RSS stuff

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Jorg
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Post by Jorg »

Why don't we setup a nice project to make a RSS reader at SF.net? We can all work on it, I am willing to contribute some too. My fav was RSS Bandit, drawback, some sites with JavaScript stuff were shown very bad, and it was SLOW because ti was written in .NET. But it definately worked for me.

I would like to see a x-platform one, and also one where IE is not used, but wxMozilla. Since Ryan already went so far I am sure we can have a 1st release soon.

Also nice to have is CSS displayed summaries of the XML. Where the user can pre-configure how the summary looks like.

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Post by AkiraDev »

Just a thought....

Has anybody ever used RSS for directly patching source code? I think we could have a fairly robust system which makes open source software development easier... something like a RSS-based CVS system. In any case, Ryan's RSS Reader can be a very useful starting point...

Congrats for the "code snippet"!
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Post by Jorg »

AkiraDev, I hope you don't mind splitting this up and continueing in the open discussion forum .. your thoughts about a RSS based code patching system are very interesting, you might be on to somethin!

So before polluting Ryan's original code dump snippet, we can continue discussion about RSS here.

So what you propose is when peope have a patch on a piece of code the patch is sent out through RSS? I think it could work if the original order is not messed up. Hmmmmm

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Post by AkiraDev »

I started giving this a little bit more thought and there might be an advantage in this to automate synchronized patching within a development team. Any software that manages this can easily sort the order in which the patches were applied through a time stamp... it could work just like regular RSS, except that the summary text IS the same as the content of a patch file... in the simplest case, of course

In fact, if we think about it, it could make it faster to distribute tasks in a development team... patches are broadcasted and applied nearly in real-time as each programmer works on his specific portion of the code... In this way, instead of having 100 programmers working nearly independently, they would be REALLY working together.

How do you think something like this could be implemented, Jorg?
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Post by Jorg »

Hi AkiraDev,

Well first of all, what do you want to accomplish with it that is the question you should ask. I think it would be a good system to send out patches as an administrator of a project but also very useful if people have a customized source of something, and cannot afford downloading and installing the whole new source again.

For a revision control system, it can be useful if your current source is diffed against the latest known base source. You submit for example your sources, a diff process on the server compares the two, and sends out a diff by RSS for other peoples to apply.

It would be a cheap way to get the latest source diffs, but it would definately need a GUI front-end that arranges the merge / diff process and retrieval and listing of the source fragments, and correctly applying the patches in the correct order :-)

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Post by AkiraDev »

Jorg wrote:Hi AkiraDev,

Well first of all, what do you want to accomplish with it that is the question you should ask. I think it would be a good system to send out patches as an administrator of a project but also very useful if people have a customized source of something, and cannot afford downloading and installing the whole new source again.

For a revision control system, it can be useful if your current source is diffed against the latest known base source. You submit for example your sources, a diff process on the server compares the two, and sends out a diff by RSS for other peoples to apply.

It would be a cheap way to get the latest source diffs, but it would definately need a GUI front-end that arranges the merge / diff process and retrieval and listing of the source fragments, and correctly applying the patches in the correct order :-)

- Jorgen
Indeed, it can already save some time. There would indeed still be a need for an administrator to control the diffs broadcast. Management could not be fully automated.

Also, consider the gains in traffic for supressed source code download and speed with which the subscribers keep their own copies of the source up-to-date.

It sounds useful... and might make a subtle difference.
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Post by Tyler »

It sounds like you two are on to something, but I'm not quite sure.

With RSS it would automatically do the updates in the best case. However, in the worst case one would be asked to do a merge of their code and the update. As this process could potentially happen while you are working on something, I think people would turn off their "auto-update" feature, in favor of checking every-so-often when they are ready and capable of thinking about doing a merge.

This would reduce the RSS patcher effectively to CVS with a different interface. So how is the RSS patcher a paradigm shift from an auto-updating CVS? (Think Tortoise, not command line).

Just curious,

-Tyler
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Post by AkiraDev »

Tyler wrote:It sounds like you two are on to something, but I'm not quite sure.

With RSS it would automatically do the updates in the best case. However, in the worst case one would be asked to do a merge of their code and the update. As this process could potentially happen while you are working on something, I think people would turn off their "auto-update" feature, in favor of checking every-so-often when they are ready and capable of thinking about doing a merge.

This would reduce the RSS patcher effectively to CVS with a different interface. So how is the RSS patcher a paradigm shift from an auto-updating CVS? (Think Tortoise, not command line).

Just curious,

-Tyler
Automation of CVS updates is a plus, and doing so through RSS makes the process automatically cross-platform (is there a version of TortoiseCVS available for Linux?). You can always have a running process or daemon checking for the latest patches every few minutes.

So, while not being a complete paradigm shift from auto-updating CVS, it improves on it, you could say it makes a simpler approach.

A good modularization of a project will make it possible for individual developers to work on a specific portion of the code, and require the least possible attention of what his peers are doing - not easy, but possible with very good object model design, for instance.

What's more, conventional patching is often made through simple text substitution. XML allows reproduction of specific structured relationships - you can promptly implement quick parsers that search for class X and apply a patch to its method Y - rather than just going to look for file z.cpp and introduce a few extra lines - the last approach is extremely fast and does not look at syntax, but not the most intelligent.

A paradigm shift would require more than just adoption of RSS indeed, but RSS can nonetheless be intelligently used for team development.

Maybe it would be a good idea to debate on "how would the most intelligent versioning system work"?

One is lead to think, RSS is quite an unexplored technology... There are zillions of applications besides news reading just waiting to be discovered.

Just my 0,02 E.

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Post by Tyler »

AkiraDev wrote: Maybe it would be a good idea to debate on "how would the most intelligent versioning system work"?
One is lead to think, RSS is quite an unexplored technology... There are zillions of applications besides news reading just waiting to be discovered.
Very true. Actually, I like your XML approach, that would be a cool way of expediting the update process.

It just occured to me how the system could get around this problem. Any updates that wouldn't cause conflicts could be automatically applied. Updates that would cause conflicts could be "queued" and applied at a later time of your choosing. 8)
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RSS is growing

Post by AkiraDev »

Microsoft is already Embracing and Extending(TM) the RSS protocol:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/index.php?p=9
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Post by priyank_bolia »

Good idea, an RSS reader would also make wxWidgets popular as firefox make to XML based languages. Though not understand what a RSS based CVS means.
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Post by Jorg »

I'm still all for a RSS reader project. We could use wxMozilla for a browser, and for IE lovers, a frame embedded with IE.

Use SQLlite or wxSQLLite for the database layer, there are plenty of XML parsers, and we have components galore to create the subject list...

I personally would like to see a FEED ANYWHERE option where a second destination can be used like a FTP site, which can be synced with the home feed so you know what articles you already read. I read at home and at work, and I always hate to see articles twice.

The ability to filter out ads which are a pain, and maybe have automated search queries that filter out a selection of the feeds, like points of interest, news about Suse, a specific problem you are monitoring in a RSS based forum, etc.

All of these features together would make it a strong RSS reader as one of the few that are truely x-platform and extendable

And ofcourse use wxIFM for the framework, call it the forum's work of art, with all people who contributed so much to the forum combined to make an RSS reader ;-)

Who is up to pulling this off shore and take the lead?

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Post by upCASE »

Sounds like a nice idea.
I won't be able to work on the core team (lack of time), but I'd be willing to contribute and help in whatever field I can.
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Post by Jorg »

Well if we all can contribute some then it would be great to see where it can go to. I have been dying to get a good RSS reader, and there is none better then one you can make yourself.

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Post by priyank_bolia »

Sorry to ask, but what will be the proposed license, as I am also starting a project whose framework is very much similar to the RSS reader. My license is undecided.
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