debexpo is more than just a web application though. It was based on suggestions by you, and therefore it has some nifty features:

• Uploading is done through HTTP PUT directly in debexpo, and handled immediately. This means that packages can be available within seconds of you uploading the package instead of having to wait for a cron job running an importer.
• debexpo supports plugins for several stages of package life-cycle. The main use of these are for QA purposes on the package, such as automatically running Lintian, checking the watch file, or checking bugs closed actually belong to the package in question, but there is scope for much more. Plugins are easy so you can customize a repository to check for whatever you want. Other cool plugins allow features such as pulling an orig.tar.gz from Debian if it is absent from the upload and not in the repository already. Plugins provide you the option to customize your repository for any purpose.
• Users will be able to have their own personal repository (much like Launchpad’s PPAs) to host binary packages. This is simply achieved by creating a new user, uploading, and adding the appropriate entry to your sources.list.
• Sponsors will be able to tell debexpo what kind of packages he or she likes to see, and a filtered package list will be shown. These kind of filters will include whether it’s a python package, or C library, whether it uses CDBS or straight debhelper, or even whether the maintainer is in the New Maintainer process (this is clearly a mentors-specific feature).
• Packages will be able to be commented on by other users, in the same way as Ubuntu’s REVU tool. This keeps package discussion in one place, and Debian Developers can claim to have uploaded the package. This is useful to stop the scenario of a Debian Developer reviewing a package that has requested a sponsor, and then finding the package has been uploaded already after the initial uploader left no mention of this.
• And more to come.

Development can be tracked through its Trac instance: http://debexpo.workaround.org/, where I invite you to submit tickets or even submit patches! Its Git repository is public: http://debexpo.workaround.org/debexpo.git (and mirrored here). Last but not least, the there is also a low-traffic mailing list.

I invite you to try it out, and report bugs. Posting to the list is a great way to get in contact.

There is little visible eye-candy in your browser to show for the work so far as nearly all the work so far has gone into the backend. A sneak peek at what it looks like at the moment is available though:

As you can see, the theme is somewhat familiar. Hopefully, as the SoC program nears an end, this will be fixed.

Oh, and hello: this is my first post to Planet Debian.

bongoproject (0.3.0-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
  * Added bongoproject to bongoproject-tools depends. (Closes: #438836)
  * debian/patches:
    + Removed apache-config.diff -- now upstream.
    + Removed sqlite-3.3.17.diff -- now upstream.
    + Removed hawkeye-apache.diff -- now upstream.
    + Removed smtpd-rset.diff -- now upstream.
    + Removed change-libexecdir.diff -- not necessary.
    + Updated remove-bongo-external.diff.
    + Added standalone-etc-default.diff -- allows bongo-standalone to get
      options from /etc/default/bongoproject.
  * Moved bongoproject-tools to pycentral.
  * debian/copyright:
    + Removed cURL license info. This is now gone from import/.
    + Added myself and email addresses.
    + Added information about having repacked the tarball.
  * Bumped Standards-Version to 3.7.3.
  * debian/control:
    + Corrected typo in long descriptions.
    + Added Homepage field.
    + Added Vcs-{Git,Browser} fields.
    + Added python-lxml build-dep and bongoproject-web dep.
    + Removed ldap-utils and slapd deps.
    + Changed bongoproject-dbg to Priority: extra.
    + Misc. dependency updates.
    + Changed bongoproject to Arch: all.
  * debian/rules:
    + Updated install/python-bongoproject rule.
    + Removed libexecdir hack.
    + Added rule to remove empty /usr/lib directory from bongoproject-web.
    + Added --enable-debug-cflags configure argument to produce a proper dbg
      package.
  * debian/*.install: Updated list of files to be installed.
  * debian/*-overrides/: Removed lintian & linda overrides.
  * debian/README.Debian: Updated instructions.
  * debian/bongoproject.postinst: Added call to "bongo-config install".
  * Renamed libbongoproject0-dev package to libbongoproject-dev.
  * Added new package, libbongoproject-runtime, to contain .so files for use
    with the tools.
  * debian/bongoproject.default: Added comments, updated and modified for use
    with the new bongo-standalone agent.

 -- Jonny Lamb  Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:17:45 +0000

Visit Installation/Debian for instructions on getting these packages. I’ll try and get these uploaded to Debian very soon.

Also, it’s easier to select source straight from the browser without the line numbers prefixing every line — something one does every day, of course:

Of course, there are a few bugs and limitations in this. I just wanted to blog with some pretty pictures, I suppose. Now I can see why I’ve never touched perl before though.

I created some packages of these snapshots. Add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://jonnylamb.com/debian/telepathy-butterfly ./

And execute:

sudo apt-get install python-telepathy python-msn telepathy-butterfly

So, I’ve been getting into this photography lark recently, and today I tried out a panoramic shot for the first time. I used hugin to stitch the photos together, and quickly found that more control points = better stitching. This is my first attempt and have learnt that taking the photos at 4pm in a really windy day, is not a great idea. Although I am really pleased about the stitching, the differing colours of photos makes it obvious where the stitches have taken place. The wind blowing the trees also didn’t help.

So, tomorrow I’m going to attempt to have another go in perhaps a few other places at 12pm, or whenever the Sun is directly above, and hopefully I can patch together a seamless shot. Fingers crossed.

Update: The photo uploaded to flickr is a little small and horrible. Here is a link to a 1.3MB JPEG file of the same thing. The original is 10MB or so, but I don’t think I’ll put that on the web as it isn’t actually any good as a panoramic shot — I’m just really pleased the stitching is good!

On other SynCE notes, the new site is ready, but the docs are preventing me using the site.

Debian BBQ tomorrow. Lack of laptop means lack of general communication.

This is good because it’s made it through the NEW queue, and so any subsequent version will be uploaded into Debian a lot quicker. To install this straight from Debian, add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list: (Note: You must be running the unstable distribution)

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main

The version in the archive is 0.2.0-3. This has not been put into my repository on my site yet. Here is the changelog entry:

bongoproject (0.2.0-3) experimental; urgency=low

  * Initial release into Debian (Closes: #419476)
  * Changed ${Source-Version} to ${binary:Version} and made deps binNMU
    compatible.
  * Wrapped deps and build-deps.
  * Added debug package bongoproject-dbg.
  * Added python dependency to bongoproject-tools.
  * Updated short descriptions.
  * Updated copyright file.
  * Added README.Package file to explain some of the library importing
    stuff.
  * Added patch remove-bongo-external.diff to remove the dependency on
    bongo.external python libraries.
  * Added python-vobject, python-simplejson and python-dateutil to
    python-bongoproject Depends.
  * Added python-simpletal to bongoproject-web Depends.
  * Updated copyright to use new FSF address.

 -- Jonny Lamb   Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:08:57 +0100

Hopefully in the near future I should create some packages for Ubuntu and Debian (etch) for 0.2.0-3, although as you can see from the changelog entry, there’s no real feature difference. Also should get my git repository for package management up soon, when I get my new server. Bear with me.

P.S. If you are reading this in a feed reader, or through the planet, then visit my site and check out my new theme. It’s nice.

Recently I started adding CalDAV support into Bongo. This is actually progressing very well. I’m working on the sundial branch in Subversion. If you want to try it out, then you can checkout using:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/bongo/branches/sundial/

And then install how one normally would from source. To try out the CalDAV support, you must be running standalone — Apache will simply not work at the moment. Point your client at:

http://server:port/dav/username/calendar/

You should be asked for username and password, but the auth system is a little broken at the moment. It is next on my list of things to do with Sundial, and hopefully I’ll commit a fix for that tonight, but I might not have time..

Remember that this is three or four days old and not only will it have bugs, but if you glance at the code, there are many TODOs floating around, so this is very alpha quality software. With respect to CalDAV client support, I’ve done most of the testing on Mozilla Sunbird and in my opinion that has the best CalDAV support, but Evolution should work (it did last night)! Come find me on IRC if you have any questions.