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The OpenForge API

Some time ago, during year 2008, Tim and I wrote the first version of the OpenForge API. The goal of this API was to allow communication between software forge. Thus, the 0.1 came with three main features :

  • retrieve project data
  • retrieve user data
  • search for projects and users

Tim is the developper and the administrator beside ShareSource, another public software forge. So, our idea was to connect our forges, allowing our users to, for instance, search for projects registered on CodingTeam.net through ShareSource.

Nowadays, CodingTeam supports the full specification and all the three functionnalities of the OpenForge API are available inside our project. We can also notice that the most exciting features, the ability to search for projects and users in a network of forges from another, is not used at all. In fact, only CodingTeam supports this API and thus only CodingTeam forges can connect their search results (this can be activated in the administration panel, and by the way, if you are running a CodingTeam forge and want your search results to appear on CodingTeam.net, just contact me).

In fact, we can say that OpenForge is a failure. The innovant part is not used and the simple parts are barely used. Beyond that, we can try to explain the relative unsuccess of our API.

The main problem is that the simple parts of OpenForge (data retrieve) is somewhat too simple. See by yourself:

  • retrieving project data from Bluemindo
  • retrieving user data from me

Example of an external search on two other forges (XML output example):

A lot of ideas have been debated on our developement room since OpenForge exists and there are a lot of possibility to improve it. I think it is reasonable to wonder if it's in the CodingTeam interest to keep these implementations in the codebase, since OpenForge is not really used by other projects (or even by users) and as the goal of OpenForge being the wish to connect software forges. Or maybe, it's time to work on this API.

It would be great to open the development of the API. Everyone should be able to give his opinion and his ideas.

There are many development possibilities that we thought about. We could use existing data representation like DOAP for projects and FOAF or vCard for users. We could switch to a really public and open development of the API. We could imagine that OpenForge supports importation and exportation of projects, bugs, SCM, wikis… Last but not least, OpenForge could also be used to post or edit content directly from the API.

Maybe OpenForge wasn't a very good idea. Maybe it can be improved to be very useful. We need help and comments.

By Erwan on Tuesday, November 2 2010, 02:04 - Miscellaneous

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First CodingTeam meeting

Now that the summer has ended, it's time for the CodingTeam blog to revive! If you are following our French-speaking community, you should know that a meeting of CodingTeam users have been organized in Paris this week-end.

The goal of this meeting was to meet users, discuss of the CodingTeam software, problems, and ideas for the future of the software forge. And to eat a lot of flammekueche (and perhaps too much).

A few technical points have been discussed. We talked about Git integration in CodingTeam (expected very soon), download count, popularity calculation and the possibility of integrating PubSub.

We (or some of us) also talked about beers, horror movies and a lots of other fun stuff.


From left to right: Florent (louiz'), Frédéric (P'tit FR[e]D), Erwan (xbright), Edouard (inouire) and Emmanuel (Link Mauve)

Furthermore, this was an opportunity for five users of the CodingTeam software forge to face their favorite administrator and their favorite developer: me.


Harold (Melsophos) and Florent (louiz')

This meeting is born on the forum and there surely will be a lot of meeting again in the future!

By Erwan on Sunday, September 19 2010, 14:46 - Miscellaneous

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Project of the Month #3 - Jappix

The project of the month for may 2010 is Jappix. This is a very new project developped on CodingTeam.net since april 2010!

According to the project leader, Jappix is a Jabber web-client that aims at becoming the web equivalent of Gajim. It means that loads of XMPP XEP will be supported, and the client will probably become a "mini" social network, entirely based on the XMPP protocole, with the help of PubSub.

The graphical aspect is also very important to the Jappix team as they want the non-profit Jappix project to be as good as other commercial web-app. According to them, the user has to feel good while using it: “ The Jabber network needs good clients, so that we can do it and convert everyone to Jabber. Let's decentralize the instant messenging ! ”

And now, a few questions asked to the project leader!

  • How did you know CodingTeam?

    I know Codingteam thanks to Edouard, who posted a comment on my weblog, that told me he was using CodingTeam.net since a few time and it was pretty good for his projects (in fact, they were shared faster). At the really beginning, I wanted to use Launchpad.net from Canonical, but I saw that it wasn't as good as I expected. Here came CodingTeam.net !
     
  • What CodingTeam brings in your project development?

    CodingTeam brings us a better organisation, mostly with the bugs reporting tool, that we use mainly as a ToDo list (because I report all the functionalities that I'd like to code for the next versions with that tool).

    On the one hand, CodingTeam.net brings us a simple hosting platform for our project, with a great SVN repository and package hosting, with the principal advandage that is to get a quick view of the total number of downloads, with the popularity of our project on the platform. The OpenForge API is also great, because we use it to retrieve data on one of our external website.

    On the other hand, the work of the translators was really simplified thanks to CodingTeam, because they are able to start translating from a simple web interface, and they do not need to contact us anymore to send any translated strings file ! That's simple, direct, and powerful.

    There are loads of things that CodingTeam has which make me love it (the XMPP functionnalities and so on). It make us work even faster and easier, together.
     
  • What would you see in CodingTeam in the future?

    Well, I think that, in a first, some tools like the translation engine might be improved to allow anonymous users translating the project that they want to. Then, I really think that opening the forge to other repository protocols (principally Git), because some developers can't bear Subversion...

    Allowing project managers to add external Jabber rooms or external repositories would be great too. Maybe that on some CodingTeam modules, the performances should be increased too: the page generation can be very slow by using a particular tool and very fast with some other tools.
     
  • Since you use CodingTeam, did you became rich and sexy?

    Well, I got lots of donations (74€) for the project (I don't know if it's thanks to the "donate" link on CodingTeam.net or the one on my weblog), but the main thing is that it allowed me to code even faster and better.
     

Thanks to Valérian who answered to my questions! Feel free to take a look at Jappix!

By Erwan on Saturday, May 29 2010, 18:50 - Project of the Month

jappix openforge potm

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Project of the Month #2 - Kinovea

The project of the month for april 2010 is Kinovea. This project is developped on CodingTeam.net since september 2008!

Kinovea is a video analysis tool for sport coaches and athletes. The main focus is to enable performance analysis through a straightforward interface. The most important functions (aside frame by frame playback) are video-drawing and side by side comparison.

The project started as a small freeware in 2004, then underwent a full rewrite starting in 2006, with the first open source version available in 2008. The project is also used by 2D/3D animators to comment on each others works.

Kinovea was rewarded in 2009: it was the third project in the Multimedia category of Les Trophées du Libre.

And now, a few questions asked to the project leader!

  • How did you know CodingTeam?

    I honestly don't remember how I stumbled upon CodingTeam, it probably was on Veni Vidi Libri wiki (a website to help Open Source software authors with licensing and organising). What I do remember is that I was attracted by the human-sized structure and clean design. The fact that the forge is open was also a strong point. It suddenly made me realise that most other forges weren't quite coherent in their approach.
     
  • What CodingTeam brings in your project development?

    We are mostly using the subversion repository facility, its web interface, and the RSS feed of code changes.
     
  • What would you see in CodingTeam in the future?

    I think one area that could be worth exploring is to give the administrator of a project more access to the underlying data of his project. For example, the wiki pages (including history) could be made downloadable on demand as a single archive, to provide an extra backup mechanism.

    I think there are already a whole lot of interesting features, probably more than one can dream of. As a matter of fact, it might be interesting to give project admins the ability to hide/show tabs to better match the tools they actually use.

    That said, I'm looking forward Mercurial support, I know it's in the works :-)
     
  • Since you use CodingTeam, did you became rich and sexy?

    Definitely. Each time I use CodingTeam, I gain one extra point of sexiness. Now I need to figure out how to fix the sexy, sexy bugs I write :-)
     

Thanks to Joan who answered to my questions! Feel free to take a look at Kinovea!

By Erwan on Tuesday, April 27 2010, 00:47 - Project of the Month

kinovea potm

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Some statistics about CodingTeam.net

Here are some cool statistics about CodingTeam.net usage (generated on 28th march 2010). There are currently 304 projects registered on CodingTeam.net.

Top categories.

User involvement.

  • Number of users: 1,276
  • Users who own one or more project: 249 (19.5%)
  • Users without any project: 1,027 (80.5%)
  • Users involved in one or more project: 283 (22.2%)
  • Users without any project involvement: 993 (77.8%)

Miscellaneous.

  • Number of posts in the forums: 2,436
  • Number of bugs reported: 1,097
  • Number of strings to translate: 335
  • Number of translated strings: 1,492
  • Number of news: 386
  • Number of downloads: 495

The fact is that a lot of users on CodingTeam.net are somewhat inactive. But the few users that are really involved seem to be huge workers (we have more than 3,200 commits since the 0.9 release (all past commits aren't counted)).

Each time I release a new version of CodingTeam, a lot of users come to CodingTeam.net to see how it works. CodingTeam.net not being a test setup may be the reason for a large part of these 77.8% inactive users: They register, see their project rejected, and stop here. Maybe it would be a good solution to create a CodingTeam demo, opened to all, allowing everyone to test, to see and to make their own advice without installing anything. Statistics are cool, interpreting them is harder.

And, last but not least, as I'm very busy this month, there won't be a Project of the Month entry for march 2010.

By Erwan on Sunday, March 28 2010, 14:22 - Miscellaneous

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