite and MediaGoblin together] available on the PageKite wiki.

If you are doing a lot of MediaGoblin development, the PageKite people have graciously offered us a good amount of bandwidth at no cost in an effort to help out fellow free software projects. If you've been making significant contributions, PM Chris Webber on freenode (who is paroneayea there) and ask if you can be added to our group plan.

== Bite-sized bugs to start with ==

Now you should visit our latest list of [http://issues.mediagoblin.org/query?status=!closed&keywords=~bitesized bite-sized issues] because squishing bugs is messy fun. If you're interested in other things to work on, or need help getting started on a bug, let us know on [http://mediagoblin.org/join/ the mailing list] or on the [http://mediagoblin.org/join/ IRC channel].

Meeting

2012-07-07T20:23:38Z

Gandaro:

== MediaGoblin Monthly Meeting ==

'''When:''' 9:00 am Pacific Time first Saturday of the month. [http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html Convert time to your timezone]. Print current UTC time: <code>date -u +"It's %F %T UTC"</code>

'''Where:''' IRC #mediagoblin on irc.freenode.net

Always announced several days in advance on the [http://lists.mediagoblin.org/pipermail/devel/ mailing list] as is date adjustments, agenda discussion and other meeting preparation.

'''Purpose:''' The idea is to discuss the past month, what happened, what was good, what should be done better. And to create roadmap for the upcoming month and assign tasks to people willing to handle them.

Typical Agenda topics:

* What happened in the last month, what was good, what could be better next time?
* What should be done next month?

Meetings are logged. [http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/ Logs for past meetings.]

== Next Meeting ==

August 4th, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time (2012-08-04 16:00 UTC)

* ...

== Past Meetings ==

== July 7th, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time (2012-07-07 16:00 UTC) ==

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-07-07.txt IRC log]

Announcements:

* Anyone who wants to edit the wiki needs to be in the goblin army group. Ask Will or Chris to get added.
* Plugin infrastructure landed. If you're interested in writing plugins, talk to Will. Some documentation at http://docs.mediagoblin.org/#part-2-plugin-writer-s-guide

Agenda:

* Keyboard shortcuts ([http://issues.mediagoblin.org/ticket/346 #346])
* Ticket triaging?
* Base plugin stuff!
* Theming
* Conference: OSCON
* Chris Webber's new "office hours"

=== June 2nd, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-06-02.txt IRC log]

* docs changes
** Will split the docs/ guide into a Site Administrator's Guide and a Plugin Writer's Guide
** Has anyone looked at the Plugin Writer's Guide, yet?
** Will wants to add a "Contributor's Guide" to docs/ which he'd update from the wiki before every release
* Is there a way to improve our unit tests and motivation to write them?
** Simulating a browser by the way of [http://phantomjs.org/ PhantomJS], [http://seleniumhq.org/ Selenium] instead of having code simulating other code against itself might be more natural to write and even more testing the actual application. I have a good feeling about this, please prove me wrong if I'd be. --[[User:Joar|Joar]] 08:53, 28 May 2012 (EDT)
* Administrative panel/tools and user uploads panel
* Git and tickets
* Plugins
** What's the state of things?
** Documentation
** What plugins might we want to build for this upcoming release?
** What things do we currently have that we might want to pluginify?
* State of kuneco/federation mini-update (Chris)

=== May 5th, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-05-05.txt IRC log]

* Post-release reflections
** Woohoo, release!
** How did this release process go?
*** We should talk about that conference.
** What's left to clean up?
*** Mongokit->SQL "style" query conversion?
*** Other cruft code?
* What are our next goals?
** Plugins
** Federation
** Favoriting
*** Take that, Pinterest! ;)
** Galleries
** Theming
*** Using sass would be neat
** Access restrictions
*** User management, or having a "secret url" that is not in the photo index that you can share with friends and generate as needed for any media type
** What about traffic? Some of us will host GMG on limited plans.
** Some kind of coding guidelines? Do we have a philosophy like "Keep it Simple, Stupid"
*** This concerns things like: Should plugins land in core eventually, do we want to support ALL THE MEDIA TYPES, ...
** Podcasting support?
** Things that have been hanging???
** Bugtrackers and milestone?
** More??? We should organize things!
* jancborchardt and his team of UX wizard-students
* Website redesign
* OpenShift?

=== April 7th, 2012, 4:00 am UTC ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-04-07.txt IRC log]

* Post-SQL stuff
* Pending 0.0.3 release!
* Are there stray patches/branches to be merged?
* Our glorious upcoming plugin future! (Update from Will)

=== March 3rd, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-03-03.txt IRC log]

* [[GSOC 2012]]
* State of the SQL transition (preview: it's super close, but we need help!)
* Plugin discussion (Will can't make this, but we should talk about use cases)
* MediaGoblin at upcoming conferences
* PageKite accounts

=== 2012-02 (held on 2012-02-04) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-02-04.txt IRC log]

* Code style guide? See also: http://issues.mediagoblin.org/ticket/197
* Kuneco/federation
* API
* More testing discussion?
* Theming?
* Preliminary plugin discussion
* Status update from the "SQL Team".

Some of the decisions:

* file an issue about proper <audio> support.
* some TODOs recorded

=== 2011-12 (held on 2011-12-03) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-12-03.txt IRC log]

* We plan to create a plugin system. Do we want to create that soon or push it off until things settle a bit more? ([[User:Willkg|Willkg]] 08:54, 10 November 2011 (EST))
* [[Feature Ideas]]: What should we do about the wiki page? Keep it and have it as a monthly topic for "what next"? Convert everything to long waiting bugs?
* Possibility of an [[SQL Database Backend]]?
*: 'executive summary' (well, you should read the long docs): "We could move to sql. It's probably replacing one type of pain by another type of pain, but those are somewhat comparable. Leaving the main question: Do we want to occupy our main devs for some long time with this task and loose momentum?"
* Schendje's [http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Feature_Ideas/Activities activities proposal]
* "Coming up next" blogpost draft by Deb Nicholson
* Jef's requests:
** Ticket #466 "Use of "Submit" in site copy is sterile and not as friendly and welcoming as it could be". I'd really like to change this soon to something more suitable. How can we improve the wording here? Some alternatives have been mentioned in the bug report, but which one should we pick? Link: http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/466
** The concept and naming of "favourites". We'll (hopefully) be able to "favourite" media soon, which I *think* means that 1) it'll work like a "I like this" comment, a quick token of appreciation, 2) it'll be added to your list of favourites so you can save and promote it, and 3) we could maybe use the number of favourites as a ranking. What I'd like to know is: is that the intended purpose? If so, should we name them favo(u)rites or something else? "Like", "love", "save", "appreciate", "heart", "high five" and many more could all be contenders. And the name should be consistent with the action and purpose, of course. So I'd like to clear up how and why we will use favourites and what we should call them.

=== 2011-11 (held on 2011-11-05) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-11-05.txt IRC log]

* What happened in the last month, what was good, what could be better next time?
** Release:
*** Good: 0.1.0 released!
*** Bad: postponing vs not postponing
** Sites and deployment documentation:
*** Good: new mediagoblin.org
*** Good: deployment documentation
*** Bad: py-bcrypt’s site was down just after the release, so the virtualenv deployment didn’t work, and it wasn’t clear how to fix it.
** Live instances:
*** Joar has a live instance!
*** But what does it mean? Should ordinary users start using it?
**** Details at [[User:Joar/mg.wandborg.se]] -- [[User:Joar|Joar]] 17:01, 6 November 2011 (EST)
*** nyergler added a note about "heartbeat"/status to API notes
* What should be done next month?
* Starting real work on federation (via OStatus)... and do we split any of this work out into its own library?
* An API
* Creative Commons licensing tools
* Merging in the multimedia/video branch
*: (this is *very close* already actually thanks to the hard work of Joar Wandborg! But we need some help on the gstreamer front to fix a few issues... if you or someone you know is an expert in this area we could really use their help to make the videos that come out smoother!)
* Rollover items from 0.1.0
* Multiple file upload interface
* Drag and drop uploads interface (probably related!)

=== 2011-10 (held on 2011-10-01) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-10-01.txt IRC log]

This month's meeting was a quickly announced short meeting. The project is getting back on track and next month's meeting will be scheduled more properly. A bunch of people were around.

The most important decisions:
* The project will keep monthly releases. They're the heartbeat of the project.
* Release 0.1.0 this sunday/monday.
* New website will hopefully be deployed in the next few days.
* And the following things are planned to happen during this month: Most importantly federation. The developers have decided to make up their minds on what federation aactually should mean for MediaGoblin. Concerning code, probably "activity streams" are the first goal. If there is no (good) python library for this, a new stand alone library may be created. If so, a name for it has to be found. It should have something about communication in it. And the other thing to happen during this month is an ongoing discussion about "bus factor".

=== 2011-09 (held on 2011-09-03) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-09-03.txt IRC log]

=== 2011-08 (held on 2011-08-06) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-08-06.txt IRC log]

Meeting

2012-05-20T18:25:53Z

Gandaro: +irc logs

== MediaGoblin Monthly Meeting ==

'''When:''' 9:00 am Pacific Time first Saturday of the month. [http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html Convert time to your timezone]. Print current UTC time: <code>date -u +"It's %F %T UTC"</code>

'''Where:''' IRC #mediagoblin on irc.freenode.net

Always announced several days in advance on the [http://lists.mediagoblin.org/pipermail/devel/ mailing list] as is date adjustments, agenda discussion and other meeting preparation.

'''Purpose:''' The idea is to discuss the past month, what happened, what was good, what should be done better. And to create roadmap for the upcoming month and assign tasks to people willing to handle them.

Typical Agenda topics:

* What happened in the last month, what was good, what could be better next time?
* What should be done next month?

Meetings are logged. [http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/ Logs for past meetings.]

== Next Meeting ==
June 2nd, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time (2012-06-02 16:00 UTC)

* …

== Past Meetings ==

=== May 5th, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-05-05.txt IRC log]

* Post-release reflections
** Woohoo, release!
** How did this release process go?
*** We should talk about that conference.
** What's left to clean up?
*** Mongokit->SQL "style" query conversion?
*** Other cruft code?
* What are our next goals?
** Plugins
** Federation
** Favoriting
*** Take that, Pinterest! ;)
** Galleries
** Theming
*** Using sass would be neat
** Access restrictions
*** User management, or having a "secret url" that is not in the photo index that you can share with friends and generate as needed for any media type
** What about traffic? Some of us will host GMG on limited plans.
** Some kind of coding guidelines? Do we have a philosophy like "Keep it Simple, Stupid"
*** This concerns things like: Should plugins land in core eventually, do we want to support ALL THE MEDIA TYPES, ...
** Podcasting support?
** Things that have been hanging???
** Bugtrackers and milestone?
** More??? We should organize things!
* jancborchardt and his team of UX wizard-students
* Website redesign
* OpenShift?

=== April 7th, 2012, 4:00 am UTC ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-04-07.txt IRC log]

* Post-SQL stuff
* Pending 0.0.3 release!
* Are there stray patches/branches to be merged?
* Our glorious upcoming plugin future! (Update from Will)

=== March 3rd, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-03-03.txt IRC log]

* [[GSOC 2012]]
* State of the SQL transition (preview: it's super close, but we need help!)
* Plugin discussion (Will can't make this, but we should talk about use cases)
* MediaGoblin at upcoming conferences
* PageKite accounts

=== 2012-02 (held on 2012-02-04) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-02-04.txt IRC log]

* Code style guide? See also: http://issues.mediagoblin.org/ticket/197
* Kuneco/federation
* API
* More testing discussion?
* Theming?
* Preliminary plugin discussion
* Status update from the "SQL Team".

Some of the decisions:

* file an issue about proper <audio> support.
* some TODOs recorded

=== 2011-12 (held on 2011-12-03) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-12-03.txt IRC log]

* We plan to create a plugin system. Do we want to create that soon or push it off until things settle a bit more? ([[User:Willkg|Willkg]] 08:54, 10 November 2011 (EST))
* [[Feature Ideas]]: What should we do about the wiki page? Keep it and have it as a monthly topic for "what next"? Convert everything to long waiting bugs?
* Possibility of an [[SQL Database Backend]]?
*: 'executive summary' (well, you should read the long docs): "We could move to sql. It's probably replacing one type of pain by another type of pain, but those are somewhat comparable. Leaving the main question: Do we want to occupy our main devs for some long time with this task and loose momentum?"
* Schendje's [http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Feature_Ideas/Activities activities proposal]
* "Coming up next" blogpost draft by Deb Nicholson
* Jef's requests:
** Ticket #466 "Use of "Submit" in site copy is sterile and not as friendly and welcoming as it could be". I'd really like to change this soon to something more suitable. How can we improve the wording here? Some alternatives have been mentioned in the bug report, but which one should we pick? Link: http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/466
** The concept and naming of "favourites". We'll (hopefully) be able to "favourite" media soon, which I *think* means that 1) it'll work like a "I like this" comment, a quick token of appreciation, 2) it'll be added to your list of favourites so you can save and promote it, and 3) we could maybe use the number of favourites as a ranking. What I'd like to know is: is that the intended purpose? If so, should we name them favo(u)rites or something else? "Like", "love", "save", "appreciate", "heart", "high five" and many more could all be contenders. And the name should be consistent with the action and purpose, of course. So I'd like to clear up how and why we will use favourites and what we should call them.

=== 2011-11 (held on 2011-11-05) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-11-05.txt IRC log]

* What happened in the last month, what was good, what could be better next time?
** Release:
*** Good: 0.1.0 released!
*** Bad: postponing vs not postponing
** Sites and deployment documentation:
*** Good: new mediagoblin.org
*** Good: deployment documentation
*** Bad: py-bcrypt’s site was down just after the release, so the virtualenv deployment didn’t work, and it wasn’t clear how to fix it.
** Live instances:
*** Joar has a live instance!
*** But what does it mean? Should ordinary users start using it?
**** Details at [[User:Joar/mg.wandborg.se]] -- [[User:Joar|Joar]] 17:01, 6 November 2011 (EST)
*** nyergler added a note about "heartbeat"/status to API notes
* What should be done next month?
* Starting real work on federation (via OStatus)... and do we split any of this work out into its own library?
* An API
* Creative Commons licensing tools
* Merging in the multimedia/video branch
*: (this is *very close* already actually thanks to the hard work of Joar Wandborg! But we need some help on the gstreamer front to fix a few issues... if you or someone you know is an expert in this area we could really use their help to make the videos that come out smoother!)
* Rollover items from 0.1.0
* Multiple file upload interface
* Drag and drop uploads interface (probably related!)

=== 2011-10 (held on 2011-10-01) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-10-01.txt IRC log]

This month's meeting was a quickly announced short meeting. The project is getting back on track and next month's meeting will be scheduled more properly. A bunch of people were around.

The most important decisions:
* The project will keep monthly releases. They're the heartbeat of the project.
* Release 0.1.0 this sunday/monday.
* New website will hopefully be deployed in the next few days.
* And the following things are planned to happen during this month: Most importantly federation. The developers have decided to make up their minds on what federation aactually should mean for MediaGoblin. Concerning code, probably "activity streams" are the first goal. If there is no (good) python library for this, a new stand alone library may be created. If so, a name for it has to be found. It should have something about communication in it. And the other thing to happen during this month is an ongoing discussion about "bus factor".

=== 2011-09 (held on 2011-09-03) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-09-03.txt IRC log]

=== 2011-08 (held on 2011-08-06) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-08-06.txt IRC log]

Meeting

2012-05-20T18:20:38Z

Gandaro: May 5th is in the past

== MediaGoblin Monthly Meeting ==

'''When:''' 9:00 am Pacific Time first Saturday of the month. [http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html Convert time to your timezone]. Print current UTC time: <code>date -u +"It's %F %T UTC"</code>

'''Where:''' IRC #mediagoblin on irc.freenode.net

Always announced several days in advance on the [http://lists.mediagoblin.org/pipermail/devel/ mailing list] as is date adjustments, agenda discussion and other meeting preparation.

'''Purpose:''' The idea is to discuss the past month, what happened, what was good, what should be done better. And to create roadmap for the upcoming month and assign tasks to people willing to handle them.

Typical Agenda topics:

* What happened in the last month, what was good, what could be better next time?
* What should be done next month?

Meetings are logged. [http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/ Logs for past meetings.]

== Next Meeting ==
June 2nd, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time (2012-06-02 16:00 UTC)

* …

== Past Meetings ==

=== May 5th, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time ===

* Post-release reflections
** Woohoo, release!
** How did this release process go?
*** We should talk about that conference.
** What's left to clean up?
*** Mongokit->SQL "style" query conversion?
*** Other cruft code?
* What are our next goals?
** Plugins
** Federation
** Favoriting
*** Take that, Pinterest! ;)
** Galleries
** Theming
*** Using sass would be neat
** Access restrictions
*** User management, or having a "secret url" that is not in the photo index that you can share with friends and generate as needed for any media type
** What about traffic? Some of us will host GMG on limited plans.
** Some kind of coding guidelines? Do we have a philosophy like "Keep it Simple, Stupid"
*** This concerns things like: Should plugins land in core eventually, do we want to support ALL THE MEDIA TYPES, ...
** Podcasting support?
** Things that have been hanging???
** Bugtrackers and milestone?
** More??? We should organize things!
* jancborchardt and his team of UX wizard-students
* Website redesign
* OpenShift?

=== 2012-04-07 16:00 UTC ===

* Post-SQL stuff
* Pending 0.0.3 release!
* Are there stray patches/branches to be merged?
* Our glorious upcoming plugin future! (Update from Will)

=== March 3rd, 2012, 9:00 am Pacific Time ===

* [[GSOC 2012]]
* State of the SQL transition (preview: it's super close, but we need help!)
* Plugin discussion (Will can't make this, but we should talk about use cases)
* MediaGoblin at upcoming conferences
* PageKite accounts

=== 2012-02 (held on 2012-02-04) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2012-02-04.txt IRC log]

* Code style guide? See also: http://issues.mediagoblin.org/ticket/197
* Kuneco/federation
* API
* More testing discussion?
* Theming?
* Preliminary plugin discussion
* Status update from the "SQL Team".

Some of the decisions:

* file an issue about proper <audio> support.
* some TODOs recorded

=== 2011-12 (held on 2011-12-03) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-12-03.txt IRC log]

* We plan to create a plugin system. Do we want to create that soon or push it off until things settle a bit more? ([[User:Willkg|Willkg]] 08:54, 10 November 2011 (EST))
* [[Feature Ideas]]: What should we do about the wiki page? Keep it and have it as a monthly topic for "what next"? Convert everything to long waiting bugs?
* Possibility of an [[SQL Database Backend]]?
*: 'executive summary' (well, you should read the long docs): "We could move to sql. It's probably replacing one type of pain by another type of pain, but those are somewhat comparable. Leaving the main question: Do we want to occupy our main devs for some long time with this task and loose momentum?"
* Schendje's [http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Feature_Ideas/Activities activities proposal]
* "Coming up next" blogpost draft by Deb Nicholson
* Jef's requests:
** Ticket #466 "Use of "Submit" in site copy is sterile and not as friendly and welcoming as it could be". I'd really like to change this soon to something more suitable. How can we improve the wording here? Some alternatives have been mentioned in the bug report, but which one should we pick? Link: http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/466
** The concept and naming of "favourites". We'll (hopefully) be able to "favourite" media soon, which I *think* means that 1) it'll work like a "I like this" comment, a quick token of appreciation, 2) it'll be added to your list of favourites so you can save and promote it, and 3) we could maybe use the number of favourites as a ranking. What I'd like to know is: is that the intended purpose? If so, should we name them favo(u)rites or something else? "Like", "love", "save", "appreciate", "heart", "high five" and many more could all be contenders. And the name should be consistent with the action and purpose, of course. So I'd like to clear up how and why we will use favourites and what we should call them.

=== 2011-11 (held on 2011-11-05) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-11-05.txt IRC log]

* What happened in the last month, what was good, what could be better next time?
** Release:
*** Good: 0.1.0 released!
*** Bad: postponing vs not postponing
** Sites and deployment documentation:
*** Good: new mediagoblin.org
*** Good: deployment documentation
*** Bad: py-bcrypt’s site was down just after the release, so the virtualenv deployment didn’t work, and it wasn’t clear how to fix it.
** Live instances:
*** Joar has a live instance!
*** But what does it mean? Should ordinary users start using it?
**** Details at [[User:Joar/mg.wandborg.se]] -- [[User:Joar|Joar]] 17:01, 6 November 2011 (EST)
*** nyergler added a note about "heartbeat"/status to API notes
* What should be done next month?
* Starting real work on federation (via OStatus)... and do we split any of this work out into its own library?
* An API
* Creative Commons licensing tools
* Merging in the multimedia/video branch
*: (this is *very close* already actually thanks to the hard work of Joar Wandborg! But we need some help on the gstreamer front to fix a few issues... if you or someone you know is an expert in this area we could really use their help to make the videos that come out smoother!)
* Rollover items from 0.1.0
* Multiple file upload interface
* Drag and drop uploads interface (probably related!)

=== 2011-10 (held on 2011-10-01) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-10-01.txt IRC log]

This month's meeting was a quickly announced short meeting. The project is getting back on track and next month's meeting will be scheduled more properly. A bunch of people were around.

The most important decisions:
* The project will keep monthly releases. They're the heartbeat of the project.
* Release 0.1.0 this sunday/monday.
* New website will hopefully be deployed in the next few days.
* And the following things are planned to happen during this month: Most importantly federation. The developers have decided to make up their minds on what federation aactually should mean for MediaGoblin. Concerning code, probably "activity streams" are the first goal. If there is no (good) python library for this, a new stand alone library may be created. If so, a name for it has to be found. It should have something about communication in it. And the other thing to happen during this month is an ongoing discussion about "bus factor".

=== 2011-09 (held on 2011-09-03) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-09-03.txt IRC log]

=== 2011-08 (held on 2011-08-06) ===

[http://mediagoblin.org/irclogs/irc_meeting_2011-08-06.txt IRC log]

Why WSGI Minimalism

2012-05-20T16:36:08Z

Gandaro: link fix

== Chris Webber on "Why WSGI Minimalism": ==

If you notice in the technology list I list a lot of components that are very "django-like", but not actually [http://www.djangoproject.com/ Django]components. What can I say, I really like a lot of the ideas in Django! Which leads to the question: why not just use Django?

While I really like Django's ideas and a lot of its components, I also feel that most of the best ideas in Django I want have been implemented as good or even better outside of Django. I could just use Django and replace the templating system with Jinja2, and the form system with wtforms, and the database with MongoDB and MongoKit, but at that point, how much of Django is really left?

I also am sometimes saddened and irritated by how coupled all of Django's components are. Loosely coupled yes, but still coupled. WSGI has done a good job of providing a base layer for running applications on and if you know how to do it yourself <ref> [http://pythonpaste.org/webob/do-it-yourself.html Another Do-It-Yourself Framework]</ref>it's not hard or many lines of code at all to bind them together without any framework at all (not even say [http://pylonshq.com/ Pylons] [http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/dev/ Pyramid] or [http://flask.pocoo.org/ Flask] which I think are still great projects, especially for people who want this sort of thing but have no idea how to get started). And even at this already really early stage of writing MediaGoblin, that glue work is mostly done.

Not to say I don't think Django isn't great for a lot of things. For a lot of stuff, it's still the best, but not for MediaGoblin, I think.

One thing that Django does super well though is documentation. It still has some faults, but even with those considered I can hardly think of any other project in Python that has as nice of documentation as Django. It may be worth learning some lessons on documentation from Django <ref>[http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4881071/ PyCon 2011: Writing great documentation]</ref> on that note.

I'd really like to have a good, thorough hacking-howto and deployment-howto, especially in the former making some notes on how to make it easier for Django hackers to get started.

== Notes ==
<references/>

[[Category:DesignDecisions]]