Month: December 2013

Jetpack is now available on GitHub

I can’t think of a way to put it better than WordPress Tavern did:

The Jetpack plugin code is now available on github and the team welcomes your pull requests. With the addition of Jetpack, Automattic now has 106 public repositories on github. That’s a lot of shared code!

Read the rest of the article for instructions on how to contribute.

Fedora 20 released

Fedora community celebrates the release of Fedora 20 today.  It is an anniversary release, marking 10 years since the birth of the project.   Yes, that’s two releases per year,  all according to the six month release cycle.  Here, I’d like to do a little side tour.

Not many people understand what a Linux distribution is, much fewer comprehend how much work goes into making one.  I have been following Fedora closely since it was born, and tried my hand at building a Red Hat based Linux distribution myself.   Of course, it’s been years since, and many things got simpler and easier, but the overall effort, I’m sure, is still pretty incredible.

Let me break it down for you a bit.  In it’s simplest form, a Linux distribution is just a collection of software.  Pretty much anybody can take a Linux kernel, bash shell with a few tools, and throw together the simplest of all distributions.  But Fedora is not that.  Fedora is much larger.   It consists of thousands of packages.  Each package is not just thrown in, it is tested, packaged and maintained, to make sure upstream patches and updates are integrated properly, and all bug reports travel back upstream.   All of these packages are tested both separately and together to make sure they work with each other.  Often, custom patches have to be developed and applied.  All of these are supported on multiple hardware architectures, in a numerous variety of scenarios.

Just that alone is a monstrous amount of work.  But that’s not all of it.  Fedora maintains a huge infrastructure to make sure tests can be executed, updates could be distributed, and community members can talk to each other.

Tonnes of help is provided to anyone in need.  This includes wiki pages, mailing lists, IRC chats, etc.  Help covers not only newcomers to Fedora distribution, but also seasoned users, system administrators, testers, and also marketing promoters.   A lot of this has been translated into dozens of languages and distributed geographically.

And all of it is an ongoing process.  Just think about it – today the new version is making its way around the world, and if you run “yum update” tomorrow, you’ll definitely find a few packages with freshly baked fixes and improvements.

Thousands and thousands of people are involved in this.  Some write code, some administrate systems, some negotiate with upstream providers, some test software, some write documentation, some translate, some organize shows and conferences, some train people and answer silly questions.  And in all of this havoc and madness, somehow, an original release cycle of once every six month is still being kept.  Yes, true, an occasional schedule slip of a week or two occurs, but overall, it has been a solid two releases per year.  Every year.  For the last 10 years.

A lot of this is hard work.  A lot of it is fun.  But there are also sad chapters in this history.  Fedora 20 is dedicated to Seth Vidal, who was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident while he was riding his bicycle earlier this year.

On July 8, the Fedora Project lost Seth Vidal, a dedicated, tireless, and brilliant contributor. Seth was a lead developer of Yum and the Fedora update repository system. He worked to ensure that the technical and community infrastructure of Fedora worked well and consistently for users and contributors around the world. Seth touched the lives of hundreds of Fedora contributors directly and millions of others indirectly by improving the experience of using and updating Fedora.

The Fedora Project dedicates the Fedora 20 release to Seth and asks that you join us in remembering his generous spirit and incredible work that helped make Fedora what it is today. We miss you, Seth.

There are ups and downs, victories and losses.  There is no other way in the project of this magnitude, in a crowd of people so huge, and in such a dynamic environment, all lasting for so long.

With all that in mind now, I suggest you give Fedora 20 a try, if you are not a Fedora user.  If you are – happy upgrading!  And let’s not forget to say a huge thank you to everyone who made this release possible.  Good job, guys!

P.S.: If you are interested in the actual changes of this release – please have a look at the changeset document.

Adding Awesome Font Icons to WordPress menus

WordPress Tavern lists step-by-step instructions on how to add icons from the Awesome Font to your WordPress menus and content.  It’s really simple and the result does look better.  Here is how my menu looks now:

main menu icons

I don’t really need the icons in the content, but it’s good to know that it is possible.

The history of WordPress user interface

inMotion Hosting runs the article “WordPress through the ages“, which shows in a number of screenshots how WordPress user interface has changed from version to version.  It is a long run indeed, and the one that brings a nostalgic tear to those of us who have been using the system for a while.  Just look at how much it has changed, how much it has matured.  From this in WordPress 1.0.1:

wordpress-1.0.1

to this in the latest and the greatest WordPress 3.8:

Wordpress-3.8

I don’t think that there is a single item that was left untouched.  Main menu has been reorganized a number of times, moved from top to the left, given sub-menu items, icons, and a variety of different fonts and colors.  The editor has been through a tonne of transformations, adding the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) feature, icons, HTML preview, media uploader, which is a story of itself, and more.  Custom post types are a fresh addition, but even they went through a bit.  So did all the other elements – social networks integration, publishing options, categories, SEO, and more.  And that’s just the post editing screen.   As much or more has happened to the rest of the screens.  Being redone in responsive layout, ready for smartphone and tablet screens comes to mind.

All these changes happened for a variety of reasons.  Of course, people building WordPress learned better ways, got more feedback, and spent more time on it.  But also the Web itself has changed.  We are seeing faster networks, more powerful browsers, and richer interfaces.

Which brings me to another point.  Pretty much every single time I was involved in building a website or an application, a non-technical client would raise the question of deadlines and phrase it like “When is this going to be finished?”.  And every single time I have to explain that applications and websites they are not finite.  They are more like kids – once you start, you never stop.  It’s an ongoing project, with more and more features, fixes, and improvements.  (There are exceptions, of course, but they are just that – exceptions).  Most times, it’ll never be done.  And one can’t just put everything into a single version, release it and forget about it.  Instead, one should make a plan, a roadmap and decide what goes into each version, leaving some space and time for things that were unthoughtful at the time.

WordPress, like may other awesome applications, illustrates this nicely.  WordPress 1.0 has been released and has been used by a lot of people.  Was it done?  No.  More changes came in during 1.x, 2.x, and now 3.x version series.  Is it done now?  No, not by a mile.  It is a much better system than it used to be.  But there are still gazillion things to be done.  And that’s a good thing!  I wish such a lengthy (and successful) roadmap to every project.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back and drop that nostalgic tear of days gone by…