Hello!

Introduction:

This semester I will be working on Sahana Eden for the Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS) program.

Eden, a project of the Sahana Foundation, is a free and open source disaster management system. There are two versions of Sahana, Agasti and Eden, the former being php-based, and the latter being python-based.

The project is led by a project management board, a group of people designated by the Sahana foundation to ensure that the project moves forward. The head of this group, Fran Boon, is also the "gatekeeper" of the code repository. The type of open source workflow that Sahana Eden uses is one that was previously unfamiliar to me. There is a single owner of the repository, and contributors download read-only branches which they can then request to be merged with the main branch when they add code. When the merge request comes in, the gatekeeper reviews the additions and either accepts them or rejects them as appropriate.

Relevant Technologies:

Web2Py - Web2py is the web framework that Sahana Eden is built on top of, and it was not web framework that I was familiar with prior to looking into Sahana. But after installing it and playing around with the admin application, I've found that it's fairly similar to Django (another python-based web framework) on the surface, although I wouldn't know if it's similar under the hood. For those who haven't heard of it, web2py is a full-stack (integrated server, DB, etc) web framework both programmable in and written in Python.

Bazaar - Baazar is the type of version control system used by Sahana. It's a distributed version control system (putting it in the same vein as Git, versus the centralized vcs's like CVS or Subversion). So far, it's fairly user friendly but seems to do everything far more slowly that I'm used to, I'm not sure if it's just a networking issue or if Bazaar really just is slow. I previously have fairly extensive experience with SVN, and a respectable amount of knowledge of Git, and am now more of a fan of the latter.

LaunchPad - Launchpad is a set of online, open-source, collaboration tools for software projects. Both the Sahana Eden project as well as my own contribution branch will be hosted on Launchpad. Launchpad uses another piece of software called Loggerhead, to view Baazar-based repositories.

Immediate Plans:

After a little bit of difficulty, I got Eden up and running, and have been playing around with the system. I've also been looking through the source. My immediately goals are to look into some testing and ease my way into the project through bug fixes, I will be getting into this in the next few days. From there, I'd like to target a project in development on the blueprint list. I will be putting together a preliminary schedule by the end of the weekend.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Professor Mukkai Krishnamoorthy for the opportunity to participate in RCOS this semester. I am sincerely sorry that I had difficulty in getting my project up and running. And as always, thanks to Sean O'Sullivan for making the program possible.