Feedback for TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin

Please let me know your thoughts on this plugin.

My Athens install (works with minor change to /bin/view for @INC)

• http://athenstwiki.mrjc.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation&to=TWiki20011201&statusFilter=FSCD&sortcol=1&table=1&up=0#sorted_table

You'll note that I had to change bin/view to stop the use of relative path names on my machine. As you can see from here, this was a one-line change:

• http://athenstwiki.mrjc.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation;to=TWiki20011201;statusFilter=all;sortcol=1;table=1;up=0;mode=diff;file=twiki%2Fbin%2Fview;distributions=TWiki20011201

My Beijing install (works - some errors in the error log)

• http://beijingtwiki.mrjc.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation&to=TWiki20030201&statusFilter=all&sortcol=1&table=1&up=0#sorted_table

• You need to have installed the patch at ProxiedIncludesBrokenImplementationBug (which you can see I did at http://beijingtwiki.mrjc.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation;to=TWiki20030201;statusFilter=all;sortcol=1;table=1;up=0;mode=diff;file=twiki%2Flib%2FTWiki%2FNet.pm;distributions=TWiki20030201 )

• This works, but I get do errors in the error log such as:

[Mon Aug  9 09:40:55 2004] view: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ../lib/TWiki/Plugins/TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin.pm line 325.

My Cairo install (works)

• NB. I have the betaRelease.md5 index installed - this is attached

Examples from some of my live servers

How have I altered KoalaSkin?

• http://mbawiki.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation&to=KoalaSkin&statusFilter=FSCD,FDCS,FSCS

From my install to Cairo

http://cairotwiki.mrjc.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=TWiki20040507beta&to=localInstallation&statusFilter=all&sortcol=1&table=1&up=0#sorted_table

Things I forgot to upgrade

http://mbssrc.com/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation&to=TWiki20040507beta&statusFilter=FSCM

• This works by saying "what doesn't match this distribution, but is recognised from a previous one"

Notes

• It shows other things I have installed that it does not recognise.

And now back from my install to Cairo

• http://cairotwiki.mrjc.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=TWiki20040507beta&to=localInstallation&statusFilter=all

Notes

1. Files I edited (Filename Same, Content Different) such as TWiki.cfg
2. Files I renamed (Filename Different, Content Same) such as TWikiHistory.html

And my junky install...

1. http://testwiki.mrjc.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation;to=TWiki20030201;sortcol=0;table=2;up=0 shows how messy some installs can get. Retain your sanity! Install the TRT

-- MartinCleaver - 03 Aug 2004

I made two changes to the Plugin topic:

• Added a handly "!!" to the top heading (---+!!) so that it gets excluded from the TOC
• Added the SHORTDESCRIPTION to the Plugin Settings, needed so that TWiki can list the Plugin with description once installed

• • Thanks Peter - regards, -- MartinCleaver - 04 Aug 2004

-- PeterThoeny - 04 Aug 2004

Comments

I couldn't get this to work out of the box.

• It needs an environment variable called TWIKI_SHARED set. I set this to point to my twiki intallation root, since the code referred to a lib directory under it.
• Having made that changed, build.pl would run, but testPluginTestSuite.pl died at line 14, because $Common::installationDir is not set. I can't see how it could be set on face value: Common is not used. There must be some basic installtion step I'm missing?

It sure would be handy to be able to run this, to validate the actions of UpgradeTwiki.

-- MartinGregory - 08 Aug 2004

The URL in the README doesn't work...

-- MartinGregory - 08 Aug 2004

Hi Martin. Ah, I see. Yes, you set it right, but you need to alter TRTConfig.pm to set $Common::installationDir - ideally this variable would be derived from the infrastructure but it seems that every plugin must define it separately. TWIKI_SHARED is required by the SharedCode build infrastructure, used during install. $installationDir is used by my code during runtime...

-- MartinCleaver - 09 Aug 2004

New version uploaded....

-- MartinCleaver - 09 Aug 2004

Still no joy, I'm afraid.

One obvious "typo" style bug:

<    $twikiBin = $Common::installationDir ."/twiki/bin";
---
>    $twikiBin = $Common::installationDir ."/bin";

However, with that fixed, running the TRTChangesFromDistribution page hangs. The apache error log is filling up with this message:

[Tue Aug 10 19:17:10 2004] [error] [client 192.168.1.1] [Tue Aug 10 19:14:08 2004] view: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /home/martin/twiki/lib/TWiki/Plugins/TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin.pm line 333., referer: http://www.gregories.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/TWikiReleaseTrack?topic=TWiki.TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin

-- MartinGregory - 10 Aug 2004

ok, thanks, am visiting relations at the mo, but will look after the weekend. Sorry about that. M.

-- MartinCleaver - 11 Aug 2004

Martin:

1. does the TRTTestSuite work for you? Does the said error on line 333 happen then too?
2. the inclusion of /twiki/ before the bin/ lib/ directory, etc, is by design. I have yet to write a mechanism to map to allow arbitrary directory structures, (all mine conform to /twiki/bin, etc;) if you wanted to write this then it would probably be best to perform such mappings whilst reading in the .md5 files during FileDigest::loadIndex()
3. The debug flag can be set by appending debug=on , e.g. http://www.gregories.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/TWikiReleaseTrack?topic=TWiki.TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin&debug=on

Regards, M.

-- MartinCleaver - 12 Aug 2004

Ha - progress, albeit slow.

It appears that the directory TRTTestSuite is inadvertently packed in the distrution as TRTTestsuite.

What I hadn't realised is that when I ran build.pl, it complained about this: I didn't read the output of that closely enough, and didn't know that what I was seeing was not right.

Fixing that, I now have clean apache logs, and TRTTestSuite page loads clean.

The next problem is that I go to TRTChangesFromDistribution select "From: localinstallation, To: Twiki20030201, all, tick" and press "go" and the page reloads with no new information. IE I always get an empty table.

-- MartinGregory - 12 Aug 2004

Weird that packing error - will investigate. * Solved. Thankyou (caused by incorrect MANIFEST file)

You get no data because your file http://www.gregories.net/twiki/pub/TWiki/TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin/localInstallation.md5 does not exist. This should be generated as part of build.pl - target 'build' if I recall correctly.

Am unlikely to be able to give help on this tomorrow, but will if I can. M.

-- MartinCleaver - 12 Aug 2004

Oh, and http://www.gregories.net/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin&debug=on should give you the debug messages.

• I'm thinking you almost certainly mean ?debug=on, but this doesn't give me any extra information! -- MartinGregory - 15 Aug 2004

-- MartinCleaver - 12 Aug 2004

what do you mean by 'target build' ?

I just followed the instructions, which are

'perl build.pl' ...

-- MartinGregory - 13 Aug 2004

"perl build.pl" is like "make", so "perl build.pl build" will execute the build target. The default target is "test" which has an automatic dependency on "build", so if you have run "perl build.pl" you should have built target "build".

See documentation in SharedCode.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 13 Aug 2004

Thanks Crawford.

Martin: Does build print "Indexing localInstallation"?

Internally it should call the sub target_build which in turn runs

• indexLocalInstallation() and
• FileDigest::saveIndex($Common::md5IndexDir."/localInstallation.md5");

It seems this is failing.

Martin.

-- MartinCleaver - 13 Aug 2004

Thanks for the info guys, I've been away for the weekend, not ignoring you. Well get to it soon.

-- MartinGregory - 15 Aug 2004

I did

perl build.pl build 

and got

Building build
Built Build

... but localInstallation.md5 did not materialise in pub/TWikiReleaseTracekrPlugin

-- MartinGregory - 15 Aug 2004

I note your twiki is not running at the mo. I'll try to catch you on TWikiIRC. M.

-- MartinCleaver - 16 Aug 2004

Seemed I missed you in that 20 min window. I'll try again tonight - about 10am Melbourne time.

-- MartinCleaver - 16 Aug 2004

Ok, am much happier with today's version as it installed cleanly on a new install. Please give it a whirl and give me feedback!

-- MartinCleaver - 17 Aug 2004

Rats - didn't work for me.

perl build.pl gave me a warning:

Use of uninitialized value in string eq at ../lib/TWiki/Plugins/TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin.pm line 76 (#1)

And running the http://www.gregories.net/twiki/bin/view.pl/TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?from=localInstallation&statusFilter=FSCD ;

gives me an httpd log full of

[Tue Aug 17 19:56:31 2004] [error] [client 192.168.1.1] [Tue Aug 17 19:54:42 2004] view.pl: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ../lib/TWiki/Plugins/TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin.pm line 372., referer: http://www.gregories.net/twiki/bin/view.pl/TWiki/TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin

-- MartinGregory - 17 Aug 2004

Will be on TWikiIRC for a while if you want to look at this together now... (PS. You forgot to unlock this topic)

-- MartinCleaver - 17 Aug 2004

I consider the release I just made the last for a while as it meets my needs. If you have comments please leave them on here for me.

-- MartinCleaver - 24 Aug 2004

Martin - I unzip the plugin file in my base directly as usual and it seemed to install OK however it's not showing up in InstalledPlugins. I went through and confirmed all the files were in right places and permissions were OK. Still not showing up. The DIFFWIKI variable is not expanding and in TRTTestSuite, I get error messages saying "The requested URL /pub/TWiki/TRTTestSuite/testInstallation.md5 was not found on this server." Am I missing something? (obviously...)

-- LynnwoodBrown - 24 Aug 2004

Hey Lynnwood, am on TWikiIRC now. One thing you might check is that you have installed the BuildContrib and DistributionContrib packages. Both are required.

-- MartinCleaver - 24 Aug 2004

Yep - that was it. Thanks and sorry for not reading instructions.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 25 Aug 2004

Great. Glad to hear it is working for you Lynnwood.

-- MartinCleaver - 25 Aug 2004

OK - here's some quick notes on my first run:

• Only the FDCD returned any results. It listed mostly a bunch of files that have nothing to do with TWiki.
• Looking over the localInstallation.md5 file, it appears that it included a lot of stuff that is not relevant (non-twiki directories) but left out some that were. Granted, I have my twiki-specific directories (data, lib, templates) mixed in with a lot of different stuff under my top level domain directory. However, the content within the TWiki directories is pretty much standard. Is there a way to tell it to ignore certain directories?
• It listed TWiki as the top level of all file references (e.g /*twiki*/lib/TWiki/plugins/etc), which is not accurate. (Maybe this is just how they are displayed?)

I did this quickly. Maybe can spend a bit more time with it tomorrow to see what's happening.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 25 Aug 2004

Lynnwood: a problem is that you do not have the index for the beta you are running. Try attaching the betas.md5 file from TWikiReleaseTrackerPluginDev to your TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin topic.

I'll be around on TWikiIRC to help.

Regards and thanks, M.

-- MartinCleaver - 25 Aug 2004

Thanks for the session on TWikiIRC. A new release is out now. Although I have yet to solve how to revert your mac -> unix line-endings problem, I now ship the plugin with the -w flag to diff. This should mean that it ignores all whitespace and hence works for you.

I've marked the issue on future plans as it could be hiding rather than solving an underlying problem.

-- MartinCleaver - 26 Aug 2004

Martin - As promised, I've taken a crack at editing & reformatting the TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin topic in attempt to make this very useful plugin a bit more accessible to average users. Rather than listing all the changes here, I decided to overwrite the topic on my local installation. You can view it here and use as you see fit. I reorganized it quite a bit but all the same info is there, plus a bit more detailed instructions for installation, set-up and usage. Thanks again for work on this valuable plugin!

-- LynnwoodBrown - 27 Aug 2004

I can't believe it! I actually over-wrote my own revisions when I updated your plugin! I saved it out of my old v file and, this time, saved it separately here if you'd like to use it. From our exchange this afternoon, I see some other things I'd like to add about the secondary pages that are displayed to explain the various options there.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 28 Aug 2004

Martin, you used the wrong template for the DistributionContrib topic; there's a NewContribTemplate that has a different table.

Reading the intro, I see (1) convert version ids but I don't see (2) recover individual files in the POD docs?

I tried to check it out to fix the problems, but it doesn't seem to be in CVS. Nor the TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin?

-- CrawfordCurrie - 28 Aug 2004

Lynnwood's changes incorporated - thanks!

TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin is in the wrong place in CVS - I've submitted https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1018436&group_id=1&atid=200001 to get this fixed.

-- MartinCleaver - 29 Aug 2004

Just uploaded version with an index for Cairo

-- MartinCleaver - 01 Sep 2004

NB. The Plugin is packaged with MD5 files of other plugins and the core. If these get out of date with your install it will show your files as changed but on examination there will be no difference.

I'll release a new version that downloads the index instead of bundling it.

Crawford: The plugin is now in the right place in CVS.

-- MartinCleaver - 03 Oct 2004

TRT seems to be generating a bunch of debug messages, even when debug is turned off in the plugin file. BTW, I also noticed that you don't have the usual debug setting in the plugin topic.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 07 Oct 2004

Y. I noticed this the other day, thanks. If you grep TWikiReleaseTrackerPlugin.pm for DEBUG you'll notice that I'd commented out the reading of the setting! The quickest workaround it to set it to 0.

I'll package and release another one ASAP.

-- MartinCleaver - 07 Oct 2004

I am building a TWikiReleaseTrackerPluginShellContribPlan

-- MartinCleaver - 22 Oct 2004

I added your signature to Plugin topic, the report on the PluginPackage topic depends on it.

I also added the Appraisal link. Feel free to take this into the next release.

-- PeterThoeny - 23 Aug 2005

This plugin is not working here. After installing it, I try to access TWiki/TRTChangesFromDistribution?mode=indexLocalInstallation on my wiki. I've tried many combinations of "From", "To" and "Status" boxes; when I click "Go", nothing happens, the page is simply reloaded and %DIFFWIKI{}% is still not expanded.

Are there any other dependencies besides BuildContrib and DistributionContrib?

-- GuilhermeGarnier - 10 Jan 2008

What version of TWiki are you using it with, Guilherme?

-- MartinCleaver - 24 Jan 2008