{"id":1099,"date":"2010-03-12T19:46:11","date_gmt":"2010-03-13T00:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/?p=1099"},"modified":"2023-12-20T16:25:17","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T21:25:17","slug":"reviewboard-extensions-a-state-of-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2010\/03\/12\/reviewboard-extensions-a-state-of-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"ReviewBoard Extensions: A State of Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my potential research experiments involves augmenting ReviewBoard<\/a>, and so, I’ve been studying the ReviewBoard code.<\/p>\n

I want to give ReviewBoard the ability to record certain statistics – for example, the number of defects in a review request, number of defects found per reviewer, defect density, inspection rate, etc…<\/p>\n

It turns out I’m not the only one who wants this to happen.\u00a0 Check out this thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So it turns out that the devs building ReviewBoard are planning on integrating an extension framework<\/a>.\u00a0 Theoretically, users could then write their own extensions to customize ReviewBoard as they see fit.\u00a0 Think WordPress plugins, but for a code review tool.\u00a0 Neat.<\/p>\n

According to the above link:<\/p>\n

A lot of this [extension framework] already exists in a private development branch, and it will be one of our primary focuses as soon as 1.0 goes out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, I found the following quote from a relatively recent mailing list message<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[with regards to the extensions framework]…We have to finish building it, testing
\nit, getting other features we have planned into the release, and performing
\nthe release. So, we’re looking at a year or more<\/strong>. But I don’t see how we’d
\nget the functionality you want short-term.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hrmph.\u00a0 My thinking:\u00a0 maybe I can help them with it, and we can crank this puppy out sooner.<\/p>\n

So where is this private branch?\u00a0 It actually took a little bit of detective work…<\/p>\n

Detective Work<\/h4>\n

I started by looking at the ReviewBoard repo on Github<\/a>, which I assumed that the extensions branch would fork from.<\/p>\n

I was right – check out the fork network<\/a>.\u00a0 There’s a branch helpfully labeled “extensions”<\/a> forked by davidt<\/a>, one of the ReviewBoard devs.<\/p>\n

Two observations:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This fork hasn’t been updated in about a month<\/li>\n
  2. The extensions stuff<\/a> references stuff from Djblets<\/a> which doesn’t exist in the Djblets master branch<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So I perform the same exercise – I glance at the Djblets fork network<\/a>, and see the handily named “extensions” fork that is in davidt’s git repo<\/a>.\u00a0 Nice.<\/p>\n

    Ok, so those are the forks\/branches that I’m going to grab.<\/p>\n

    A Fluke<\/h4>\n

    So, funny story:\u00a0 I was able to get this “extension” version of ReviewBoard working on my work machine.\u00a0 But it was by a complete fluke – this extension version of Djblets is actually missing some pieces.\u00a0 The only reason it worked for me was because I accidentally ran with the master checkout of Djblets first.\u00a0 This errored out, and also generated a bunch of compiled Python.\u00a0 I then switched to the extensions branch, which left the compiled Python behind<\/em>.\u00a0 The compiled Python filled all of the missing pieces that are in the extensions branch of Djblets, and so it ran.<\/p>\n

    For a guy who is pretty new to both Git and Django, I found that problem pretty frustrating to track down.\u00a0 Especially when I started writing up the checkout instructions… big thanks to Zuzel<\/a> for her invaluable (and patient) Django guidance.<\/p>\n

    Anyhow, if you’re interested in the steps to failure<\/em>, here they are…<\/p>\n

    Setting Up (for failure)<\/h4>\n

    I’m running Ubuntu Karmic.\u00a0 I have Git installed.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. First of all, this document is invaluable<\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Check out django_evolution from SVN<\/a> to some local directory<\/li>\n
    3. Put path to django-evolution into PYTHONPATH (export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:\/…\/django-evolution-read-only\/)<\/li>\n
    4. Get Python Setuptools (sudo apt-get install python-setuptools)<\/li>\n
    5. With easy_install, get nose, paramiko, recaptcha-client, Sphinx (sudo easy_install nose paramiko recaptcha-client sphinx)<\/li>\n
    6. Clone original master Djblets repo (git clone git:\/\/github.com\/djblets\/djblets.git) and CD into djblets directory<\/li>\n
    7. Add davidt’s remote Djblets branch (git remote add davidt git:\/\/github.com\/davidt\/djblets.git)<\/li>\n
    8. Fetch davidt’s repo\u00a0 (git fetch davidt)<\/li>\n
    9. Track davidt’s extension branch for djblets (git branch extensions davidt\/extensions)<\/li>\n
    10. In djblets root dir, type:\u00a0 sudo python setup.py develop<\/li>\n
    11. This should install Django too.\u00a0 The ReviewBoard install doc says to install from Subversion, but this will do for now.<\/li>\n
    12. Clone ReviewBoard git repo (git clone git:\/\/github.com\/reviewboard\/reviewboard.git) and Cd into it<\/li>\n
    13. Add davidt’s remote Reviewboard branch (git remote add davidt git:\/\/github.com\/davidt\/reviewboard.git)<\/li>\n
    14. Fetch davidt’s repo\u00a0 (git fetch davidt)<\/li>\n
    15. Track davidt’s extensions branch of reviewboard (git branch extensions davidt\/extensions)<\/li>\n
    16. Switch to extensions branch (git checkout extensions)<\/li>\n
    17. So reviewboard\/reviewboard\/extensions should have stuff in it.<\/li>\n
    18. python .\/contrib\/internal\/prepare-dev.py<\/li>\n
    19. Manually create the directory reviewboard\/reviewboard\/htdocs\/media\/ext.\u00a0 ReviewBoard expects it and will complain if it isn’t there.<\/li>\n
    20. Run .\/contrib\/internal\/devserver.sh<\/li>\n
    21. Go to localhost:8080<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      If you’re like me, you’ll see an error about “no module named urls”.\u00a0 This is because the extension branch of Djblets is missing urls.py in its djblets\/log directory<\/a>.\u00a0 As you can see, urls.py exists in the master Djblets branch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      So I’ve accidentally got it running.\u00a0 But this version of ReviewBoard I’ve created is like Frankenstein’s monster – it’s a sad, stitched together monstrosity that should probably never see the light of day.<\/p>\n

      I tried to merge the master branch of Djblets and ReviewBoard into the extensions branch, and then realized that I had no idea what I was doing<\/em>.\u00a0 The last guy you want doing a merge is a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing.<\/p>\n

      So that’s where I stand with it.\u00a0 Kind of a sad affair, really.\u00a0 I’ve posted on the ReviewBoard developer mailing list asking for some guidance<\/a>, but all is quiet so far.<\/p>\n

      In the meantime, I’ll continue studying the code when I can.\u00a0 The extensions stuff is actually pretty far along, in my opinion<\/em> – but what do I know, I’ve never built one<\/em>.\u00a0 I’ll also take a peek at some other examples of extension frameworks to see what I can learn about implementation (that’s right – I’m talking about you, WordPress<\/a>).<\/p>\n

      I’ll let you know what I find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      One of my potential research experiments involves augmenting ReviewBoard, and so, I’ve been studying the ReviewBoard code. I want to give ReviewBoard the ability to record certain statistics – for example, the number of defects in a review request, number of defects found per reviewer, defect density, inspection rate, etc… It turns out I’m not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[454,626],"tags":[131,638,636,639,634,637,504,635],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code-reviews","category-research-computer-science-technology","tag-extensions","tag-framework","tag-gather","tag-git","tag-metrics","tag-plugins","tag-reviewboard","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prmTy-hJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3183,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/3183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}