Hello all, Once upon a time, around the time FC2 came out, I released a web tool called Fedora Tracker (http://www.fedoratracker.org), which indexes the various apt and yum repositories out there into a single searchable database. It enjoyed some popularity and I was happy to contribute to the usability of Fedora. However, some of you may have noticed that Fedora Tracker indexes far, far fewer repositories for FC4 than it did for previous versions. This is because, having been under the impression that most yum repos wouldn't adopt the new xml metadata format until FC5, I didn't include support for it in the most recent update. Obviously this proved to be a mistake and as a result Fedora Tracker has become significantly less useful. I've been waiting ever since that last update (around the time FC4 came out) for my work load to relax enough to give me time for another one. Alas, this doesn't seem to be happening. My responsibilities here at Red Hat are different than they were when I started Fedora Tracker and I just can't devote the same amount of time to it that I used to. In previous emails I have casually invited people from the community to peruse the code and offer updates if they so desired, but now Fedora Tracker really needs outside help. It's been sitting there, more or less useless, for months now and I want to see it back up to snuff. So, if you are a python developer with some time to contribute to a worthy project, here are the details: Code is at http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=105932 - trackerClass.py contains most of the front-end code - tpClass.py contains most of the back-end code - repo.py contains most of the package-handling code Major tasks that are currently TODO Top Priority: --------------------------------------------------- - Add support for yum xml repos The ideal way to do this would be to alter the yumRepo class definition in repo.py (in particular the retrieve() and update() methods) to check for and handle xml metadata before looking for traditional header.*info files. The object would be to pull down the relevant xml files and use them to build repo.rpmInfo objects, which are used as a generic representation of package metadata within Tracker. Lower priority --------------------------------------------------- - Switch to a templating engine for html I will be the first to admit that the way the frontend html is managed is horrendous. We need to move to some sort of templating engine. I've never used one before, so if you have a favorite and are willing to devote the time, please write me with a proposal. - Performance enhancements Searches still run a lot slower than I would like. Optimizing database queries is not something I have much experience with. I've figured out a trick here and trick there, but I'm sure there is more that can be done. Effort here will be hindered by the fact that I'm currently the only one with direct access to the database (see next item) - Move to more flexible hosting My current webhost is great, but they seem to be designed around the assumption that only one person manages each site that they host. As such, a lot of the above tasks will be more difficult since I'm the only one who will have actual shell access to the system. I'm currently working with them to try and find an alternative, but if that fails I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who thinks they could offer web/python/mysql access to a larger group of developers. If anyone has the time and expertise to offer on one or more of these tasks, please drop me an email, take a look at the code and feel free to ask me any questions (I can arrange to meet on irc as well). If this email actually generates some interest, then we can look into setting up a mailing list, wiki or similar. I've never actually maintained a project with multiple developers before, so general advice about how I might approach this better would also be great. Thanks, --Brad
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