Tracks

Jumpbox for Tracks

2009-04-02T19:55:42Z

The nice people at JumpBox have just released a JumpBox for Tracks 1.7. JumpBoxes are pre-built, pre-configured virtual applications which run in a range of Virtualization software applications. You just download the JumpBox (free), then open the file with your Virtualization software. Once the JumpBox has booted, it will give you a URL which you can visit in a browser. The software will then guide you through setting up an account. If you’d like to try out the JumpBox without installing it, you can use the “Trial This JumpBox” button on the web site, which will let you play around with it to test it out. It’s great to have another method of using Tracks for those of you who don’t want to go to the trouble of installing Tracks and its dependencies on your computer, or installing Tracks on a web host. Try it out! I’ll add links and instructions to the manual in due course.

Tracks 1.7

2009-02-28T13:21:54Z

Tracks 1.7RC2

2009-02-15T12:05:47Z

Making yourself comfortable with git in the terminal

2009-01-15T19:15:14Z

If you’re cloning or forking Tracks from GitHub, you might be interested in some changes you can make to your .bashrc to make using git a bit more comfortable. Henrik over at The Pug Automatic posted this tip for putting both your current branch name on the command line, and also indicating whether you have any uncommitted changes in the branch. If your branch has uncommitted changes, it prints an asterisk after the branch name. This is incredibly helpful for seeing at a glance what state you are in, without having to issue the commands ‘git branch’ or ‘git status’. If you flit about between branches a lot, having the branch name at the command prompt can save you from a great deal of trouble.

You can grab Henrik’s code here, or use mine below. I just foraged around among the forks and the comments on this related post to get a version combining the best bits of them all, then I substituted in my existing command prompt. Enjoy!

Tracks gets its own domain name

2008-12-30T16:31:58Z

...and a new home! I have now completed the migration to the new Shared Accelerator at Joyent.com, and in the process, gave Tracks its own domain name: getontracks.org. You may find that the new server feels a bit more snappy than the old one, and it should be more stable and reliable. The migration process was fairly complex, and it’s possible that some links may be broken, so do please email me if you find anything amiss. I’ve redirected the old domain to the new one, so feed readers should pick up the redirection. If they do not, you might want to enter the new feed URL manually for the RSS2 feed or Atom feed.

I was hoping to replace our Trac bug tracker with a custom solution run with ExpressionEngine (which runs this site), but importing existing tickets proved too much for my pre-Christmas brain! Instead, I imported all the old tickets into an Assembla space. Assembla offers a number of rather cool features, and will be easier for me to administer. You can find out how to use the site to submit tickets here.

Tracks 1.7RC

2008-12-14T13:32:54Z

Absent for August

2008-08-02T18:22:00Z

I’m off to Brazil for a work course again on Monday, and I’ll be away for 3 weeks. I won’t have email or web access during that time, so can I ask that you direct any questions to the forum or mailing list where other Tracks users will be able to help you. If you want to make a pull request on GitHub, or if you’ve got a patch, lukemelia, lrbalt and epall all have commit rights to the main repository, so you can send your request to them.

Have a great summer everyone, and I’ll post again when I get back!

Pledgie button

2008-06-28T11:23:00Z

GitHub provides a handy shortcut for creating a Pledgie campaign, and shows the button on the repository page. We were previously accepting donations using a Paypal button, which meant I then had to do some mental arithmetic and manually update the MacBook-O-Meter to show the additional donations. Pledgie is much easier to use, so I’ve now embedded the Pledgie button on the Contribute page, and also in the sidebar of the site. Click the button if you feel like making a donation! Pledgie donations can be anonymous or you can display your name proudly in the donors list, and you can use PayPal or a credit card for payment.

BitNami screencasts in Spanish

2008-06-28T10:27:01Z

Spanish-speaking Tracks users will be interested to know that BitNami have a couple of screencasts in Spanish, showing the installation process with BitNami (which was produced by Javier Martínez) and an introduction to using Tracks. Many thanks to Antonio Santos at BitNami for pointing me to the screencasts, and for telling me that Tracks was the third most downloaded Stack on BitNami last month!

Tracks moves to GitHub!

2008-06-15T11:33:00Z

I’m happy to say that Tracks has now moved to GitHub. The subversion repository is still available as a read-only repository, but all new development will happen via Git at GitHub. The main reason for this move is to make it much easier for people to contribute to the project. Anyone can clone the repository and submit patches, but to make life even easier, you can sign up for a free account at GitHub and then fork Tracks. GitHub provides a ‘pull request’ button, so when you’ve added something cool or fixed a bug, hit the button and we’ll pull in your changes. Git makes merging much easier than Subversion, even if the codebase has moved on a bit since you created the patch.

The latest stable version of Tracks can still be downloaded as a .zip file (see the download link in the sidebar). If you don’t want to install Git, but you are feeling adventurous and want to get the very latest development version, you can use the ‘Download’ button on the GitHub page to get a tarball of the project.

To clone Tracks, change to a directory in which you want to store Tracks (e.g. ~/Sites):


git clone git://github.com/bsag/tracks.git
cd tracks

If (when!) you produce a cool new feature or fix a bug, create a patch. If you develop in a branch called ‘experiment’:


git diff master..experiment > my_feature.patch

Then attach my_feature.patch to a ticket.

Or you can sign up for a free account on github and fork Tracks using the convenient button. You can then use the button to issue a pull request for your changes to be pulled into the main repository.

Tracks 1.6

2008-06-03T18:53:45Z

Comment moderation

2008-05-22T20:36:00Z

I’ve been getting a fair bit of spam slipping through Akismet’s fingers recently, so I’ve decided to turn comment moderation on and see how it goes. Please feel free to comment as usual, but remember that your comment won’t show up immediately. If you are a spammer, your comment won’t turn up at all!

Morphexchange - Tracks as a hosted service

2008-04-07T18:47:00Z

If you’d like to have a globally-accessible installation of Tracks, which you could access from any computer on the internet, but you either don’t have a web server, web host, or don’t want the hassle of installing it yourself, you could try Morph eXchange. The Morph Application Platform allows you to run certain Ruby on Rails applications as services. They have some services which require a paid subscription, but their Tracks service is free to use. All you need to do is go to the homepage, signup for an account, then under subscriptions you will see Tracks listed. Click subscribe, and you can launch Tracks and enter your data.

New screencast

2008-04-01T18:26:01Z

I’ve just uploaded an introductory screencast to the screenshots page. In it, I introduce the basics of starting with a new, blank installation of Tracks, adjusting the preferences, adding contexts, projects and actions, and editing actions. In due course, I’ll add more screencasts on specific aspects, like using tags, the tickler, and the statistics page.

It’s the first screencast I’ve done with a voiceover, so please forgive the stumbling, mumbling parts. Watching the screencast, you might marvel at the fact that I lecture for a living. The thing is, I’m used to a live audience (except at 9am Monday lectures, where the audience is mostly asleep), and talking to myself felt distinctly odd I also seemed to be channelling Bill Lumbergh from Office Space, with my “let’s go ahead and…”. I don’t know why, because I almost never say that in real life. Anyway, enjoy, and try not to laugh too hard.

Tracks 1.5

2008-03-27T17:11:25Z