Redmine

Since we are trying to do Scrum, and since we are not close anymore to have a meeting and coding session we started looking for a Redmine plugin that lets us do remote planning and developing using stories and tasks.

We found Scrum-pm, a great plugin, that makes Redmine “Agile compliant”

Here there is a small quick howto to install  Scrum-pm on Redmine 1.0.1 using Sqlite as database.

Go to your Redmine root folder and backup your current database ( just to prevent unexpected problems ).

cd MY_REDMINE_ROOT_FOLDER
cp db/redmine.db db/redmine.db.backup

now you can download the plugin using Git from you Redmine root folder:

git clone git://github.com/software-project/scrum-pm.git vendor/plugins/redmine_sprints

You have also to install some dependencies:

git clone git://github.com/technoweenie/attachment_fu.git vendor/plugins/attachment_fu

sudo gem install googlecharts

If you are using Redmine on Dreamhost, and you have trouble installing Ruby gems take a look at Dreamhost’s RubyGems wikipage.

Once everything is installed you should run:

rake db:migrate_plugins RAILS_ENV=production

and it should work just fine!

It’s for reasons like these that I like Free Software and Open Source.
Only with this methodology of work is possible this tight collaboration and head to head for all developers around the word.

Just one click away! Amazing!

The problem is that Eclipse Galileo doesn’t work right with the new version of gtk (gtk+ 2.18), and therefore all the Eclipse GUI is unusable.
In particular I’ve noted that click of mouse are not intercepted correctly and also some interface redraw (for example if I change perspective or move some bar) doesn’t work.

Now, this morning I’ve found the bug and also a workaround for the moment.
Just open a terminal, then give this command export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true and finally launch eclipse from the same terminal.

Open Source community it’s amazing!

Update
Now eclipse packaged in Ubuntu official repository work without above trick. Simply install eclipse 3.5.1-0ubuntu7 (or later) from the Ubuntu archive.
Eclipse version in the official eclipse site doesn’t work right yet. (See #28 in this bug for a complete explanation of this Eclipse bug)

Many improvements are done to ALSA and now the code is better and cleaned in the kernel driver while the userspace library it’s rather complex, for backward compatibility. Pulseaudio, the sound server, go forward, and manage some new requirements of an actual multi-user, multi-source desktop environment, like, quote Colin:

• Software mixing
• Independent (per-application) volume control
• Dealing with permissions (is the user allowed to access the sound device?)
• Dealing with Bluetooth devices
• Dealing with Network based devices (UPnP, Apple Airtunes, Native PulseAudio etc).
• Handling the moving of streams between outputs.
• Handling sound from remote applications run via X11 over a network.
• Dealing with routing policy (Music goes to USB speakers, Desktop sound events to built in speakers, VoIP to Bluetooth headset)
• Effects to promote HCI (e.g. positional event sounds  – button clicks etc, coming out louder on the left hand speaker when triggered from the left hand side of the desktop)
• Power Consumption and Efficient savings.
• Reduces risk of buffer under-runs.

So, GNU/Linux users stay calm and contribute everyone in your manner to the FLOSS world.
Also the sound stack is an a good state

It is still in development but it is a great intitiative of Teester because it’s a good way to integrate Thunderbird with Gnome.

The plugin is written in Python, and it needs the python-evolution binding. Now i will explain you how to install it. I am using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex 64 bit version.

Obviously you need on your system Thunderbird and its calendar extension: Lightning.

Open Synaptic and install these packages and their dependencies:

python2.5-dev, python-gtk2-dev, libecal1.2-dev,
libgdk-pixbuf-dev, libebook1.2-dev

or using a terminal:

sudo apt-get install python2.5-dev python-gtk2-dev libecal1.2-dev \
libgdk-pixbuf-dev libebook1.2-dev

Download the evolution-python binding from Conduit site.

Open a terminal and digit:

tar zxvf evolution-python-0.0.4
cd evolution-python-0.0.4
./configure
make
sudo make install

Well done, now evolution-python bindings are installed. Now download Evolution Mirror add-on and add it to your Thunderbird Add-ons.

Open Evolution, create an account. You have to do this because it creates some basic data such as the Personal calendar.

Now open your Thunderbird and start add Tasks or Events and you’ll see them on the Gnome Clock applet.

As i have already said, the plugin is still in development, for now it does not add events and tasks that has been already inserted before. It also merge all calendars’ data in one unique Evolution calendar. These are some missing but i think and hope that they will be fixed soon.

Anyway is a great work! I hope to have time to help the developer in this add-on, also because it will be very useful with my still-in-development tool called SyncIt. Take a look on my Trac to know something about it even if it is not updated and poorly documented.

Great italian article about Neelie Kroes and her talk about Open Source in the European Union.
The focus is on the formats interoperability (for example, ODF actually is the only ISO standard implemented and working correctly for the documents) and the freedom of choice.

Because Our Passion is greater than money of Microsoft or other big software companies.