The Bugzilla project will be participating in the Google Summer of Code this year, with (at least) two project slots under the Mozilla banner. If you have ideas for projects that can be done to improve Bugzilla please add them to the wiki.
MacFUSE
So, yesterday, I overheard someone mentioning MacFUSE in a conversation and my reaction was pretty much “hey, someone ported that to the Mac?!??” Indeed, and I’m apparently a little out of touch because it’s been out for a while. This is one really handy tool for a sysadmin.
Anyone who’s admined an RPM-based system knows that when you install a newer version of something, it will often drop in new configuration files, either along side the existing one with an .rpmnew extension on the end, or move your existing one to filename.rpmsave before writing it out to the original location. Of course, if you’re behaving like a proper sysadmin, you have to go look and see what they changed and try to merge your existing config with the new one. This is best accomplished using a visual diff/merge utility. The best one of these I’ve seen for Linux is called meld. Unfortunately it has a ton of dependencies (mostly related to GNOME and X11) which are a bit much to install on every server in your farm, especially if there’s no other reason you need X11 on them.
Now back to MacFUSE. Apple distributes an awesome visual diff/merge utility with the Mac OS X developer tools called FileMerge, which works a lot like meld (but of course, it’s a bit more polished). MacFUSE is a kernel extension that allows plugins to define interfaces to arbitrary filesystems. One of the plugins available for it is called “sshfs.” sshfs uses the sftp server available via most ssh servers to access the filesystem of almost any machine you can ssh into. This means if I can open an ssh connection to one of my servers, I can now mount its filesystem in the Finder in Mac OS X (and also via the shell). This makes it easy to navigate to the server’s /etc directory and type “opendiff config1.conf config1.conf.rpmnew” which invokes Apple’s FileMerge to compare/merge those two files. It’s a huge effort saver for a sysadmin using OS X on their workstation. 🙂
Mad props to Amit Singh and all the people helping him make MacFUSE a reality!
Bugzilla 3.0rc1 released
Bugzilla 3.0rc1 has been released. Max has more details.
As Max mentions, this really is a release candidate this time instead of a “late beta” like some of our previous release candidates have been in the past. So to anyone who is maintaining a localization pack for Bugzilla, now’s the perfect time to update it for Bugzilla 3.0, since what’s in the templates now is pretty much what’ll be there for the final release, unless any major regressions are found.
MythTV rocks
I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up a MythTV box on and off for a while, and with family members complaining about the difficulties of getting a VCR programmed for the correct time, the allure of a DVR where you could just point it at a show in the program schedule and say “record this” was getting high. Just before Christmas, I ran across a new startup company selling preconfigured dual-tuner Home Theater PC boxes with Ubuntu and MythTV preinstalled on them, and for a pretty decent price, so I wound up purchasing a Hannibal Duece+ from them. I got the machine a couple weeks ago, and have had a lot of fun fine-tuning it. Having a web interface on the box to point your browser at it and view the program schedule and schedule recordings is a kick, too. The machines are still a little rough around the edges with the initial configuration, but TVEase is showing a lot of promise, with an active forum and a definite open source attitude about how to configure the machines for new customers. The only current drawback is the deathgrip the cable industry has over the digital channels – trying to get off-the-shelf hardware that supports CableCARD® is a bit of a joke currently. If you’re in the market for a DVR, and aren’t married to all the high-numbered channels, I’d definitely recommend picking up one of these things.
Does your software interact with Bugzilla?
We’ve had a page up on the wiki for several months now listing things we know about that interact with Bugzilla. With the release of Bugzilla 3.0 imminent, now is a great time to make sure that your cool app that knows how to talk to Bugzilla or does something cool with Bugzilla data is listed there so people can find it. If you know of anything cool that interacts with Bugzilla that isn’t listed there yet, even if you’re not responsible for it, feel free to add it to the list.