Berlin 2016 sprint update

This week some Plonistas, unfortunately fewer than expected, meet at IN-Berlin to work towards a brighter future for Plone.

Some of us resumed our work already started in Innsbruck sprint early this year while some other topics grew out of discussions and trying things out.

I will never get to write as good as Paul reporting on Barcelona’s sprint, but hey, I will do my best:

In no special order:

Just by trying out the newly shiny plone.org website (congrats plone.org team!!), some bugs where discovered and reported, work done by Stephan Klinger.

The PLIP about assimilating collective.indexing to Plone core finally got all its tests green and is about to be ready for review, work done by Maik Derstappen and Gil Forcada.

Python 3 support was a hot topic during the sprint, so with that in mind Florian Pilz and Michael Howitz created a new tool, zodb.py3migrate, that allows you to convert existing ZODB databases to python 3! Best of all, its great documentation! Be aware that the migration is done in place!

Our Jens2 team was not quadratic this time around, but Jens Vagelpohl continued trying to tame Pluggable Authentication Service (aka PAS).

Did I say that Python 3 was a hot topic? Thomas Lotze with googling support from Gil Forcada took the problem head on and decided that, as Thomas had not that much time (unfortunately he was around only 3 days), work on cracking hard nuts: C extensions. And indeed he did! AccessControl and DocumentTemplate at least compile on python 3.5 (throwing quite some warnings, but hey, have you ever seen Archetypes being installed?). Best of all is that Python 2.6 and 2.7 already have quite some macros for forward compatibility, so the bits that are compatible were pull requested and they are already merged!

Unfortunately that work, C extensions, came to a halt as we hit with RestrictedPython. After long discussions between Thomas, Gil and Maik we decided to make a video conference with the Barcelona sprint, Eric Bréhault, as well as Alexander Loechel, who couldn’t join is in Berlin, but that he already had worked on the topic while in Insbruck early this year (read about his findings). The discussion went really well and Alexander offered himself to continue working on it, stay tuned!

Maik and Stephan meanwhile where not happy with the constellation of form packages that we currently have (z3c.form, plone.autoform, plone.supermodel, plone.z3cform, plone.app.z3cform…) and made yet another package ((will be soon moved to collective))… just kidding! No, instead they worked on improving the forms related documentation: getting rid of grok ((and hidden grok dependencies lying in plone.directives.form and plone.directives.dexterity)) and making sure that the documentation is consistent ((at the beginning there are some fields, and two pages later, magically, fields are different!)). For that Stephan created the linked above package and Maik was working on moving the remaining useful bits of plone.directives.form to plone.autoform. Stephan started a discussion on the topic on community.plone.org.

Lastly, I put my jenkins/mr.roboto hat on and added some more functionality to mr.roboto: warn which pull request jenkins jobs need to ran to know if a pull request can be safely merged and auto update buildout.coredev’s checkouts.cfg whenever a pull request gets merged. The logic is fairly trivial, but gathering all the pieces together to drive the control is far from it, and testing is yet a complete other matter (thanks mock!!).

All in all we had fun, lots of things got done or discussed and, as with every sprint, everyone is looking for the next one!

Happy hacking!

 

Ready, set, sprint!

In less than a week Plonistas will be meeting in Berlin to sprint on Plone.

The topic this time is to continue the long endeavor to cleanup and slim down our stack, Zope included.

Thanks to IN-Berlin we will sprint at their offices. All information on how to get there is on the sprint page.

The main communication channels with the sprints will be the usual #sprint IRC channel (on freenode) and we will try to maintain a hangout channel open as well (we will provide the link later on).

On social networks you can try to keep an eye on #berlinsprint hashtag.

Happy hacking!

Berlin strategic sprint 2016 update

In nearly a month the Berlin strategic sprint 2016 will start, and finally we can announce where it will be hosted: IN-Berlin offices!

You can find all information in the link above.

There are still some spots left, the venue is big enough to accommodate around 15 to 20 persons, so if you want to join the sprint, now is the time to sign up and register. As it’s an strategic sprint the Plone Foundation could help with the travel costs if that’s an issue for you to attend, contact them!

And best of all: spring has already arrived in Berlin, so we can expect good weather ((hopefully not famous last words)) and a full city to enjoy!

See you all in Berlin!

WPOD

WPOD: World Plone Office Day

During this year’s PLOG I presented the simple idea behind WPOD:

  • every last Friday of the month
  • meet somewhere (remotely is fine as well, see below)
  • hack on Plone instead of your regular work
  • Rinse and repeat

That’s it, as simple and as easy as it can be.

Mark on your calendars every last Friday of the month, you have an appointment with the Plone community to bring Plone one step further ahead!

WPOD in Berlin

Preparations are being made for the first ever WPOD in Berlin that my company will gladly host. If you happen to be around Berlin, please contact me telling that you are coming!

The location is Hegelplatz 1, 10117 Berlin.

You are welcome during all day long. Plonistas are expected to come during the morning, enjoy some lunch together, and hack away until late afternoon.

WPOD around the world

If you happen to not be in Berlin, fear not, an irc channel will be available (#sprint on irc.freenode.net) so you can feel the same experience as in any other city hosting a WPOD.

Credit where credit’s due

That’s not an original idea of mine, nor is something that I thought of myself alone, Philip Bauer already tried to present the very same idea on last year’s Plone Conference in Bristol.

Later on, during the Bycicle sprint in Berlin, Stefania and I discussed about it and defined the format as it will start with.

Thanks to them for their bright minds and clever ideas!

Future

Within 10 days the first WPOD will happen, Plonistas will hack/plan/design away and Plone will get better and better.

I hope that other cities and individuals alike will start participating on WPOD, the more we are the bolder the change we will make.

There are some plans to put all the relevant information regarding WPOD on plone.org, either on the current website, or even better on the newer plone.org that is on the making (watch here for tickets ready to be fixed by any of you!).

Happy hacking!

Update: a meetup has been created, please RSVP there.

Times they are a changing

Last year around this days I was still living near Barcelona (Molins de Rei actually), some days later, on the November 4th I took a flight from Barcelona to Berlin my new home as of now, and since then, things have happened in a quite fast peace…

We (with Sílvia obviously!) went there as I got a job offer from der Freitag, a newspaper, where I help building their website. With such a big move, packing, unpacking, moving, legal stuff and so on kept ourselves busy for quite some time. Thankfully I stayed ~one month with Kat and Dave (million thanks again!!) which helped a lot in getting papers sorted out and finding a flat where to stay :)

German classes started on January (12h per week plus 40h work) and a wedding in Catalonia on June  30th was the new thing to keep ourselves busy.

Right now German classes are still undergoing, we are going to make a late honeymoon to Japan ((advices to what to see/do are welcome :) )) and we are starting to get ready for the next small thing: we are expecting a baby!

We are really excited about it! All these ultrasounds and 3D images that nowadays doctors do and everything really get you the (obviously not like the future-to-be-mom) feeling that something is being cooked in your wife’s belly :D

Surely times will keep changing from now on! :D The baby is expected to be around early Spring so (s)he ((We still don’t know the gender)) will not get frozen by the Berlin’s winter which their parents are still not used to :)

Looking back before coming to Berlin looks really far far away and it’s been only one year!

transport públic a Berlín

Com es pot fer que tot i privatitzant (o semi privatitzant) el transport públic, aquest encara sigui de qualitat?

Molt senzill: tots els vehicles de transport públic (trams, tramvies, metro, trens…) de Berlín tenen un GPS o dispositiu de posicionament semblant que permet saber en tot moment on és cada vehicle.

D’aquesta manera l’empresa privada de transport públic pot decidir canviar els horaris dels serveis sempre que vulgui, però si el servei no va a l’hora, la ciutat de Berlín els hi cobra una multa per els retards. O sigui, que si el tren arriba dos minuts tard se’ls cobra un multa, com més tard vagin els serveis més cobrarà el govern de la ciutat.

Això transposat a Catalunya voldria dir que només amb els retards de Rodalies ja no hi hauria dèficit :D

bicis a Berlín

Estava responent en Marc que m’ha fet un comentari però ja ho poso aquí igualmnent:

Hi ha carrils bici per tot arreu perfectament delimitats amb una pavimentació diferent o a vegades segregats i tot.

A més resulta que Berlín és completament pla, de manera que és molt còmode anar amb bici per tot arreu, una petita inclinació del terreny ja la consideren un turó es veu :D

I com ja vaig dir ahir, pel fet que les voreres siguin tant amples, fa molt més fàcil la convivència entre ciclistes i vianants.

Tenen coses una mica rares però, segons em van explicar no està permès circular amb bici si no portes com a mínim un llum que funcioni amb dinamo, res de piles, res de bateries, ha de ser amb dinamo.

També es força normal que els edificis tinguin un petit tancat a la planta baixa, a nivell de carrer, on els propietaris/llogaters puguin deixar-hi la bici (encadenada clar). De manera que per molt que visquis a un 10è pots portar-te la bici igualment.

Quan fem el trasllat amb la Sílvia cap a Berlín i ens portem les bicis ja us anirem comentant. Mentrestant hauré d’anar buscant una botiga on comprar el llum amb dinamo :)

Berlín dia 2

Avui ha tocat anar a veure pisos, demanar d’anar-ne a veure un bon grapat més (amb un intent de frau pel mig) i intentar assimilar les complexes normes que regeixen la societat berlinesa pel que respecte a tarifes i horaris dels transports públics (hi ha mil i una combinacions de tot plegat) i el funcionament de diversos serveis com la banca, les empreses de telefonia mòbil, etc etc

Tot això amanit amb un dinar típic rus i un sopar mig anglès :D

Berlín dia 1

Com que fer-ho en prosa seria molt llarg, aquí va un resum del dia en format de llista d’elements:

  • En Gerard devia tenir raó i aquelles llenties realment no són bones. Ahir al vespre i avui al matí (amb tota la nit pel mig) tenia molt mal de panxa, arribant a vomitar algues vegades i tot
  • Els dies de pluja realment la circulació pel Baix Llobregat no és precisament fluida…
  • Té la seva gràcia que surti amb avió de Barcelona amb pluges i una bona capa de núvols grisos i arribi a Berlín i em saludi el sol.
  • El transport públic de Berlín impressiona per la seva qualitat i quantitat, però per si això no fós poc, anant cap al centre de Berlín ens han fet baixar d’un tren (els motius en alemany no els he entès) i tothom ha baixat i s’ha esperat pacientment sense cap reacció enèrgica.
  • La ciutat en si està molt pensada a escala humana i no pels cotxes realment, costa trobar un carrer estret o una vorera que no puguin passar 3 o 4 persones de costat perfectament.
  • Això sí, com a bons alemanys tenen normes molt estrictes i fora de tota lògica mediterrània:
  • normalment només pots entrar a llogar un pis el dia 1 o 15 de cada mes. No pots entrar a viure-hi el dia 5 per exemple, no entra en els seus plans
  • si llogues un pis, el més normal per no dir que és una excepció totalment fora de lloc, SEMPRE estarà buit, l’esport nacional és construir els interiors de les cases.
  • els lloguen tant buits que fins i tot pots no tenir cuina ni lavabo, només els connectors a la paret!
  • i evidentment, per si no us ho pensàveu, el mateix passa amb els llums, només et deixen el cable perquè tu hi posis el que vulguis!
  • pels motius anteriors normalment un alemany es trasllada un parell de cops a la vida: quan se’n va a viure amb la parella i quan necessiten una casa més gran perquè tenen fills
  • hi ha el costum de deixar un llum lila a la cuina encès tota la nit … (ja em direu per què!)