cia.vc reports

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 12:27 pm

It would be cool to add the svn hook for cia.vc (I think it's called cia.navi.cx as well - they are one and the same thing) to add a way to track SVN commits and increase project visibility.

It takes a few secs to register an account there and a few secs to enable the svn hook for a Sourceforge project.

Post by **ace123** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:39 pm

Actually that cia script was on my list of things I wanted to do for the new web site...

ghoulsblade · Post by **ghoulsblade** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 8:59 pm

someone has already started the cia.cx page for the project. i filled in the repository url and added an irc bot.
please remove the "check every 15 minutes" flag when you have activated the sourceforge cia support =)

Post by **ace123** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 9:59 pm

Yeah, I just started that project, but I set it up through sourceforge, so the hook script should contact them directly.

So I turned off the 15 minutes flag.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 11:53 pm

It's accessible as RSS so should be easy to add to the VS frontpage.

Post by **ace123** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:12 pm

The problem is more in the fact that sourceforge has an external firewall on their shell servers, making it hard to add an automated script.

But I found an easier method using svn log --xml which will generate a nice and simple XML file that can be formatted using a simple XML Stylesheet.

So that's all working, and that is what you see on the front page... the problem I'm having now is I can't figure out how to use crontab.

I added my script to crontab, and here it is:

Code: Select all

# WARNING: Every minute for debug purposes!!!

# Vega Strike: Get latest SVN log for display on home page.
* * * * * /bin/bash /home/groups/v/ve/vegastrike/htdocs/svnlog/grabsvnlog.sh

Any idea what might be wrong with this?

It never seems to even get to the running phase... I made a simple shell script to create a file in /tmp, and it wouldn't run that either.

Here is the aforementioned /svnlog/grabsvnlog.sh file.

Post by **ace123** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:26 pm

Aha! Shoulda guessed.

sf.net site status wrote:( 2007-06-13 13:43:38 - Project Shell Service ) As of 2007-06-12 the cron service provided under the project shell service has been disabled. Ongoing systems problems have forced us to pull it offline until a suitable replacement can be developed. Accordingly, no estimate for when we'll restore service is being provided.

So CRON does in fact just not work at all... So I have to use a PHP method.

Should be simple, but Sourceforge's firewall seems to completely block off Web servers from even accessing other sourceforge servers, such as svn.sf.net. So...

So now it looks like the only solution is to take a server I own, download the XML log from there, and send it to a PHP script in a POST or PUT query.

Sounds messy, also is insecure (someone could then stick whatever content they want on our home page if they know where that updating PHP script is) but I can't think of a better way until they fix Cron.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:59 pm

Um, cia.vc is integrated into Sourceforge SVN. Set up the python hook and it should work. Then, from cia.vc, VS commits will be avialable via RSS which is easy to add to the website.

Post by **ace123** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 7:21 am

It's finally done.

I wasted too much time on simple stuff. So many systems seem to be crippled of one feature or another that required figuring out a different way of doing it.
For example, I was trying to use PHP to read the POST data, but it kept trying to expand it as urlencoded. But finally, I realized that a shell script CGI program would work just fine, so I had to redo some of the logic.

It was kind of like a maze, and I had to find a path from start (downloading the XML) to the finish (saved an HTML segment on vegastrike.sf.net).

Yes, as you said, it should have been simple, but I kept hitting really trivial but annoying stumbling blocks such as an outgoing firewall, no crontab scripting and so on.