George has been leading the charge to a major bug fixing release of foswiki – we’ve resolved over 120 issues, and worked hard to improve security – dealing with some interesting cross site scripting issues found by ‘SonyStyles’, and then pushing on to harden the registration process to deal with spammers.

foswiki’s password system can now migrate your user’s password store to more modern encryption methods – the default that we shipped with Twiki can thus move from crypt to md5-apache.

4 days after the release, the installation and maintenance options for 1.1.5 have improved too:

1. my yum package repository (extensions too)
2. my debian package repository (extensions too)
3. my Foswiki on a USB stick for Windows
4. Oliver’s VirtualMachine

That’s right, on Redhat Enterprise and Centos, it’s now just as easy to install foswiki and its ~300 plugins as it is on Debian.

• Debian repository for foswiki
• Centos6 and RHEL6 repository for foswiki

This means that you can now manage your Enterprise Foswiki using the same package management tools as the rest of the operating system.

For example, I just installed a demo system with:

yum install foswiki-jhotdrawplugin foswiki-ldapcontrib foswiki-newuserplugin foswiki-glueplugin foswiki-ldapngplugin foswiki-calendarplugin foswiki-edittableplugin foswiki-interwikiplugin foswiki-renderlistplugin foswiki-smiliesplugin foswiki-tableplugin foswiki-directedgraphplugin

and when yum finished, I browse to http://server/foswiki/ and its up and running.

These packages are built by a script that downloads the latest packages from http://foswiki.org/Extensions, generates an EPM manifest and then builds rpm packages – every night. I have not yet tested them with Redhat Enterprise 6 or fedora

To try it out, you’ll need to add the EPEL repository, and then this one to your yum config:

su
rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm
cd /etc/yum.repo.d/
wget http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_rpms/foswiki.repo

and then run

yum makecache

To see what foswiki extensions are available, run
yum search foswiki

To install foswiki, and some plugins:

yum install foswiki foswiki-workflowplugin foswiki-jscalendarcontrib foswiki-ldapcontrib

then browse to http://servername/foswiki/bin/configure to enable the plugin and configure settings.

Just a short teaser from my testing virtual machine: I’m still working on a few wrinkles – hopefully It’ll be releaseable for foswiki 1.1.5

yum install foswiki-widgetsskin

========================================================================
 Package Arch Version Repository Size
========================================================================Installing:
 foswiki-widgetsskin i386 110415-226 foswiki 9.6 M
Installing for dependencies:
 apr i686 1.3.9-3.el6_1.2 base 129 k
 apr-util i686 1.3.9-3.el6_0.1 base 89 k
 apr-util-ldap i686 1.3.9-3.el6_0.1 base 15 k
 foswiki i386 1.1.4-231 foswiki 2.6 M
 foswiki-autoviewtemplateplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 9.1 k
 foswiki-commentplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 23 k
 foswiki-comparerevisionsaddon i386 111217-226 foswiki 95 k
 foswiki-edittableplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 78 k
 foswiki-emptyplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 15 k
 foswiki-famfamfamcontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 3.0 M
 foswiki-historyplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 76 k
 foswiki-interwikiplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 11 k
 foswiki-jqueryplugin i386 111221-226 foswiki 6.1 M
 foswiki-jscalendarcontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 383 k
 foswiki-mailercontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 44 k
 foswiki-patternskin i386 111217-226 foswiki 725 k
 foswiki-preferencesplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 12 k
 foswiki-renderlistplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 20 k
 foswiki-slideshowplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 23 k
 foswiki-smiliesplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 14 k
 foswiki-spreadsheetplugin i386 120118-226 foswiki 37 k
 foswiki-tableplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 29 k
 foswiki-tinymceplugin i386 111222-226 foswiki 1.4 M
 foswiki-tipscontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 18 k
 foswiki-topicusermappingcontrib i386 111221-226 foswiki 41 k
 foswiki-twikicompatibilityplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 140 k
 foswiki-twistyplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 28 k
 foswiki-wysiwygplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 61 k
 httpd i686 2.2.15-15.el6.centos base 818 k
 httpd-tools i686 2.2.15-15.el6.centos base 70 k
 mailcap noarch 2.1.31-2.el6 base 27 k
 perl i686 4:5.10.1-119.el6_1.1 base 9.7 M
 perl-AppConfig noarch 1.66-6.el6 base 87 k
 perl-Archive-Tar i686 1.58-119.el6_1.1 base 70 k
 perl-CGI i686 3.51-119.el6_1.1 base 206 k
 perl-CGI-Session noarch 4.35-5.el6 base 120 k
 perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib i686 2.023-119.el6_1.1 base 67 k
 perl-Compress-Zlib i686 2.020-119.el6_1.1 base 43 k
 perl-DBD-Pg i686 2.15.1-3.el6 base 191 k
 perl-DBI i686 1.609-4.el6 base 705 k
 perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker i686 6.55-119.el6_1.1 base 290 k
 perl-ExtUtils-ParseXS i686 1:2.2003.0-119.el6_1.1 base 42 k
 perl-FreezeThaw noarch 0.45-5.el6 base 19 k
 perl-IO-Compress-Base i686 2.020-119.el6_1.1 base 66 k
 perl-IO-Compress-Zlib i686 2.020-119.el6_1.1 base 133 k
 perl-IO-Zlib i686 1:1.09-119.el6_1.1 base 30 k
 perl-IO-stringy noarch 2.110-10.1.el6 base 68 k
 perl-Module-Pluggable i686 1:3.90-119.el6_1.1 base 37 k
 perl-Package-Constants i686 1:0.02-119.el6_1.1 base 24 k
 perl-Pod-Escapes i686 1:1.04-119.el6_1.1 base 30 k
 perl-Pod-Simple i686 1:3.13-119.el6_1.1 base 209 k
 perl-Test-Harness i686 3.17-119.el6_1.1 base 229 k
 perl-Test-Simple i686 0.92-119.el6_1.1 base 110 k
 perl-Text-Glob noarch 0.08-7.el6 base 11 k
 perl-devel i686 4:5.10.1-119.el6_1.1 base 420 k
 perl-libs i686 4:5.10.1-119.el6_1.1 base 590 k
 perl-version i686 3:0.77-119.el6_1.1 base 49 k
 postgresql-libs i686 8.4.9-1.el6_1.1 base 201 k
 rcs i686 5.7-37.el6 base 169 k

Transaction Summary
========================================================================
Install 60 Package(s)

Yes, I’m finally cutting the foswiki release package up into its constituent parts so that the packages can be updated separately like when using configure.

The same build script is used to generate debian packages, so I hope that will come in February too.

see http://foswiki.org/downloads and http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian/ for more information.

Foswiki 1.0.4 has been released with more than 100 bug fixes and some small enhancements. Upgrading is highly recommended. If you did not upgrade from TWiki yet, now is a good time as Foswiki 1.0.4 fixes more around 300 bugs relative to TWiki 4.2.4.

Grab it now from : http://foswiki.org/Download/WebHome – the straight and upgrade archives, OSX installer and my Windows Installers are here.

My debian package repository now spans Foswiki 1.0.4 and 168 Foswiki extensions – its never been easier to install

see http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian

Over the 4 months of our project’s existence, 33 developers have been involved in making ~3000 commits – next up, the future !

I’ve set up a debian repository that you can help test the release package before it gets uploaded into debian proper.

To try it out, add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian/ stable main contrib
deb-src http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian/ stable main contrib

and then run

gpg --keyserver the.earth.li --recv-keys 379393E0AAEE96F6
apt-key add /root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg


OR (if theearth.li doesn’t work for you)
wget http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian/FoswikiReleaseGpgKey.asc
apt-key add FoswikiReleaseGpgKey.asc


apt-get update

apt-get install apache2 foswiki

This repository contains about 281 (Apr2011) foswiki-extensions – auto updated nightly direct from foswiki.org. The packages have as many dependencies as I was able to coerce my build scripts to work out – but there is more work needed.

In just 10 weeks, the Foswiki project has re-built the project infrastructure, fixed an additional 100 bugs over and beyond those we fixed in the TWiki source repository before the fork, moved to a new web application architecture (FSA) and undertaken a detailed security audit, fixing at their roots a large number of potential exploits.

Additionally, we already have the following easy installers:

Windows Installer – I’ve built an installer using Apache 2.2 and Strawberry Perl, making it possible to install Perl dependencies.

OSX Leopard installer – Matthias Wientapper has built an pkg

Debian and Ubuntu linux – I’ve ported my TWiki package builder to Foswiki, and now have a live updated (nightly) Debian repository containing Foswiki v1.0.0 and 105 of the 109 Extensions uploaded to http://foswiki.org/Extensions

Virtual machine image – Eugen Mayer has built a virtual machine, with detailed instructions for use with Virtual Box and VMWare.

So given the over 1800 commits in 10 weeks, a release, and much much more, It seems to me that Foswiki is a success..

Download Foswiki today!

Easy installation on Windows, Linux and OSX!

Trivial upgrades of TWiki and TWiki Plugins

Summary: This package enables you to quickly and easily install a pre-configured TWiki 4.2 ‘software appliance’ on Windows, by using the free VMware Player or VMware Server – like another computer running within your computer. This generally performs better than a normal WindowsInstallCookbook approach and is easier to install than IndigoPerlCookbook (takes just 5 minutes, a bit like installing a hard disk that has TWiki and Linux pre-installed). Although running TWiki on Linux on top of Windows may seem complicated, it’s actually much simpler than installing TWikiOnWindows – no TWiki or Linux knowledge is needed to get a working TWiki installation!

This uses TWiki VM 4.2.3 released on 12 September 2008. It is installed using SvenDowideit‘s fosiki TWiki debian package repository to make upgrades, and installation of TWiki Plugins (with external dependencies) easy.

I’ve been running a firefox 3.0 pre-release build for ages now, and finally thought I’d upgrade – (it turns out) mozilla do not provide 64 bit binaries. The i686 build that you can download from getfirefox.org does not work on my debian amd64 system – but not everything is lost.

As I’m a developer, I’m reasonably happy to play with nightly builds – and so – http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ has what I need – today its firefox-3.1a2pre.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2.

Unziped into my non-debian firefox dir, and runs seemingly fine, except that the firefox addins won’t run, as they are scared of firefox versions that they have not been tested on

That too can be solved – edit the application.ini file, and replace the Version=3.1a2pre with Version=3.0.1 or whatever the release is that your addons are willing to work on.

so far, only VMWare’s addon won’t run – perhaps I need to set the Version lower, as it worked on Minefield 3.0pre.

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceweasel&searchon=names&suite=testing&section=all tells me that 3.0.1 is in amd64 debian testing since July 2008

VMWare’s addon to give console access won’t run in the 3.0.1 debian version either – talk about disappointing. The 3.1 nightly build seems to feel faster too, so I suspect I’ll be running that most of the time, and will look to migrate away from VMWare over time.

CPAN, while incredibly useful, can be a pain, if you forget that you need to re-configure it after installing essential tools.

For example, if you make the mistake of setting up a basic, non-development Debian virtual machine, configure CPAN, try to use it, and on seeing ‘make’ errors like (from install Bundle::CPAN of all things) :

Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running install for module Compress::Raw::Zlib
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

cpan>


You install make apt-get update ; apt-get install build-essential…, only to continue to see the same errors wizz past….

CPAN really truly needs to realise that the make settings are mis configured, and tell you.

What you need to do, is to tell your cpan about it by running:
cpan> o conf init

OR, if you’ve not yet messed (configured) up your cpan, install build-essential first.

And while you’re contemplating using cpan, think hard about trying dh-make-perl instead

Ideally, CPAN should be able to realise that it can’t call make if it does not know where it is – and point this fact out, rather than making it appear as though the package being installed has an issue.