HiveMinder

http://hiveminder.com/ is a task tracker in progress, which includes a limited API. The key features from my perspective are task dependencies and tags, and how they can be used to hide things and make task lists less overwhelming. (See hm_task_py for more about the code, instead of the process.)


hm: Sun Feb 24 20:46:00 2008

Sun Feb 24 20:46:00 2008

Minor fixes to todo.py today;

(I'm using defer-until-task enough that I should make it an actual subcommand :-)


hm: Tue Feb 19 19:12:00 2008

Tue Feb 19 19:12:00 2008

Most of the work on todo.py has been about matching the existing todo.pl code, or existing features in the UI. Finally, my first "hiveminder feature that can only be done through new code":

for taskid in $(todo.py --task-ids-only --tag postmerge list); do todo.py but_first $taskid AV68; done

postmerge is a tag (set with braindump) on a bunch of tasks that can't be done until task #AV68 (identifying a major code merge) is completed. As far as I can tell, you can't do this with braindump, bulk update, or task review at all... Basically, this is a "defer until next release" software-development task-management button :-)

This suggests that a few other commands should return task ids in parsable form (like hive-braindump.py itself, which currently just reports them coincidentally in the status message and would need to parse that.)


hm: Thu Feb 7 02:27:00 2008

Thu Feb 7 02:27:00 2008

More cleanups (still working my way through firstclown's changes), and simple implementations of

Also general cleanup of the call method, which should also make it more useful when imported as a module.

As a user, I just discovered that there was already a working done here, which is more useful now that braindump prints out the task-id - todo.py done AXJY works...

Footnotes:


hm: Mon Feb 4 00:19:00 2008

Mon Feb 4 00:19:00 2008

Hadn't poked at todo.py in a while (it's mostly a protocol testbench for me, I actually want commandline tools that do entirely different things) but I got a simple "add comment" implementation in the mail from firstclown; I tweaked it a bit, and then noticed that handle_response hasn't worked in a while, so I fixed that as well. I should really set up a test account with standard test-tasks for this so I can actually do proper "first do no harm" development :-)

Footnotes:


hm: Fri Jan 4 22:32:00 2008

Fri Jan 4 22:32:00 2008

New API! /=/search/BTDT.Model.Task/tags.xml (or .json of course) produces a full set of tags in about 2 seconds for my relatively large tag set. So, hive-cheap-tags.py should replace any use of the expensive version; for starters, hive-cheap-tags.py --elisp > ~/.hiveminder_tags.el will work with hive.el until I get around to having the elisp invoke it more directly...


hm: Fri Dec 28 00:40:00 2007

Fri Dec 28 00:40:00 2007

This has mostly made me want to go look at pymacs again, but at least it's done. hive.el provides a simple m-x hive-braindump that prompts (with completion) for tags (comma separated) and then a body, then calls out to hive-braindump.py to actually do the work.

Next step is to do a tree-browser, but much as I'd like to have it inside emacs, that's going to be painful enough that I'm going to do it in python first (using STFL for a curses interface.)

Other next step is to try using one of the new JSON interfaces to get the tag list on the fly. Probably also want to come up with some way of currying hive-braindump itself to make it easier to define macros and context-sensitive wrappers (though half the value of an emacs hook is to have yet another place to capture ideas that aren't in your current context, so that might not be as useful as it sounds at first.


hm: Thu Dec 27 01:24:00 2007

Thu Dec 27 01:24:00 2007

After 20+ years, emacslisp is still kind of painful, but sometime recently it grew a completing-read-multiple function which turns out to do most of the prompting work I wanted for m-x braindump. That's enough for tonight, I'll throw a call-process in tomorrow that actually calls the python code...


hm: Tue Dec 25 02:38:00 2007

Tue Dec 25 02:38:00 2007

Progress on vim support (which turned out to merely be a highlighting mode for todo.pl output) inspired me to apply some torque to the emacs mode. The blocking task (#8239) was to simply get a list of tags out, somehow. What I realized recently was that tag completion was important, but didn't have to be perfect; if the only way to get tags was expensive, we'd just have to keep a cache. Thus we now have hive-expensive-tags.py which uses BTDT.Action.TaskSearch.xml to get all of your tasks, and discard everything but the tags themselves...

When I run it, I get 90 tags, at the cost downloading 800K of XML; it takes about 6 seconds, from here. This feels... unecological :-) and I've erred in favor of not doing it at all, over "doing it wrong". I think I'll manually stash the value every so often, rather than automatically invoke this, until someday when newer APIs appear that let me get just the tags out.

Thus, hive-expensive-tags.py --elisp > ~/.hiveminder_tags.el should suffice for now, and I can move on with the rest of the interface...


hm: Sun Dec 23 02:05:00 2007

Sun Dec 23 02:05:00 2007

Added --group to hive-braindump.py even though it's just a specialization of --tag, now that I'm giving groups another try.


hm: Fri Dec 21 01:13:00 2007

Fri Dec 21 01:13:00 2007

I'll have to dig a bit to be sure, but as of today I think all of my open API bugs have been fixed, yay! In particular:

curl -F key=value -b JIFTY_SID_HIVEMINDER=... <http://hiveminder.com/=/action/BTDT.Action.TaskSearch.json>

works now - multiple -F arguments narrow the search, and even with just owner it successfully returns large payloads. I'll have to combine this with the STFL curses-UI bits I learned for MeterStone and do a quick tree-browser for tasks...


hm: Thu Dec 20 00:25:00 2007

Thu Dec 20 00:25:00 2007

Jesse mentioned that one of the JSON interfaces had been fixed, so I dug up a test, and sure enough it works. Then I looked more closely and noticed that all three paths have more response values than they used to... so: hive-braindump.py now prints the encoded ids of the just-created tasks, so you can conveniently but-first or and-then them.

Err, except for the conveniently part - as the FAQ points out, you can't actually do those operations over the braindump protocol. (Requested.)


hm: Fri Dec 7 22:58:00 2007

Fri Dec 7 22:58:00 2007

Since I've been camped out on the EEEpc at breakfast and lunch times lately, often in places without net, I put some trivial queuing into hive-braindump.py - if it doesn't see net, or an attempt to post fails, it queues up the item until next time. There's a --flush-queue option that might be useful in a personal net-start script.

Still haven't gotten this hooked into emacs any better than running it in shell mode; mostly that's blocked on not having found a sane way to list all tags, for a completion-table in the prompter (and without that, it's boring, running it in an existing emacs shell buffer is actually more useful.)


hm: Wed Oct 3 22:49:00 2007

Wed Oct 3 22:49:00 2007

Hackathon time! hive-braindump.py has a simple commandline client that assumes you already have ~/.hiveminder from running todo.pl (or you create one, with a line starting with sid: and followed by your JIFTY_SID_HIVEMINDER cookie value.)

It uses the webservices interface rather than the direct REST one... but since that path actually works I can move forward on m-x braindump again :-)


hm: Sat Oct 14 05:03:00 2006

Sat Oct 14 05:03:00 2006

Yay, jesse added

depended_on_by_count: 2
depended_on_by_ids: 38157   38158
depended_on_by_summaries: move thok email   move swat email

Sadly, syck falls apart; use ctypes instead? Sadly, libsyck0-dev only provides a static lib; the only dynamic lib is the one that is already the parser. electric fence doesn't catch anything either.

Rebuilding syck.so with debugging (after purging the PHP references from the build :-) and installing python-dbg, and running "./todo.py listid 7AM" to test the bad bit of code got this:

#0  0x00000000 in ?? ()
#1  0xb7cb5e83 in syck_hdlr_get_anchor (p=0x82217c0, a=0x81fcb18 "1") at handler.c:108
   108                      n = (p->bad_anchor_handler)( p, a );

#2  0xb7cb14d0 in syckparse (parser=0x82217c0) at gram.y:192
#3  0xb7cafacd in syck_parse (p=0x82217c0) at syck.c:497
#4  0xb7cadf81 in py_syck_load (self=0x0, args=0x0) at pyext.c:397
#5  0x080b63c7 in PyEval_EvalFrame (f=0x81c0a2c) at ../Python/ceval.c:3563
#6  0x080b713b in PyEval_EvalFrame (f=0x81f8d44) at ../Python/ceval.c:3645
#7  0x080b713b in PyEval_EvalFrame (f=0x815cac4) at ../Python/ceval.c:3645
#8  0x080b781f in PyEval_EvalCodeEx (co=0xb7cf78a0, globals=0xb7d58824, locals=0x0, args=0xb7cc7318, argcount=2, kws=0x0, kwcount=0, 
    defs=0x0, defcount=0, closure=0x0) at ../Python/ceval.c:2736
#9  0x080fc13d in function_call (func=0xb7acf72c, arg=0xb7cc730c, kw=0x0) at ../Objects/funcobject.c:548
#10 0x0805946c in PyObject_Call (func=0x81f9cf8, arg=0x0, kw=0x0) at ../Objects/abstract.c:1795
#11 0x080b4bba in PyEval_EvalFrame (f=0x81d5d74) at ../Python/ceval.c:3840
#12 0x080b713b in PyEval_EvalFrame (f=0x8142f0c) at ../Python/ceval.c:3645
#13 0x080b781f in PyEval_EvalCodeEx (co=0xb7cf7a20, globals=0xb7d58824, locals=0xb7d58824, args=0x0, argcount=0, kws=0x0, kwcount=0, 
    defs=0x0, defcount=0, closure=0x0) at ../Python/ceval.c:2736
#14 0x080b7a65 in PyEval_EvalCode (co=0x0, globals=0x0, locals=0x0) at ../Python/ceval.c:484
#15 0x080d95cc in PyRun_FileExFlags (fp=0x813e008, filename=0xbfe1bcf4 "./todo.py", start=0, globals=0x0, locals=0x0, closeit=1, 
    flags=0xbfe1ba34) at ../Python/pythonrun.c:1265
#16 0x080d986c in PyRun_SimpleFileExFlags (fp=<value optimized out>, filename=0xbfe1bcf4 "./todo.py", closeit=1, flags=0xbfe1ba34)
    at ../Python/pythonrun.c:860
#17 0x08055b33 in Py_Main (argc=3, argv=0xbfe1bad4) at ../Modules/main.c:493
#18 0xb7d95ea2 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#19 0x08054fa1 in _start () at ../sysdeps/i386/elf/start.S:119

and there simply is no bad_anchor_handler, so it all catches fire.

Oddly, setting up the handler:

syck_parser_bad_anchor_handler( parser, py_syck_error_handler); /* [eichin:20061014T0538-04] */

just changes the quality of the traceback - we don't get to see the error because it goes is screwing up the cleanup too...

#0  0xb7e88309 in free () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#1  0xb7d5299f in syck_free_node (n=0xb7b719dc) at node.c:39
#2  0xb7d5338d in syck_st_free_nodes (key=0x81fcb18 "88··°Ë\037\b\020", n=0xb7f51304, arg=0x0) at syck.c:206
#3  0xb7d54430 in st_foreach (table=0x81f9cf8, func=0xb7d5336b <syck_st_free_nodes>, arg=0x0) at syck_st.c:495
#4  0xb7d533ff in syck_st_free (p=0x82217c0) at syck.c:226
#5  0xb7d53601 in syck_free_parser (p=0x82217c0) at syck.c:247
#6  0xb7d51fc0 in py_syck_load (self=0x0, args=0xb7f51304) at pyext.c:406

Adding a forced print, and then looking at the given line and offset, it turns out not to handle *1 syntax -- force-replacing it out causes the parse to succeed...

print syck.load(res.replace('        _current_user: *1',''))

Will complain and try and work around it... but upstream (rubyforge CVS) stopped at 0.55, and http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/svn/syck/trunk/ext/ is notably missing the python branch...

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=python-syck;dist=unstable

lists this bug -- with no analysis, but a good short test case:

python ./syck-deb-293251.py
py_syck_error_handler: 2, 5, b['stuff', 'stuff']
Exception exceptions.TypeError: (2, 5, 'b') in 'garbage collection' ignored
Fatal Python error: unexpected exception during garbage collection
Aborted

among a set of 500-day-old bugs from possibly the only person to try it, and a reference to a better implementation:

This at least doesn't crash (it can't using the pure python version, but there's pyrex to call libyaml... wonder if that should use ctypes) but it isn't compatible in other ways:

  in "<string>", line 2, column 8:
    fnord: !!perl/hash:Jifty::Result

hm: Fri Oct 6 04:46:00 2006

Fri Oct 6 04:46:00 2006

split hm_talker and hm_config (the tester function for new_config is a bit of a leak, but it works.) Started fleshing out a bunch of documented functions.


hm: Tue Oct 3 05:34:00 2006

Tue Oct 3 05:34:00 2006

spent about 4 hours poking around at pycurl (pycurl assumes too much that you know how the underlying curl features work), but did end up with a todo.py that logs in and lists my tasks....

suggest to the pycurl author (maybe offer patches) that all of the variables become const-functions just so that they can have docstrings hanging off of them!