[Pachy-Dev] Report from weekly call 2/2/06

Fri Feb 3 12:59:03 PST 2006

wow!  What a FANTASTIC report!!  Go dev!  Nice work, Josh!!

Larry

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joshua Archer" <joshua at yaboogie.com>
To: "pachy-dev" <pachy-dev at lists.cdl.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 1:49 PM
Subject: [Pachy-Dev] Report from weekly call 2/2/06

> Hello Pachyderm Development Team!
> 
> Yesterday, Thursday Feb 2nd, we had another of our weekly calls, and  
> at this call we covered an overview of the project's status, but more  
> importantly I proposed a shift in the way that we operate the  
> development arm of the pachyderm project, to prepare us for the  
> imminent release of the project to the open source community. I'd  
> like to take a moment to cover both with the greater group, and get  
> feedback. I apologize in advance for the length of this email.
> 
> First, I welcomed Susan Baur and Adam Tanguma to our team as system  
> administration support for the NMC live instances (production, dev,  
> etc.). Adam Tanguma comes to us from the NMC, and will be acting as  
> first-tier support for Pachyderm issues, as well as manning the help  
> desk for NMC instance Pachyderm users. Susan Baur is from the CDL,  
> and will be acting as second-tier support for the NMC Pachyderm  
> servers. Susan, Adam and I met after the dev call, and discussed  
> operating procedures. We will be opening up a mail alias  
> 'help at pachyderm.org', which all support mail will get funneled  
> through, and which will forward to Adam, Susan and myself. Until  
> then, direct your support questions to Adam, and he will help you and/ 
> or push them down the stack when appropriate. Thank you both for  
> contributing your time and effort to the team, the development team  
> looks forward to working with you.
> 
> On the Pachyderm project, we've gotten a lot done over the last week,  
> and yet we still have much to accomplish. One thing that I have  
> finished this past week is the OS-independent thumbnail image  
> generator, meaning we're no longer tied to Mac OS X for a fully- 
> operational Pachyderm. There were also some bugs in some of the  
> Apollo libraries that I managed to fix as well. There are still a few  
> nits to fix in the thumbnail code, but for the most part, we are there!
> 
> We've gotten a lot accomplished on the server front as well this  
> week. The subversion repositories have been moved from apollo to  
> dev.pachyderm.org, and earlier yesterday I sent out instructions on  
> how to switch repositories from apollo to dev. If you need help,  
> please contact me and I will walk you through the process. Very soon  
> I intend on cleaning up the repository in a significant way, so get  
> your code checked in soon. I'll notify you when you will need to do a  
> fresh check-out of the repository. I still need to move over a copy  
> of the compiled apollo libraries to dev as well, to use as our  
> ratified versions of the libraries for pachyderm. I'll let everyone  
> know when that happens as well.
> 
> Mantis has been moved to dev as well, though until yesterday any mail  
> Mantis was trying to send was being sent with a 'localhost.local'  
> hostname, so many institutional spam filters might have been blocking  
> the mail (such as the CSU/CDL). That has been fixed, and mail should  
> be coming out normally. So, please check your Mantis queue manually  
> and get yourself up-to-date, just in case someone's assigned a bug to  
> you or has updated bug status.
> 
> We need to design and implement a back-up scheme for dev -- Susan and  
> I will work on a plan for this, and will run our ideas past the group  
> (and discuss with Larry if $$ is necessary).
> 
> I am also currently working to get the most recent version of the  
> code base updated on dev. I'm still running into configuration  
> issues, but I'm close. Once that is done, we should look to dev as  
> our test machine instead of apollo. In fact, at this point we do not  
> have any dependencies on apollo, and all activities should take place  
> on dev.
> 
> The production server (www.pachyderm.org) appears to be running just  
> fine, which is excellent news. We will eventually need to upgrade the  
> version of pachyderm to the most recent on www once we are convinced  
> it is stable and dependable. We also need to design and implement a  
> back-up plan for www. Same comments as above.
> 
> The CDL is also working to get our own instance running on Mac OS X  
> (pachyderm.cdl.edu), and progress is moving forward on that in  
> parallel with installation on dev.pachyderm.org. Other servers to  
> take note of are the NMC Windows Pachyderm instance (no domain yet,  
> but a request has been made for 'win.pachyderm.org') which is up and  
> running, with only a few nits to work out before it's complete, as  
> well as a Linux version that Tim Steiner has installed on his own  
> personal server as a proof-in-concept (seems to work well!), and the  
> Solaris version that Case and Sun are working jointly to install.  
> Very soon, we will be able to boast running instances on 4 platforms  
> (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris)!!
> 
> SFMOMA is scheduled to attempt an install of Pachyderm the week of  
> 2/27, so I and Tim Steiner will be working with Tim Svenonius and the  
> SFMOMA IT staff to get that running in the very near future. In this  
> installation, we will be testing Tim Steiner's installation scripts  
> for Windows. I am also looking for any other volunteers willing to  
> attempt an installation at their own institution on a casual  (non- 
> public) basis to help us debug and perfect the installation process.
> 
> I also mentioned in the call several proposals that have been  
> submitted to multiple conferences for Pachyderm, in case anyone would  
> like to co-present, or be present if the proposals are accepted. I  
> have submitted several proposals to NMC (including one with Jeff  
> Merriman regarding Sakai/Pachyderm integration), Michelle LaMar and I  
> have submitted a proposal to Educause, and I have submitted a  
> proposal to the CSU's CATS conference. I also intend on submitting a  
> proposal to OSCON. If you are attending any of these conference, I  
> can give you more details on the proposals. Also, if anyone else has  
> submitted proposals to conferences for Pachyderm, please mention it  
> to the pachy-dev list.
> 
> One final bit of status is that we are in need of hammering out a  
> feature list for our next release, and attaching a time schedule for  
> that release (and any milestones leading up to that release). I'm  
> certain that will be a process that will occupy the pachy-dev list  
> for a little while in the very near future.
> 
> My intention is to review Mantis, and to accumulate any information  
> the team has and update the status report document which I sent out  
> several weeks ago, either today or monday. Please, if you have any  
> changes or additions to the document to make, let me know what they  
> are as soon as you can.
> 
> -----------------------------
> 
> Alright, are you all still with me? Still awake? Okay -- on to the  
> second section of the meeting... everyone, take a deep breath,  
> stretch, refill your coffee, and come back to read the rest :). I'll  
> put it in a separate email, since it's taking me so long to write it  
> up. I'll send it out in a few hours...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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