A Bit Of A Change

For the last few months I’ve been running my own server and I have been meaning to do some overhauling to it. So, in the meantime I’ve decided to make this place my blog, because that’s all I was doing was blogging in a CMS, and I could have been doing the same thing here for free. Instead I was wasting mounds of Hydro, and getting too frustrated with themes.

What I’ve decided to do is still use the server, but install either Subversion or Bazaar on it, and create an Ubuntu repository. That way, when I want or need to reformat my computer, or remove Ubuntu for some reason. I can just reformat my Desktop, install Ubuntu again, enable my repository in Synaptic and have a 5 click install instead of fooling around for a couple hours trying to get all the software I had installed prior.

Not only do I want to do that, but, I also want to make a categories of interest to the Music Engineer, Video editor, or Artists. I want to have preselected categories and have all the best software in each category per category. I’ve already mentioned some information in my first post.

Once the repository is done, I want to have the same server as a LAMP install, that way I can have a nice looking site to present the repository. With that being said, maybe I will be able to include the repo with the Ubuntu repositories. It probably wouldn’t happen, but it’s worth a try.

With that being said, I will be able to learn packaging too. I think anyway. Once I get the repo and the website installed, I wouldn’t mind creating some directories with .debs in them. That way people can install singular programs of their choice without making my repo another source in Synaptic. Similar to Getdeb, but, a lot different.

What do you think I should do?

Bazaar – CVS – Revision Control System

So, in IRC, or the ladder – Internet Relay Chat I was talking to a Ubuntu Developer and he suggested to use BZR rather than Subversion.

“Bazaar, the next-generation distributed version control system” as the description in Synaptic. For a more descriptive note I just clicked on the entry in Synaptic, and it shows a broader description.

“Open source distributed version control system that is powerful, friendly,
and scalable.”

“It manages trees of files and subdirectories. In particular, it records
revisions of trees, representing their state at a particular point in time,
and information about those revisions and their relationships. Recording and
retrieving tree revisions is useful in several ways if you are writing
software or documents or doing similar creative work.”

Here’s a bit of history of Bazaar.
As stated on Wikipedia: Bazaar former name was Bazaar-BG. February 2005 it all started when Martin Pool who has described and reviewed a number of revision control systems in his weblog. Hired into Canonical Ltd and started building the revision control system. Name change was significant which lead Bazaar’s original name was Bazaar-NG, then, Baz and now it’s just known as Bazaar.

Development: Team’s focus on ease of use, accuracy, and flexibility. Wikipedia says; “Branching and merging upstream code is designed to be very easy, with focus on users being productive with just a few commands. Bazaar can be just by a single developer working on multiple branches of local content, and collaberating teams can be coexistent across a network.”

Bazaar is written in Python, with packages for major Linux Distributions, Mac OSX, and Windows. Bazaar is released under the GNU Public License. Bizaar is free.

• Uses a decentralized system to avoid system bottlenecks, or dividing distributors into cramps of access privilege.
• Designed for easy usage: supports regular filesystem commands
• Designed to handle merges between similar branches of code, and to avoid conflict in relation to pieces of code written by different programmers.
• Supports files and names from the complete Unicode set. Allows commit messages, committed names, etc.
• Has support for working with other revision control systems. Allows branching from subversion, make local changes and commit them into a Bazaar branch, then later merge into other systems. Bazaar has basic support for Subversion with the bzr-plugin.

For just a recap. Bazaar is a Distributed revision control system that Canonical Ltd and the Ubuntu community developed. The current/ latest release is of December 14, 2007. Bazaar is cross-platform and is released under the GNU General Public License.

The Bazaar website is http://bazaar-vcs.org/

The majority of this article is from here.

I have a dream….

No, I am not referring to Martin Luther King Jr. but, it may be revolutionary. I have an idea quite quest worthy for insanity. All crimped up into a repository ready for distribution, or the thought and intention of an idea. I just need to put some motivation behind it. I’ve thought about the idea I’m going to explain to you for quite a while now, although, tonight I’ve extended the idea. It’s still the same thought, but a bit more expanded.

My revolutionary idea is quite consistant of building a CVS. A CVS is a content version system that keeps track of versions of software and keeps you uptodate with current versions of software. I want to build a CVS with subversion, have all the GPL’d, and LGPL’d and other software I use in the repository so when I go to reformat my Desktop and after I’ve installed Ubuntu, I can do a 5 click install or something similar and have all the software I use installed in an instance.

So, instead of searching around for a half hour for all the software I use, I can have everything that I essentially use at my own hands. Although, it would be hard to keep track of all current versions of software I use. So much is installed, it’s hard to know or remember what you had installed prior to the removal of the last session you had.

With such a CVS installed – is there a way to find out what software has updated or not? I’m sure current active projects have RSS feeds that can be used so you can be informed on what has updated, and when a major release is upcoming.

Then after that thought of having subversion installed for my own use, I was thinking, “hey, I wonder if I could create other repository(1+) to keep track of other current projects and software?”

If so, I could create profiles of repositories in which people can select, and download. So, say if you were into graphic design, video editing, creating vector graphics, drafting, etc.. I could create certain profiles, or keywords and have the best possible software to download with an add of the repository. But, come to think about it when loading Synaptic packages are sort out by categories and sorted out anyway.

What if someone is running a system with limited resources and want the best CLI programs, and don’t know what to get? I can have a section of the repository pointing to the best packages that I like and it will direct them to something of relevance.

Usually, myself, I do research before I install software because there is over 23000 packages in the Ubuntu repositories and there are a lot of different authors of software and some software can do the same thing, but, do things better or have better organization with tasks and have a better use interface.

In order for me to get going on this idea, and situation. I need to learn how to install subversion, and use it. Subversion won’t limit be to just that either, it will give me good ideas on how software is packaged too and will eventually help me learn and distribute packaging.

Thanks for your time, and looking forward in your response.
–Justin