Is Pinax alive? - django

I've seen Pinax in the past and I'd like to use it today. It's on version 0.7. I wonder know if it's still in development.

It is very alive, as you can see in its GitHub repository

It's very much under active development. Check out http://groups.google.com/group/pinax-users for the latest info.

An important note:
Much of Pinax is Django-apps which are developed separately from pinax and are brought in via version control systems (subversion, mercurial, git, etc)
So even if the pinax project maintainers were to go on a 6 month hiatus (though they are very unlikely to), the platform would continue to be updated and receive bug fixes

Related

Automatic setup of Django development environment

It has been a year since I last setup a new project with Django and I remember automatizing it was pretty painful at the time. When searching the subject these days I can't find anything really helpful.
So, what is the latest in automatic setup of Django local development environment?
By that I mean maybe some orchestration with something like chef or juju to setup a vagrant box or similar to develop on a local system with a database like PostgreSQL and other system level tools (cache, queue...). Maybe with automatic connection to a github repository or equivalent. Anything that would help start developing right away and also deploy the environment on a server without pain.
Does something like that exist today and it has escaped me? Or is it something that still needs to be improved? Setting up a good development environment for Django has changed a lot since the early days of virtual environment and sqlite, and even since a few years ago.
Edit: I have accepted the only answer because... it's the only answer. And it's good enough. But feel free to add any new answer since this one, although interesting, does not satisfy my needs.
It looks what vagrant-django-template is pretty good solution for you.

Is libdmtx dead, suggested replacement?

I've been using libdmtx in a project and looking to update to a newer version, but it seems the project hasn't been updated in well over a year. The last update/version was June, 2011. The Git repository shows that the last commit was August, 2011. Finally, the author's web site, which previously promoted libdmtx, Dragonfly Logic, is dead with a 404 Not Found error.
Is there another data matrix library that can meet this criteria?
Open source
Platform-neutral C/C++ (i.e. can build for Windows, POSIX environments)
Encodes/decodes data matrix
Actively maintained
Alternatively, did libdmtx move somewhere else and continue to get maintained somewhere that I'm not aware of?
I can't say that I'll never develop on libdmtx again, but it certainly wouldn't be anytime soon. I simply don't have the spare hours anymore to even keep up with the correspondence, let alone to perform any meaningful development.
So if you wish to fork it, you have my blessing. :)
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any other open source packages that do exactly the same things as libdmtx (which is why I created it in the first place), but I tried to list any similar projects I came across at http://libdmtx.sourceforge.net/resources.php
Good luck!
As libdmtx is currently unmaintained (I wouldn't say dead, as there are several users of the library) one should have to look at options.
zxing-cpp is a viable alternative. It can code and decode both DataMatrix, QR codes and barcodes. It compiles both on windows and posix, and are open source (Apache 2)
My only complaint about the zxing-cpp library is that is doesn't support dot peen generated data matrix images.
This Github project has revived libdmtx in 2016 with sporadic but ongoing activity since then: https://github.com/dmtx
(I am not affiliated with this project, just wanted to add an update to this question after finding it in a search.)

Is it advisable to upgrade to Django 1.5?

I'm currently using 1.4.3. 1.5 will make my front-end development much easier because of the new verbatim template tag.
The release candidate was posted a few weeks ago: https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2013/jan/04/15-rc-1/
Is it advisable to upgrade? Where can I find a build status or see outstanding bugs or anything else that's holding up the final release?
This is mostly a judgment call based on your project requirements and your schedule. Technically, I consider 1.5 to be pretty good and the improvements, especially to user model extension, to be invaluable. But it's still under development and bugs are still being found.
If you are developing an app that you don't plan to launch within a month, I would definitely upgrade. I like the new 1.5 features and it will probably be officially released fairly soon.
If you are developing an app that you need to launch sooner than that in a high-stress environment, I would pass on upgrading until after 1.5 is stable.
If you are developing an app that isn't going to see heavy use very soon, then you could go either way, but I would lean towards upgrading.

What are the advantages of using chiliproject over redmine?

This question already exists, but it is over one year old now and a lot has probably happened if the documentation is a good judge. There is no documented path to migrate from current redmine (2.1) to chiliproject for example.
Chiliproject is a fork of redmine, but I am unable to decide wherever I should migrate or not. There is no clear path as to how I should do the migrations and how much functionality I might loose.
Is there a way to compare the differences between the two projects? Is it worth to spend the time investigating the migration path?
If you have migrated what is your experience?
I searched StackOverflow for the "redmine vs. chiliproject" question because I am having a lot of trouble with installing plugins of any kind on the newest chiliproject version.
Usually, it looks like everything is working fine until you try to update the settings for the plugin (for example, install the Contact Form plugin and try to change something on http://SERVER:3000/settings?tab=contact_form), the debug log shows that the changes were made in the database, but they changes are never loaded back to the plugin page.
I have not been ale to find any documentation on potential changes to the plugin architecture in ChiliProject that would cause this. The plugin page does not list many plugins that are known to work with ChiliProject 3 either.
TL;DR: If you think that you will have any desire to use any existing plugins to extend the functionality of the program you choose, go with Redmine.

How to write modular Ember.js apps

Is there any guidance on how to write modular Ember.js apps? I have seen Tom Dale's position on AMD here so I am not going to force fit AMD on to the framework (as some have attempted here). It appears that Ember internally uses bpm/spade. Is that a reasonable approach to modularize Ember apps too? Any samples using this approach?
P.S. The getbpm.org site seems to be down which makes it difficult to learn about it. There is a github page but it refers to the site for install instructions.
BPM in it's current form is no longer supported by the core team, but is community supported. The only build tools they are officially providing support for is rake-pipeline. However, BPM does still work and it works well (I still use it with my projects). For info on how to use it see this: https://github.com/ud3323/bpm/wiki/Using-BPM-with-Ember. You may want to use my fork of bpm too. I've merged in Joe West's support for a proxy middleware.
There is also community build tools for node.js called ember-runner which looks promising as well.
As for using rake-pipeline. Look at the AssetFile on the emberjs projects to see how must be configured using rake-pipeline and rake-pipeline-web-filters. Also, take a look at the answers to this question on StackOverflow (especially Yehuda's). You may also find this gist helpful as well.
Try Ember App Kit - maybe it would help you.
I have played a bit with Rails, so for me, creating a rails 3.2 app was the easiest way to achieve this. So if you don't mind using rails as a back-end, I this might suit you.
Perhaps ember-tools could help:
https://github.com/rpflorence/ember-tools
I am novice still I found yeoman and ember-generator useful. In future you might need to add tests , mock rest calls you can easily npm install sinonjs and npm install ic-ajax