Releases
At $DAYJOB I now manage between 15-20 python libraries that implement extensions to Openstack's Django-based dashboard, or are microservices that implement REST APIS (or both). For a while I've been working on adding documentation written for Sphinx in ReStructured Text. It's taken a learning curve but I'm slowly getting the toolchain and build process going.
The next thing I wanted to tackle was maintaining a readable changelog for my current project. This weekend I started experimenting with Jeff Forcier's Releases library. Releases is a Sphinx extension that makes it pretty easy to maintain the changelog for a python library (or anything you can write sphinx docs for). Jeff wrote Fabric, and Releases came out of his struggle with how to best maintain Fabric's changelog. Changelogs are tricky - trying to generate one from version control can be automated but doesn't give you control over how much information to provide about a given feature or fix, and forces commits to be written with the changelog in mind. Manually maintaining the changelog obviously gives you fine control over what to include and the language tone, but making sure that the log includes what bugs/fixes get into various releases is tedious. Jeff describes the the myriad issues involved in his original post on his solution to this thorny issue.
Enter Releases:
>Releases is a Sphinx extension designed to help you keep a source control friendly, merge friendly changelog file & turn it into useful, human readable HTML output. (from the Releases documentation)
Releases turns a file like changelog.rst into this (Fabric's changelog).
I decided to start testing Releases out, and ran into my first bug right off: the code I'm writing has not yet had a release, and writing a changelog like this (without an actual release listed) doesn't work:
=========
Changelog
=========
* :feature:`1` Implement REST service
* Flask-based API server
* Celery-based queue
* Documentation for Installation and API
I chatted Jeff up on Twitter and then IRC, and we decided this was not really a bug, but an edge-case he didn't have, but was something that should be fixed. There's now a ticket filed on Github, and I did find a workaround: adding a no-date release at the bottom fixes it (and it does not render the null release):
=========
Changelog
=========
* :feature:`1` Implement REST service
* Flask-based API server
* Celery-based queue
* Documentation for Installation and API
* :release:`0 <>`
RT @SciencePorn: This is the best headline you'll read today. http://t.co/DG8TZG0T4o
EVE Fanfest 2015
I'm not a big gamer. In fact, I'm not a gamer at all right now. But for about 8 months I played EVE Online, the decade-plus-old MMORG of internets spaceships, and I got hooked. I mean, Internet Spaceships?! I wandered around on my own for a while, got into a corp that got AWOXed, then found Rixx Javix and Stay Frosty, which became my adopted piratey home. YARR!
Even though I ran out of time and resources to play, I still follow along on Twitter and other social media and forums, especially the goings on in Stay Frosty.
This week is Fanfest, the huge gathering of EVE players and CCP Games, the company that makes EVE, all in Reykjavik, Iceland. Some of my ex-corpmates (including Rixx) are there, so it's fun to follow along and see what news comes next!
Stay Frosty!!
Spring Migration
Well, here in Arizona it's been Spring for a month or so, even while the East Coast is still buried under record snow. Spring, usually means a renewed interest in my oft-neglected blog, and this time I realized that monkinetic had been down for some time and I didn't even know it.
I'm a very bad nerd.
Oh well. So to reduce the mental and technical overhead I've ported the damn thing back to Jekyll and moved it to Github Pages, where I don't have to futz around with hosting, and Fastly is still making it, well, fast. So let's see how 2015 goes in the blogging category.
RT @SallyStrange: Schrodinger's douchebag: A guy who says offensive things & decides whether he was joking based upon the reaction of peopl…
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@freebsdgirl no u dint #shotsfired
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5 days after oral surgery and I'm still taking a full vicodin every afternoon and a half in the evening. Pain sucks.
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