Best Practical

Time tracking (beta) with Hiveminder

Today we're releasing time tracking as a new Hiveminder Pro beta feature.  (If you read to the end of this post, you can save a few bucks when you sign up for Pro.)

Time tracking in Hiveminder lets you estimate the time left for a task and record when and how long you work on it.  These numbers are useful as a measure of completion and for tracking billable hours.  Once you've started using time tracking, Hiveminder can generate reports that show how well you track time.

Handy stopwatches for each task make it easy to keep track of your time as you work.

Reports per task and for any tasklist provide a way to see how much time is left and who has worked on the task.

Learn more about how to use time tracking in our online help.

Time tracking is a new feature for us that hasn't seen a lot of usage yet, so we're not sure how it'll work for everyone.  (This is why we're calling it a beta feature.)  We'll be improving and refining it as time goes on and we use it more, but we also want your feedback.  As always, we're very open to all comments and suggestions for improvement.  Let us know using the feedback box on every page what parts of time tracking work for you and what parts don't.

If you decide to sign up for Hiveminder Pro to try out this beta feature in the next month, use the coupon TIMETRACKINGBETA to get 10$ off!

Shipwright, our new code packaging tool

Like any opensource software shop, we distribute the source code
for our software. How's that for the obvious statement of the decade?

Actually, I can beat it. It's a pain in the neck for end users to
collect and install all of the dependencies for our software.

And now I'm going to one-up myself again.  Customers often build
our software against untested versions of libraries, making debugging
'frustrating.'

RT, our flagship product, depends on 124 separate packages, 114 of
them CPAN libraries. While CPAN has pretty good support for recursively
installing dependencies, it's not perfect and can be time consuming
and confusing for end users. And when it doesn't work right, as can
happen when a module author makes an incompatible change, debugging
requires a wizard.

We've built a new source (and binary) packaging system called
Shipwright.  Shipwright allows you to track all of your package's
dependencies in a version control repository like SVN or SVK as
well as build order and build instructions.

It comes with tools for importing Perl modules, C libraries and
other dependencies from CPAN, upstream version control repositories
and tarballs. When it can discover dependency information (as it
can for Perl modules), Shipwright will automatically import the
current versions of all listed dependencies if the repository doesn't
already contain sufficient versions.

Shipwright can automatically set up build instructions for projects
using autoconf as well as projects using Perl's MakeMaker,
Module::Install and  Module::Build mechanisms. If necessary, you
can customize the build instructions and dependency ordering after
you import a package.

When it's time to ship your project to your end users, all you need
to do is take a snapshot of your Shipwright repository and send it
out. To build your project, an end user just needs to run
"./bin/shipwright-build". If they want to, your users can choose
to skip certain dependencies (if they want to use system versions)
or specify an installation path.  By default, Shipwright builds
fully relocatable binary distributions into a temporary directory
and users can move them into place or copy them to any number of
hosts with the same base system libraries -- Shipwright automatically
wraps all your binaries and scripts so that they can find the
Shipwright versions of their dependencies, no matter where you move
the installed distribution.  Shipwright also comes with sh and tcsh
scripts you can 'source' to add an installed distribution's libraries
to your current environment.

At Best Practical, we've configured most of our Shipwright distributions
to bundle everything above libc. Perl, Subversion and GD are just
some of the packages we distribute as part of these relocatable
builds.  We now have a single-command tool to build, link and install
Subversion, SVK and all their dependencies (including APR, Neon,
Perl and a bunch of others).  With a single command, we downloaded,
extracted, checked in and tested Tatsuhiko Miyagawa's Plagger Feed
Aggregator and all 134 perl modules it depends on. After that, a
single command built a full binary distribution of Plagger, ready
for deployment on any Mac OS X system.

I'm quite proud to release Shipwright 1.0 today. I designed Shipwright
with sunnavy, one of the hackers here at Best Practical.  He's
responsible for almost all of the project's implementation to date,
though we're eager to have additional developers join us going forward.

If you're interested in Shipwright, download 1.0 from
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Shipwright and subscribe to the Shipwright
mailing list by emailing shipwright-subscribe@lists.bestpractical.com

You can always get the latest version of the Shipwright source code
with this command:

svn co svn://svn.bestpractical.com/Shipwright/trunk

You can get a glimpse of Shipwright builds of RT, SVK and Jifty at http://code.bestpractical.com/shipwright/

RT Spring Training 2008

As the creators of RT, Best Practical Solutions, LLC are the acknowledged leader in RT training. We provide unparalleled instruction in how to get the most out of RT. Best Practical is pleased to offer its training program with an intensive one-day developer and administrator training session taught by the developers who built RT.

This comprehensive session will cover:

• RT's system architecture
• A guided tour of the RT source code
• Extension mechanisms you can use to customize RT
• How to tie RT into your existing authentication infrastructure
• Bulding your own tools that talk to the RT backend
• Automating common procedures
• Customizing RT's workflow to match your own
• How to write custom reports based on RT's data

This session will be offered in:

• Boston, MA on Monday, March 24th, 2008
• Amsterdam, The Netherlands on Monday, April 21st, 2008
• San Francisco, CA - date will be forthcoming

Additionally, we offer private training sessions for organizations. If you would like to schedule a private training session, please drop us a line at training@bestpractical.com.

Register now to reserve your seat! Space is limited.

What's new and exciting in the world of Best Practical

Things seem to be getting busier and busier here at Best Practical Total World Domination World Headquarters (BPS TWDWHQ). 

We're very close to releasing Hiveminder Pro, an optional upgrade that will get you better reporting, saved task lists, attachments and some other incredibly nifty features we're not quite yet ready to roll out.

As everyone in the blogosphere likely already knows, Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) today. We're particularly excited because of one specific new feature. We've heard rumors that Leopard ships with SVK, our distributed version control system which also works as a super-smart client for your existing Subversion server.

We're nearly ready to make the first 'beta' release of RT 3.8, the next version of our enterprise-strong issue tracking and workflow system. RT 3.8 comes with dozens of new user-visible features, as well as really huge improvements to the testing infrastructure we use to make sure it stays rock-solid.

Oh. and I'd be remiss in my duties as a 'business person' if I forgot to mention that we're running a special on new support contracts.  If you're interested in support for RT or SVK but haven't yet bought a support contract, we're offering discounts of up to 20% on new support contracts if you sign up before the end of the year.   This is a great way to spend any budget surplus you've got kicking around while supporting  future development of RT and SVK (as well as the rest of the stuff we make ;)  Drop us a line at sales@bestpractical.com and we'll get you set up.

Hackathon this Thursday

Come hang out at our glorious headquarters from ~7pm to ~Midnight this thursday evening and hack on your favorite project. We'll provide net, music and a bit of food. You should bring something exciting to hack on.

If you want to hack on a BPS project, like Jifty or SVK or our Object Pony, so much the better. But whatever you want to hack on is fair game.

If you need the address or directions, ping me. RSVPs by mail or comment are appreciated.

A new toy for 2007

I'm pleased to announce the first public release of Doxory, a new tool to help you share the important (and not so important) decisions in your life with your friends. (It lets you run your friends lives.)

We hope you enjoy it: http://doxory.com

Coming up next

Doxory. 

Current beta users are sworn to secrecy.

Hey buddy, can you spare two bits?

We've been opening up our code a bit lately. I know that sounds weird coming from an open source company, but we've traditionally been very, very cautious with who
gets a "commit bit" to our products.  Only two or three people outside Best Practical have commit rights to RT.  SVK has a richer cast of characters.  With Jifty, we've fully embraced Audrey Tang's methodology. When she's feeling confrontational, she calls it "Anarchistic Development." When she's talking to folks with a more Web 2.0 bent, she calls it "Wiki Style Development".  Just about anybody who shows up has commit privileges thrust upon them.  It's worked amazingly well for Pugs. So we figured we'd try it for Jifty.

If we were hosting Jifty somewhere like SourceForge or Google Code, we could just add people by email address and the system would take care of sending them email, getting them a password and so on.  We really prefer to host things locally, which left us in a bit of a vacuum. We couldn't find a single good tool for handing out commit bits and managing projects in a Subversion repository.

I bet you can tell where this is going.

We've got another new project.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please allow me to present CommitBit, a subversion access management system with built in support for a "code.example.com" project directory.

CommitBit lets you, the administrator, set up repositories and projects through a simple web interface. You can grant an individual  a commit or admin bit to a specific project just by typing his or her email address into CommitBit's web ui.  Project administrators can, somewhat unsurprisingly, grant commit or admin bits to others through the same interface.  CommitBit takes care of notifying the new project member, setting up their password and so on.

On the backend, CommitBit can set up new subversion repositories or work with preexisting local repositories. It manages a bunch of files so you don't have to:

• htpasswd files for svn over WebDAV
• passwd files for svnserve
• authz files that work with both
• an apache2 configuration snippet

On the "codedot" side, you a project listing, the ability to spotlight whatever's currently hot and per-project overview pages with lists of committers, pointers to your bug tracker, wiki, mailing lists, Subversion repository, repository browser and so on.

If you're interested in CommitBit, you can find out more about it at code.bestpractical.com:

http://code.bestpractical.com/project/CommitBit

SVK 2.0 Technology Preview 1

I'm glad to announce svk 2.0 technology preview 1 (tp1); we are on the
way to our 2.0 release, scheduled to come out before Christmas.

Although this is not a stable release, we have been using this version
for daily development without issues.  So please upgrade if you'd like
to help with testing and to try out the new features below.

This is the first major release after 18 months of development since
svk 1.0 was released in May 2005, and there have been exciting
improvements and features since then.  Here are some highlights:

* Interactive commits

You can now use "svk commit --interactive".  svk will work you
through each chunk of changes in each file, and let you decide
exactly which ones you want to commit.

* Floating checkout

You can now use "svk checkout --float" to have the checkout metadata
stored in the toplevel directory of the checkout copy.  This allows
you to move the checkout copy around without having to use "svk
checkout --relocate".

* View support

svk's "views" are much like views in databases. You can now set up a
"view" that is actually a map to different parts of a
repository. You can then check out the "view" and work with it as if
it's just an ordinary svk checkout path.

Please note that this feature is still of beta-quality; some
commands do not work properly in view checkouts.  We plan to fix
them before the tp2 release.

* Log filter plugins

You can now write custom log processing plugins for filtering and
displaying log messages; svk ships with several, and others are
available on CPAN.  For example, try "svk log --filter 'author
clkao'" or "svk log --output stat" (the latter requires
SVK::Log::Filter::Stats from CPAN).

* Better copy and rename support across merge.

This solves the problem described in:

http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2005-08/0712.shtml

* Startup time improvements

* Many, many bugfixes and tiny features

Cheers,
CLK

(posted by Jesse)

*taptaptap* Is this thing on?

Here at Best Practical, our web presence has been...somewhat scattered. Between our internal "news" section inside hiveminder hiveminders.blogspot.com, the rt-announce mailing list and our various personal blogs, our corporate message has been scattered, at best. And we haven't really had a good forum to announce new projects like CommitBit, Mnemonic, Jifty and the "Bad osftware ideas" we sometimes refer to as Worst Impractical Solutions.

Back when we had an old-school marketing person who prided herself on the size and depth of her rolodex,bestpractical.com had a news section that we kept up to date.   For the past few years, we've been far too technology focused. We haven't had a good forum to get the word out about all the cool stuff we're doing (to say nothing of all the horribly embarrassing, but funny stories about life as a small, self-funded software company.)

I can't promise that we won't subject you to my ideas about what makes a programmer good or a programming language suck. We're as opinionated as everybody else who's been doing this for a while. But mostly, I suspect that we're going to be too busy building things to play the punditry game very much.

That's all a bit of a long-winded way to say:

Hi!