Inspirated

The first thing that comes to mind after seeing “curses” and “Python” in the same sentence is “go away or I shall taunt you a second time”. After spending a while trying to write text-mode interfaces, it only starts ringing truer.

Coding period for Google Summer of Code 2011 officially began last week. Because of exams and some subsequent issues involving my university I had been lagging behind my intended schedule. With help from Damian Johnson though I was able to get my feet wet quickly and start integrating menus in arm. Luckily, the arm codebase was very well-written and neatly organized which simplified my task and allowed me to end up with a functional implementation by the end of first week:

(Click on the thumbnail for larger version.)

The code can be accessed via my Git repository at Tor Project. In addition to that I also now own a shiny krkhan@torproject.org email address which is currently setup to forward messages to my primary mail.

Menus still needs a bit of polishing as the controls are not completely intuitive and I still need to bug-hunt thoroughly on varying screen sizes. For the time being they work well enough to control all aspects of arm except for quitting or resetting Tor, which I shall be fixing after figuring out a few quirks.

“As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.” — Buddy Hackett

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to Xfce!”

After completing my project for last year‘s Summer of Code my degree was delayed for a while because of flunking a few courses. Glass half full, this gave me the chance to participate once more before I finally graduate this summer — Deo volente.

In a repeat of last year I once again became a duplicate student as my proposals for both Fedora and Tor projects ended up in top slots. Both organizations were really nice in the de-duplication process and inquired about my preference which inclined towards Tor since it allowed me to contribute to fields of privacy and anonymity. In words of Free Software Foundation:

Using free software, Tor has enabled roughly 36 million people around the world to experience freedom of access and expression on the Internet while keeping them in control of their privacy and anonymity. Its network has proved pivotal in dissident movements in both Iran and more recently Egypt.

This by no means implies any lesser significance for Fedora in my life and I would have been as much enthused had it been my mentoring organization for the summer instead of EFF. However, since I had to make a choice I went for the option where I would be contributing more directly to privacy enhancing technologies.

My project this summer revolves around improving the excellent Anonymizing Relay Monitor (arm) which is used by the Tor community to monitor and control bridges and relays. The complete proposal can be read here (or via the original PDF). It contains nitty-gritty details of my summer aspirations as well as non-technical stuff like why I want to contribute to this particular field.

I Know What I Did Last Summer, and I’m looking forward to doing it again. Quoting myself from FLOSS Manuals:

“Summer of Code is about much more than just code. The sheer fun of integrating with the open-source community and your mentoring organization can in fact outweigh the gratification of actual coding. “

Just spotted this comment on Gnome Bugzilla:

I would like to extend my thanks to the gnome team/community for a great last
moment with my dad.

Adrian Hands (my father) wrote the patch above to improve the usability of
gnome for himself and others. You see my dad was suffering from ALS and his
hands were so crippled he could no longer use a keyboard. Thus we used a Darci
usb morse code keyboard emulator to help him type. Even the morse code device
was a struggle as the sensitivity adjustment and positioning of the nice two
paddled key would fall out of whack. I rigged up a pvc cage that wrapped around
his knee and fixed remote switches to the cage so that he could use the
remaining strength in his legs to operate the Darci morse code device. He used
this last bit of body movement to write this patch.

My father passed away yesterday. I went back through my email to find our last
correspondence (he was in India for treatment, and I live in Raleigh). I would
like to share the email with you.

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Adrian Hands <handsadrian@gmail.com> wrote:

> ACCEPTed
> COMMITed
> RESOLVEd
> BOO-YAH!
>
> commit 0b209b1ff16e863e60a1d86413aa57c5fbde76b0
> Author: Adrian Hands <handsadrian@gmail.com>
> Date:   Fri Dec 31 14:34:58 2010 +0100
>
>    Add Copy Image and Copy Path to clipboard functionality
>
>    Fixes bug 78514.
>
>  data/eog-ui.xml  |    9 +++++++
>  src/eog-window.c |   63 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  2 files changed, 72 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

I have the coolest Dad in the world!

I am so glad that my last comment to my Dad was something like this.

Adrian Hands loved free software / open source. I do as well.

Thanks so much for the great software, and a new great memory.

(Click on the thumbnail for larger version.)

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.” — Albert Einstein

Smolt is a hardware profiler for Linux distributions which makes it easier for end-users to report back their machine configurations to a centralized database. Mike McGrath provides an excellent backend for developing Smolt GUIs which I have coupled with GTK+ for GSmolt:

(Click on the thumbnails for larger versions.)

The script can be found at the gsmolt repository on GitHub. Things on todo list include profile reporting in a separate thread and better error handling. I’ll provide RPM and Deb packages when the code is ready for a public release.

As a side note, this is the first project I have tracked using GitHub (as opposed to Launchpad + Bazaar). While Launchpad has its added advantage of PPAs which make it easier to push out public releases for Debian derivatives, I’m liking the Git experience so far. Hopefully some day Copr shall mature to a point where it can be the end-all, be-all Launchpad alternative for Fedora users.

Screensavers like glmatrix have long been used by *nixers to woo people by showing them customizable animations as desktop wallpapers. Users of desktop environments such as Xfce have to however use xwininfo to determine and use the window IDs of their desktops (as the “-root” option stops working when the root window is overlayed by respective desktop managers e.g., Xfdesktop). For those who want to automate the startup process of XScreenSaver wallpapers in such environments, here’s a quick command you can use:

$ /usr/libexec/xscreensaver/glmatrix -window-id $(xwininfo -name "Desktop" | grep 'Window id' | sed 's/.*\(0x[0-9a-z]*\).*/\1/g')

Results:

(Click on the thumbnails for larger versions.)

The final package arrived today containing the (100% Organic Orgasmic) shirt and certificate:

(Click on the thumbnail for larger version.)

The Program

And with the final code submission uploaded at Google Code, Summer of Code 2010 officially draws to a close. What a ride it has been!

My first post on Inspirated regarding Summer of Code took place all the way back in March 07 when I submitted a proposal for Fedora. Three and a half years later, I finally appreciate the fact that GSoC is about much more than just the code. In fact, “Summer of Open-Source” would probably be a more suitable title for the program despite sounding half as sexy. When my proposals got rejected I had to learn, contribute and integrate more with the open-source crowd. When one of the applications finally made it beyond the selection process, I had to “bond” with the organization I was going to be working with. During the coding weeks, I had to communicate regularly with my mentor and Ubuntu community in order to ensure that I was progressing in the right direction. To summarize, becoming a part of the open-source universe is as important an aspect of GSoC as producing open-source code.

The Code

Here’s a quick rundown of the code produced for the program (without including the intermediate branches and patches):

Attachment Search

• Merge Revision: Expot API call for listing the source packages a team has subscribed to.
• Branch: Search attachment files using Horspool’s algorithm. The branch eventually didn’t make it upstream as it was decided that with the existing implementation the searches would be too expensive for Launchpad, essentially requiring a solution with a different design approach.

Arsenal and python-launchpadlib-toolkit Modifications

• Package, Package, Package: These libraries had to be modified extensively in order to provide support for the Arsenal scripts developed during GSoC. Classes like LaunchpadApplication, LaunchpadBugzillaApplication and BugzillaAdapter perform regular chores for these applications e.g., authentication, web-scraping and keyring manipulation.

Attachment Upstreamer

• Script: Command-line script for upstreaming attachments from a Launchpad bug to a remote Bugzilla.
• Script, Template: CGI script for demonstrating the capabilities of Arsenal library and python-launchpadlib-toolkit.

Bug Matchmaker

“Incompatibility: In matrimony, a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.” — Ambrose Bierce

Fortunately, matchmaking across different bug trackers was easier.

• Script: Command-line script for searching a remote Bugzilla for similar entries to a given Launchpad bug.

Automatic Patcher

• Script: Command-line script for automatically generating patched Debian packages for a given Launchpad bug using diff files found in its attachments.

The Nutshell

The processes of collaborating, getting code reviewed and improving accordingly has gone a long way in instilling more confidence in me as a FLOSS developer. On the technological side of things I’ve had to deal with REST APIs, Zope Interfaces, OAuth procedures, web-scrapers based on Curl, Debian patch systems, a plethora of Python and a good-bit doze of different development paradigms.

It has been awesome working with the Ubuntu community and Bryce’s guidance has been absolutely crucial for ensuring that something useful was produced by my project. I’d like to thank everyone involved in the program for making it so much fun. I Know What I Did This Summer.

As eleven weeks of the-best-summer-ever draw to an end, here’s the final coding report for GSoC 2010.

Related Links

Time Spent

60 hours.

Highlights

The week was spent mostly cleaning and packaging the code accumulated over the summer. To demonstrate some of the aspects of the Arsenal library, I also created a proof-of-concept CGI script which upstreams Launchpad attachments for a bug to a remote Bugzilla. The task was fun, as the efforts put into refactoring things into launchpadlib-toolkit and BugzillaAdapter finally paid off and it took only a few hours to get the script working (that too with most of the time spent learning AJAX).

Concerns

None.

Waiting Items

None.

Stalled Items

None.

Accomplishments

• Branch, Merge Revision:
  • Revision: Added support for quilt.
  • Revision: Added support for using patch utility for quilt packages where the diff files update debian/* stuff themselves.
  • Revision: Cleaned up the library to provide LaunchpadApplication and LaunchpadBugzillaApplication.
  • Revision: Fixed BugPatcher to use LaunchpadApplication as base class.
  • Revision: Cleaned up LaunchpadBugzillaApplication to take username password as arguments instead of modifiers.
• Branch, Merge Revision: Fixed packaging issues to release debs for Karmic and Lucid.
• Branch: Implemented a CGI script demonstrating the upstreaming capabilities of Arsenal library. An example run can be seen in this screencast.

Minor Tasks

• Revision: Some more code cleanup.
• Revision: Check launchpadlib version before appending ‘/beta‘ during API URL detection.

Actions for the Following Report

• Fill the final evaluation.
• Write a summary of the overall GSoC experience.
• Start waiting for the t-shirt.

Related Links

Time Spent

90 hours.

Highlights

• Refactored Attachment Upstreamer in order to migrate Launchpad and Bugzilla chores to launchpadlib-toolkit and BugzillaAdapter.
• Implemented match-upstream.py for matchmaking Launchpad bugs in remote trackers.
• Implemented bug-patcher.py for generating patched Debian packages for Launchpad bugs.

Concerns

None.

Waiting Items

None.

Stalled Items

None.

Accomplishments

• Branch, Merge Revision: Migrated Attachment Upstreamer to use launchpadlib-toolkit.
• Branch, Merge Revision: Migrated Attachment Upstreamer to use BugzillaAdapter.
• Revision: Updated launchpadlib-toolkit to serve scripts such as Attachment Upstreamer through attachment filters and wrappers.
• Branch, Merge Revision: Implemented match-upstream.py with support for multiple level searches for finding a bug’s attributes in a remote tracker. Supports searching titles, git commit ids and attachment filenames.
• Branch: Implemented bug-patcher.py with support for modifying Debian packages which use cdbs patch system to generate a patched version using a bug’s attachments.

Minor Tasks

• Created a LaunchpadBugzillaApp class which shares majority of the initialization code for send-attachments-upstream.py, match-upstream.py and bug-patcher.py.
• Fixed various bugs in LaunchpadBugzillaApp for dealing with Gnome Keyring and Launchpad authentication.
• Added various filters to launchpadlib-toolkit.

Actions for the Following Report

• LaunchpadBugzillaApp should be derived from LaunchpadApp which would allow using the latter for scripts such as bug-patcher.py where Bugzilla portions aren’t required.
• Update Bug Patcher to include support for remaining Debian patch systems.
• Clean up the code accumulated over GSoC development and write tests.