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I'm doing some preventative work on the wiki server's database, so expect some downtime this evening!

ETA: Finished! I think the ibdata1 should vex me no longer by taking up 12GB of the 19GB of space on the server, causing the file system to fill up entirely and make the wiki start to fail.

foxfirefey

People who have bureaucrat permissions on the wiki can now use the rename page to assist users who need to change their handle.

foxfirefey

We had a category that was creating a glitch in the Mediawiki software: "Â Third_party_programs"

I had to go into the database to try and fix it; the category is now gone and I don't forsee any problems from that, but in case I did cause some, please let me know.

( for admin reference )

ninetydegrees

Is is just me or is there an issue with log in? I used to be able to log in using a username and password and it stopped working for me some time today. I could no longer access any pages so I cleared my cookies for wiki.dwscoalition.org and now every time I try to log in it tells me I need to enable cookies. However, wiki.dwscoalition.org is on my whitelist on FF. I've also tried it on Chrome where no cookies are blocked and I get the same message.

Clues?

foxfirefey

The wiki now supports embedding Gists from GitHub. (Gists are single version controlled files with easy updating.)

You can see this Gist Test page to see what the syntax is and what the result looks like.

Here's an expanded, modified version of the original structure I was suggesting.

Paths (/Foo/Bar) are suggested page names / structures. Links are existing pages that seem related and can be used as a base for the new article, or as a base for a subpage of that article.

How do you all feel about subpages? Do you find it helpful in organizing, or will it just make the page names harder to remember?

Note: Categories are helpful for finding everything related, but bare category pages ted to be overwhelming because they're strictly alphabetical order, not priority order, and a category can get pretty broad (e.g., all howtos, even those for a completely unrelated topic), so we need something besides.

I haven't listed all the pages. There are a few groups of pages documenting all the database tables, or a bunch of howtos on closely related topics; I've marked those as "(prefix)".

Despite the number of links, again this is not all that I expect the wiki should contain. But by now I hope that this is enough to make it obvious where additional pages could go.

( warning: massive link dump )

We've been gradually building up articles on the wiki, which is good because wiki == good, but it can be a bit overwhelming for someone new because they won't know where to start.

I propose reorganizing the articles under the Development section: I don't want to constrain things too much, but I think slotting things in more clearly will be helpful for both new and old alike.

We're partway there because of the fine work people have put into Dev Getting Started, but I want to sit down and rethink the split a bit.

What I have in mind is to split up the pages into one-time steps and steps that have to be repeated over and over again, and revise how things are arranged and highlighted in Dev Getting Started. So instead of having a Bugzilla page and a Github page and etc, we have something like the following:

front page
1. Dev Getting Started
  - one-time setup
    - dev environment (scratch installation / getting a hack)
    - bugzilla (registering, username conventions)
    - github (forking etc)
    - CLA
  - working on stuff (the basics)
    - programming guidelines
    - finding things
    - claiming a bug -> submitting a pull request, including conventions etc
    - editing in case of a review
    - updating code (dev maintenance)
2. Development
  
  This is more specific resources. Everything under here to be a subpage of /Development?
  - everything in the getting started section
  - submitting hotfixes on a release branch /Development/Release
  - setting up various modules /Development/Setup? Tools? Server?
    - schwartz /Development/Setup/Schwartz
    - gearman
    - search / sphinx
    - memcache
  - howto /Development/Howto
    - new userprop
    - database table (create, edit)
    - edit a database table
    - memcache
    - beta feature
    - enable shop items
    - enable paid time
  - stuff under /admin (/admin/pay, etc)
  - explain stuff under /dev (/dev/classes, /dev/eventoutput, etc)

The examples provided aren't definitive, just examples of what we have and need off the top of my head. There are plenty of articles on the wiki that aren't yet in this list but could fit (most probably under /Development).

Would this structure be helpful for you? What would be most useful to highlight in Dev Getting Started? I'd like to request that we focus on overall structure before specific page suggestions as much as we can, so that it's easier for people to find what they need in the pages we already have.

Dev Getting Started - added Bugzilla workflow before Version Control. Adjusted some text for the long version; changed from mentioning submitting a patch to "version control"
Bugzilla workflow - removed the patch upload instructions and just link to Version Control

I'm updating documentation to remove mentions of Mercurial and replace with resources for Git. I'm also trying to go through the flow of pages, starting from the main page, hopefully figuring out what someone new to the project will click on...

Right now I'm doing a depth-first traversal of links, starting from the "Dreamwidth Developers" section of the main page.

Dev Getting Started - changed paragraphs to a list for easier scannability. Moved stuff from the intro at the top to a "what you need" section / removed the two paragraphs on installing a dev environment since they somewhat are repeated below or in other pages.
Bugzilla - made the link to workflow more visible, removed needs-review / needs-commit from saved searches
Dreamwidth Scratch Installation - adjusted references from etc/config* to ext/local/etc/config*; removed paragraphs from the "Starting development section", instead linking back to "Dev Getting Started" to centralize
Main development folder - moved to Directory Structure
Dev Patches - obsolete, deleted. Will replace anywhere that refers to this to the git workflow
Draft: Github development process - forward to Version Control
Version Control - replace with old contents of Github development process

Stopping for now; have worked my way through the links at http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/wiki/index.php/Dev_Getting_Started through to the end of "The short version"

I'll post further changes in another entry.

foxfirefey

It's that time again--I'll be upgrading Mediawiki to 1.20 over the next few hours, so if you run into problems after I've updated this post to indicate the upgrade is complete, please let me know!

ETA: The update is complete--keep me posted on any issues you have!

Current Mood: cheerful

exor674

I am thinking we are lacking in documentation for more production-like setups including [ and I am probably missing things here ]:

resource concatenation
clustered setup
cron jobs for maint scripts + recommended schedule ( which need daily, which weekly, which whenever, etc.. )
running purges
... I am probably missing more things...

foxfirefey

So, as you may/may not know, we are in the process of moving our source control and development process over to git in order to take advantage of Github.

What we need to do is go through our documentation and change:

* Links to the old hg.dwscoalition.org repository to their new equivalents on https://github.com/dreamwidth/dw-free
* Descriptors that refer to cvsreport.pl, which no longer exists, especially in update contexts
* Installation instructions
* Documentation on code layout--cvs directory no longer exists, for example

And anything else that we can think of. The Development category is in need of special attention.

We also need to start creating best practice policies (for instance, do development on branches your create) and putting them onto the wiki. We do have one new page with a first draft of instructions so far on:

Moving your Dreamwidth installation to use Github

Feel free to comment on this post with anything you see that needs updating, if you don't feel like updating it yourself!

foxfirefey

Okay folks, the server the wiki is on is horrible out of date, and badly in need of an upgrade. I'll be doing it sometime today--if the wiki is down when you need it, I am sorry! It will be back soon.

Update: The server OS and the wiki software have both been updated to recent versions. There may be some problems to work out still, as Special:SpecialPages is erroring out.

Update 2: Tracked down the erroring out to the OpenID extension, which is now properly updated.

foxfirefey

Previously, I think I disabled regular account creation, and that let OpenID accounts register. This kept away spammers, but still let grandfathered accounts work by logging in using their passwords.

This strategy no longer works and I need to figure out a new one. The OpenID plugin has a setting to only allow OpenID logins, but that then blocks out non-OpenID users. In the meantime, registration is turned off because I can't keep dealing with the many, many spam registering accounts that have been constantly happening since I turned regular registration on. There might need to be Captchas, or some other strategy.

foxfirefey

~~I've been putting it off but it needs to be done--expect the wiki to be askew until I finish (or give up and restore the backups until I can figure out what went wrong)!~~ Upgrade is finished!

Upgrade Notes

SemanticQueryFormTool can't be used anymore with the most recent version of Semantic Mediawiki
Right now it's on the default MW skin and I took one of the icons to use for the logo. I'm very very open to new logos--the size to shoot for is 135px by 135px. I might tweak the CSS for the skin a little, but mostly I'll keep to the standard.

If you can go test out the wiki and make sure you can log in, that would be dandy!

foxfirefey

Replicating this

dw_dev_training post on Dreamzilla and wiki documentation bugs, this post is to tell you there is a brand new section for development and volunteering documentation on the wiki.

To filing a new bug in this category, select "Project Documentation" as the product and "Wiki documentation" as the component.

pauamma

So I've been writing and or uodating a series of wiki pages(*), often in pairs for setting up foo and using foo in your code. Titles so far follow the "Setting up Foo" (which may also covers installing, starting/stopping, and troubleshooting) and "Foo" (which covers up writing code for or using in Dreamwidth code).But now, I'm wondering whether that's the best nomenclature and considering renaming "Foo" pages to "Using Foo in code" or something similar. I don't think it's worth having an extra Foo page for that, as it would just link to both and have little content of its own. However, that makes it hard to link to both, when you don't know what information the reader is most likely to want. So I'm considering using [[Category: Foo|Foo]] instead, for those links. What do you guys think?

(*) So far, TheSchwartz is done, Gearman is next (haven't started), and when I'm done I may do Memcache and MogileFS.

pauamma

Should http://www.dreamwidth.org/dev/classes be mentioned/moved/duplicated in thw wiki? Where, if so?

afuna

I was about to update the protocol documentation, and found that we have two pages for it:

http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/XMLRPC_Protocol
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/XML-RPC_Protocol

The latter is lots more comprehensive, but the former has some interesting semantics code in the source, which I'm not sure how to port over.

Thoughts?

foxfirefey

Hello, folks! I have upgraded the wiki to version 1.16 of Mediawiki. Let me know if you run into any weirdness.

I also feel like I should note that I have modified an extension for the browser editor jEdit to let people edit the Dreamwidth wiki using it. Is anybody interested in me distributing this? Let me know!

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Dreamwidth Wiki

Downtime: database maintenance

Rename extension now available

Be on the lookout for sad wiki things

Unable to log in

Gist embedding

All the links (almost all the links)

Organizing the wiki

More Changes

Updating documentation

Upgrading the wiki to Mediawiki 1.20

"Production Setup" Documentation Needed

Large project: update our documentation for Github!

Upgrading wiki server today

Wiki account registration temporarily disabled!

Wiki upgrade in progress

Upgrade Notes

New Bugzilla category for wiki to-dos.

A question of nomenclature

(no subject)

Merging duplicate pages?

Upgrade to 1.16!

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May 2013

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