Django Windmill Tests – GSOC Progress Update

I feel that a status update is long overdue, but as the corpus of Windmill tests grows, so does the time it takes to run a complete instance of the regression suite. However, I do have some fun progress to report as well as a few questions/problems that are showing themselves now that all the fluff is over. First, let’s talk about the fun stuff!

I do have 3 of my major improvements/fixes/restructures to django.test somewhat complete. At the moment they are lacking most in documentation, a problem I intended to rectify later this week.

1. Windmill Tests: Windmill test runners are nearly complete, threaded development server for AJAX widget testing complete.
2. Code Coverage: Coverage.py support for runtests.py and management command. Extensible system is easily pluggable with other coverage systems.
3. Test-Only Models: This is still a topic of discussion, but adding the property ‘test_models’ to a TestSuite will load and wipe the models. Has tests and limited docs.

My major TODO’s still outstanding:

• Documentation!
• Twill Runner Support (Utilizing the Windmill Threaded Server)
• Windmill Admin Regression Tests (Healthy set of tests written, need to document and finish more)
• Skip tests that are known to fail
• Test new features/API’s

That’s it for now, more updates are available on the django-dev list!

Wordpress Upgrade

I just upgraded to the latest Wordpress release (2.8!) let me know if you have any issues viewing the site!

Google Summer of Code 2009 – Django Testing – Coding Day 1

Among all the excitement of the past few weeks, the start of GSOC appears to have snuck up on me! Started work today on the coverage runner. My progress is easily followed on my GitHub Django fork (until we get real SVN branches). Can’t wait to start posting some real results!

Google Summer of Code 2009: Django Testing Updates!

So my Google Summer of Code: 2009 project proposal was accepted! I will be working on a 2 phase project revolving around Django’s testing framework, and regression suite. Most notebly, I plan to:

• Implement Windmill test coverage for Django’s Infamous contrib.admin
• Provide several missing features/conveniences to the Django testing tools

While it may not be the most glamorous project, I’m excited for it! When paired with my epic mentors, (the ever-infamous Eric Holscher and notorious George Song) it looks to be a solid summer. You can expect me to post weekly status updates here, as well as anything else relevant to the project. As my ‘get to know Django and make sure I can conform with coding standards etc.’ ticket, I’m planning to add an assertion which checks for dead links after template rendering. Or, as its better known, Django Ticket #5418.

I want to also give a quick thanks to Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Eric Holscher, Jannis Leidel and all the other PyCon 2009 Sprinters who helped me create the proposal.

Making Silverlight Applications Available Offline

Ok, so I am a huge fan of the Silverlight development environment, C# and XAML represent one of the best UI design paradigms in computing today. Needless to say, I cannot thank the Moonlight project enough for bringing Silverlight support to Linux. The problem is, Microsoft either want’s me to develop a desktop application or a web-based application…. And only one of those is cross platform. Needless to say, if I restrict my WPF application to exclusively Silverlight-available libraries, I can get it to run on Linux. This is far from seamless, but in a pinch, it can be an option.

However, a far better solution would be to load Silverlight in the browser, while offline. (Taking advantage of the Silverlight plugin and its packaging). Utilizing Google Gears, I was able to serve up the compiled .xap file and run the Silverlight app in Firefox without a connection to the server hosting it. I haven’t had a chance to test how IsolatedStorage behaves under these conditions, or how Moonlight handles it (couldn’t get the latest 2.0 to build), but here is the VS2008 solution I used to get everything working.

Offline Silverlight Via Gears Demo

Finally! A Django IDE with Real Code Completion and Template Support

Now it seems like forever ago, but I have been on the hunt for a good Django IDE for a very long time. I have tried PyDev, Aptana, Komodo, TextMate, Vim, Emacs, Wing IDE and every variation in between, but was never satisfied with the featurset. I wanted complete python language support and completion, complete support for Django Templates, total HTML support, as well as complete Javascript (specifically jQuery) support. Most editors made the mistake of having support for some of those individually, but I can’t get javascript support inside of a Django Template etc.

The magical and awesome app that represents the first real attempt at a complete Django development environment? Netbeans!

I know it sounds crazy, but progress is being made, and while its a boatload of effort to get it built, and even then, not much of the promised featureset actually works. But those are just details, examination of the code available at:

http://code.google.com/p/netbeans-django/

shows some real work being done towards a Django project type. Moreover, a recent blog post from someone at Sun alludes to this support being available as soon as Netbeans 7.0.

Perhaps this is just another let down waiting to happen, but the existing Python code support is fantastic, and significant strides appear to already have been made towards the goal of total Django integration. If you want to try out the existing language support, just grab the Netbeans 7M2 build and install the Python plugin!

Oh No! Hacked!

I wanted to apologize, my Wordpress install was compromised. I’m restoring a backup now.

Using Linq to Sqlite Providers: Updated

So, I still get hundreds of hits each day looking for my linq to sqlite provider, which is quite outdated. To prevent anyone else from falling prey to bitrotten code, I have taken down the link, and created this brief walkthrough. 

For starters, you need to download sqlite for ADO.Net here: http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/

You will also need the ADO.Net Entities Framework and Visual Studio 2008.

• First, install the Sqlite Provider that you downloaded, and when prompted, choose to install DesignTime support for Visual Studio 2008. 
• Now, open Visual Studio and create a new project.
• Expand the Server Explorer on the left and add a new connection. 
• Select the Sqlite provider.
• Once you have a Sqlite Connection, create your schema.
• Next, Create a new ADO.Net Entities Model, and choose to generate models from a database. Select your Sqlite Connection.
• Viola! We now have objects representing our SQLite database that can be queried and modified!

I’ll upload a screencast in a few days when I can get my hands on a screencast recorder for Windows. I’m also working on the means to generate those ADO.Net entities under Mono, but I am still researching what is out there.

Code Review in Rietveld with bzr/Bazaar

I like bzr. Those of us that do (like bzr) aren’t quite as popular as the git lovers and as a result, we don’t see tools as fantastic as Rietveld, Github and Git-CL being spread around on domains outside of launchpad.net. While this isn’t the end of the world, it certainly represented a hurdle when I decided that I was going to formalize my code review process for internal projects. 

While most applications have some form of bzr support, its generally pretty broken or outdated. Given that I was going to have to write code no matter what application I chose, I figured I would use my favorite: Rietveld. Rietveld already had a tool supporting Git and Hg, so expanding it to support bzr was a straightforward task. The initial patch is awaiting review at http://codereview.appspot.com/14053  so please share your thoughts/opinions. If there are others who start to use this, then I might consider packaging this functionality into a bzr plugin! 

If you just want to take advantage of bzr support, then download the file here: Upload.py

Moved Blog to Wordpress.com

I know that my blog has been pretty quite the past few months (I’ve been super-busy!) but kubasik.net was never really meant to host the traffic this blog was generating, so to make things easier on all 6 of you who read it, I have moved the blog to Wordpress.com. There are still redirects at Kubasik.net/blog as best as it can, but let me know if you are finding dead links!