Jan 03 2009
Yesterday I uploaded the first Foswiki Installer for windows to Foswiki Downloads. It will install Apache 2.2 (if you don’t already have it) and Strawberry Perl and then configure and install Foswiki v1.0.0 beta 3.
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Nov 19 2008
3 weeks into a fork compelled by the Trademark problems of the 10 year old TWiki name, and we’re almost fully reborn.
Foswiki - started out as Free, Open Source Wiki - When Community matters.
Next steps for us will be to create the Foswiki Association, and to release Foswiki v1.0 - all before Christmas 
Oct 24 2008
mirror 1 460MB (USA) TWiki 4.2.3, (does not include VMware):
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.
Aug 21 2008
I’m at the LgWebNetwork conference in Sydney at the moment - having seen John Allsopp do his thing on “The real and the virtual - closing the circle”, Bobert Beerworth not talking about Beer… and yet Social (networks), and James Robertson (ok, it was about CMS’s free and otherwise), and then Cameron Adams - designer guy and a session on Writing for the web (what no blog?) by Brian Hardy, I’m reminded at how much the Wiki community needs to get out more.
There are so many little improvements Wiki’s should make - just by leaning over the fence a little, and expanding the scope of an Enterprise Wiki into the serious CMS space. We already ‘compete’ reasonably well in the Knowledge Management and Collaboration areas, and by working on the Wiki’s accessibility, we should be able to make it more usable for the less regular users.
Interesting Take-Aways
All in all a refreshing reminder of the ideas I’ve had that get forgotten in the heat of working for clients.
Aug 20 2008
Yep, I finally got sick of typing the 26 letter domain DistributedInformation.com, so I’ve traded down to 10!
fosiki.com
Still working on TWiki and open source, but also doing other Social Apps, including a few in facebook.
I’ll write about the name’s providence later - perhaps I’ll even be able to make up a long convoluted story
Aug 20 2008
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.
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