Helix Agile Development Virtual Appliance

[VMTN_Admin]

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/328

Facilitate the use of SVN and Trac for software projects and help them become more agile.

[citizenDAK]

1) Is there a project URL for "Helix" virtual appliance?

[prabhakar]

From the doc:

http://ipaddress/helix for Trac

http://ipaddress/svn/helix for SVN

Let me know if that helps. Thanks for trying it out...

[citizenDAK]

(sorry for being unclear before...)

Is there an online (Internet) URL for the helix project, or is that just a codename for this particular VM?

[prabhakar]

It is just a code name for this project.

[citizenDAK]

2) How do the Helix and vmTrac appliances compare? (Or any other SVN server appliances?):

Helix Agile Development

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/328

vmTrac

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/308

=================================

Message was edited by citizenDAK:

cross-posted to

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=412792&#412792

[tkarakai]

I like the size of the VM, thank you for paying attention to removing the unnecessary things. My suggestions:

- Use the most current version of Trac (0.9.5 currently) including lots of bug fixes and latest Subversion too.

- I know it's trivial but it would be a nice touch to write a script which would create a new svn+trac project by simply taking one argument: the new project name.

- The big question for me: How are you planning to upgrade components when new versions are out? Are you planning to make future versions available for the general public?

Thank you!

[prabhakar]

The versions of trac and SVN on the appliance are the ones that are in the backports repo for Ubuntu Breezy. I am planning on upgrading the appliance itself to Dapper and thus update SVN and Trac to the latest versions. Once i do that I will make it publicly available. I will also add a script to automatically create the svn and trac projects given the project name. Thank you both for your suggestions and for trying out Helix...

[jdz]

It was with great excitment that I found this and a few other SVN/Trac appliances, since I'm in the middle of doing an eval of Subversion for work. The problem is all solutions are avalable only via torrents without seeds. I've tried helix, tracvm, vmtrac, etc, and even some other vm's like nuke etc, but with no seeds and or peers they are impossible to get and therefore useless. Can it really be true that none of these great VM's are actually available? Is there another way or am I missing something?

[prabhakar]

I am not sure what VMware is doing with these torrents but it really sucks when you put all this effort in and the people who want to try them out cannot get to them. I have started seeding my appliances. Try it now. Sorry about that.

[YellowDog]

There are 4 or 5 Trac implementation in here. I will promote mine.

My version is not a straight install; I tried to make it a complete install. It has VM Tools installed, has the latest Stable version of Trac 9.5 and SVN (latest at time of submission) 1.3.1. The whole environment has been setup to maintain multiple projects and uses Apache’s mod_python for performance. I have created a number of scripts to quickly manage Trac (see below), as well as install the Trac web based administrator. I didn't try to make it small, I tried to include those items that I would want installed. I choose Debain because it easy to mange, administer and upgrade.

So please check it http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/377

settrac = set default trac project

trac_add = create a new project

trac_del = remove a project

aprs = restart apache

ahup = unhung apache

alog = tail of apache log

tlog = tail of trac log

tsql = connect to trac sql

rpyc = Remove compiled python files

tadm = trac admin

tini = Edit trac.ini

gtini = edit global trac.ini

find_setup = Find the nearest enclosing plugin directory

insp = Install a new version of a plugin

devp = Setup a plugin using setup.py develop

cleanup = Clean a plugin build directory

[citizenDAK]

Is there a proper way to keep this VM up-to-date, including your additions (scripts)? (Debian uses APT like Ubuntu does, right? Or would that break any existing projects...)

performance. I have created a number of scripts to

quickly manage Trac (see below), as well as install

the Trac web based administrator. I didn't try to

make it small, I tried to include those items that I

would want installed. I choose Debain because it

easy to mange, administer and upgrade.

[prabhakar]

Ubuntu is debian based. You can use apt-get to keep it updated. I am also planning on doing another release with everything updated and post it on SF. I will post here when I do that. The additional scripts are from vmtrac not Helix :smileyhappy:

Thanks for trying it out...

[Geoffrey_Hardy]

I like it. Easy to setup a project in SVN and Trac and get going very quickly. Would be a nice touch to have a script like the other user mentioned. Good job.

[sweerana]

Small size, quick to get up and running. Does what it is supposed to very well. A script for creating the project would have been nice. I like it. Good job.

[prabhakar]

Here is a http link, in case you are having trouble with torrents:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170938&package_id=195195

[citizenDAK]

NICE! I like the idea of "VMTN appliances" being open source, and hosted on SF.net!

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170938&package_id=195195

p.s., where's a description of each component of this project? All I see is "This is the 1.0 version of Istanbul." but it has four zip-files:

Helix ( this V.M. ),

Hercules,

Hermes,

Pyle

[prabhakar]

Sorry about that. I will post a description of each component.

[prabhakar]

A big thanks to all the users who downloaded the appliance, and tried it out. I will post the stats on the total downloads later today.

-prabhakar

[prabhakar]

Here is a rough estimate of the stats as of this morning on the downloads of this appliance collected from MY[/b] bittorrent seeding and sourceforge. These DO NOT include downloads/torrents from Vmware.[/b]

\----

---

Downloads via torrent : 148

Downloads from SF : 49

Total Downloads : 197

Number of Votes : 20

Percent of downloads that voted : 10.15 %

\----

---

-prabhakar

[prabhakar]

Here are the stats including appliances downloaded from VMware. Thanks to Brady Miller for pointing me to the vmware torrents stats page.

\----

---

Downloads via torrent from VMware: 234

Downloads via torrent from me: 148

Downloads from SF : 49

Total Downloads : 431

Number of Votes : 20

Percent of downloads that voted : 4.64 %

\----

---

-prabhakar

[igeman]

So first let me say this thing is genius... I tried to get svn work myself without result... with Helix start and enjoy.. it works :smileyhappy:

Unfortunatly I can't use port 80 to connect from outside my LAN... Only Port 443 is open

Is it possible to change the port Helix is listining?

I suggest it should be a way to tell the Apache Server to do so?

In which folder is Apache installed?

Thanks a lot

Bye

ige

[prabhakar]

Thank you for your feedback. Glad to hear that you like it. You probably found the answer to your q by now, the apache conf files are in /etc. Apologies for the delay in replying to some of the recent postings. I have been very busy with work, as we have a major release in two weeks, and a trade show demo. Am planning on updating this appliance in a few weeks.

-prabhakar

[greywire]

I like this a lot because I failed miserably at trying to get trac and svn properly installed and configured in windows.

The only problem now, is that I am trying without success to get the webadmin plugin installed.

Can anybody help?

Please?

[prabhakar]

What is the webadmin plugin, are you referring to webmin?

[elementalBeat]

I'm new user to Linux and VMWare and I have to say I am very impressed so far with the range and quality of some of the appliances. However, there is a bit of a learning curve and I was wondering if someone might be able to help me with a little issue I've encountered.

I recently downloaded the Helix appliance and have found success in getting up and running. I've managed to follow the instructions and even change the port to what I need. I've scrounged for all the documentation I can find and tried everything twice, but I still can't seem to create new users. Can someone please help me with this? I have multiple team members who need to contribute to a project and I want to be able to track changes by developer.

Thank you.

[prabhakar]

Here is a pointer to a nice articles that details what you may be looking for:

  http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/7655/print

Hope that helps.

[elementalBeat]

I still can't get it to work properly. Is there any harm in letting all team members use the same login? I know I loose the ability to see who is making changes, but other than that, will subversion function properly?

Is your default config using the Helix system user? If so, can I create another system user with the useradd command to allow access that way? I already tried this and it didn't seem to work either, but as I mentiond I am new to Linux and very easily could have done womething wrong.

[TalusMaximus]

I personaly would not use a single login for every developer, that would maketracking down, who made a specific change later on in the project a nightmare.

I think you may be confusing subversion users with system users (they are not the same), subversion users are managed though the use of the /etc/svn-access.conf file. This is a simple list of users and their passwords and once set up correctly will allow all your devs to checkin/out files under their own identity.

Note: I'm not 100% sure where Helix puts it's svn-access.conf file so you may have to do some searching ... try "[b]locate svn-access.conf[/b]" or failing that "[b]find / -name svn-access.conf[/b]"

[BrunchMonolith]

This is an extremely useful out-of-the-box solution for evaluating TRAC and SVN, however I would advise against using this for real production purposes if you need to store large amounts of code and assets: The hard disk on this VM is formatted to 1Gb, of which about 500Mb is left. This means at an absolute best case you'll only be able to store 500Mb worth of data/assets in the svn repository before you run out of space. If there's to be a future release of this, please increase the VM's disk size to a vaguely useful figure, i.e. 20Gb.

Another issue I've encountered is that the version of sqlite included in this release is very old, about 2 years old now. If you want to set up new trac projects, there will be no problems. However if you have any existing trac projects from another trac installation that you want to import (which most likely will be using a more recent version of sqlite), it's quite tricky: In the end the only solution I could find was to create a fresh new trac project, and use 'sqlite3' to directly import the raw SQL from the old trac project into the newly created trac.db file. Again, if there's an update of this, it would be wise to update the version of sqlite (as well as trac, svn, and any dependencies).