Category Archives: Development

SVN to Mercurial Transition

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Time for some quick development news, guys!

While the release of the 1.2 version of our software (featuring useful stuff like user privacy and the retooled user input panel) nears ever closer, Oxwall team is happy to inform you that we are switching from SVN to Mercurial DVCS (Distributed Version Control System). We see this as a natural evolution step in maturing our software, so there is really no downside to this information.

The new system will give everyone more flexibility. For starters, we’ll be able to keep up two development branches (dev and stable) more effectively. On the other hand, the change will allow developers to merge their plug-ins with our updates more effortlessly, due to the simpler process of getting snapshots of nightly builds. Basically, you will not have to wait for the old version of the software to break down on all upgraded websites. Instead, you’ll be able to update your plug-ins almost simultaneously with each new release.

We are bringing you this news early to let plug-in developers know that with the new system their lives are about to become much more easier. Also, if you are still using some other instrumentation, may we suggest switching to a distributed revision control like Mercurial or Git. We chose the former for its simplicity and we hope you do the same.

What we are working on

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As you might notice we are heading toward stable release, particularly we plan to release 1.0 RC shortly which might also become the “stable” release. Minor shortcomings are being figured out, thanks to your help. Since we support all updates you can safely use 1.0 beta 5 for a live website. Updating to stable will be a button click deal.

All of this is a headache of the platform lead, meanwhile other developers are busy developing new features and making Oxwall even better choice for your projects.

We thought it would be cool to give you an idea of what our dev plan looks like and what you might expect in the nearest future. Here’s the development roadmap page: oxwall.org/roadmap. We revived the good idea implemented on the old website and will maintain it carefully from now on.

Some of you will recognize their own old-time suggestions. We do not ignore them. We consider all feedback but we have to choose carefully because of limited resources and because the last thing we want to sacrifice for features is product integrity.

Watch our roadmap: oxwall.org/roadmap – we promise to keep it up-to-date.

Docs: plugin development crash course

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And one more piece of good news today: we have compiled comprehensive plugin development crash course for those impatient to start creating their own Oxwall plugins.

This article is sufficient for creating simple plugins and gives an impression of how more complex plugins can be developed. Over the course of time we will develop more documentation covering every aspect of Oxwall codebase and development approaches – for now this tutorial is a quick and (semi)dirty way to start writing code immediately.

Let us know how it goes for you and how that article can be improved.