Official 23 impressions Blog

Project management software is not just for managing software based project. It can be used for variety of other tasks too. The web-based software must provide tools for planning, organizing and managing resources to achieve project goals and objectives. A web-based project management software can be accessed through an intranet or WAN / LAN using a web browser. You don’t have to install any other software on the system. The software can be easy of use with access control features (multi-user). I use project management software for all of our projects (for e.g. building a new cluster farm) for issue / bug-tracking, calender, gantt charts, email notification and much more.

Obviously I’m not the only user, the following open source software is used by some of the biggest research organizations and companies world wild. For example, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses track software or open source project such as lighttpd / phpbb use redmine software to keep track of their projects.

You use the following top 10 software for personal or business use. Keep track of all your projects in one place and finish them successfully on time.

#1: Codendi

Codendi is an open-source collaborative development platform offered by Xerox. From only one interface, it gathers, all the needed tools for software development teams: management and versioning of code, bugs, requirements, documents, reporting, tests etc. It is mainly used for managing software project processes.

• Download Codendi

#2: Redmine

Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database. It includes calendar and gantt charts to aid visual representation of projects and their deadlines.

• Download redmine

#3: ProjectPier

ProjectPier is a Free, Open-Source, self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams through an intuitive web interface. ProjectPier will help your organization communicate, collaborate and get things done Its function is similar to commercial groupware/project management products, but allows the freedom and scalability of self-hosting.

• Download ProjectPier

#4: Trac

Trac is an open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. Trac allows hyperlinking information between a computer bug database, revision control and wiki content. It also serves as a web interface to a version control system like Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs.

• Download Trac

#5: Project HQ

Project HQ is a collaborative open source project management tool, similar to Basecamp and activeCollab. Project HQ is built on open source technologies like Python, Pylons and SQLAlchemy and is fully database independent. Project HQ uses a structured workflow to assist you in managing your projects.

• Download Project HQ

#6: Collabtive

Collabtive is a web-based project management software that is being published as Open Source software. The project was started in November 2007. It strives to provide an Open Source alternative to proprietary tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab.

• Download Collabtive

#7: eGroupWare

eGroupWare is a free open source groupware software intended for businesses from small to enterprises. Its primary functions allow users to manage contacts, appointments, projects and to-do lists.

It is used either via its native web-interface, making access platform-independent, or by using different supported groupware clients, such as Kontact, Novell Evolution, or Microsoft Outlook. It can also be used by mobile phone or PDA via SyncML.

• Download eGroupWare

#8: KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

• Download KForge

#9: OpenGoo

It is a complete online solution focused on improving productivity, collaboration, communication and management of your teams. OpenGoo main features include document management, contact management, e-mail, project management, and time management. Text documents and presentations can be created and edited online. Files can be uploaded, organized and shared, independent of file formats.

• Download OpenGoo

#10: ClockingIT

ClockingIT is a free Project Management solution, which helps your team stay focused and on top of things.

• Download ClockingIT

Other FOSS Project Management Software Projects

1. JotBug
2. Bugzilla (only bug tracking)
3. OpenProj (desktop app – replacement for MS-project)

How do you manage your IT / software and other projects? Are you using a better option? Let us know in the comments.

1 – Installing RVM

$ sudo gem install rvm  

$ rvm-install

Finally put this lines in your .bash_profile or .bashrc:

  if [[ -s $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm ]] ; then
          source $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm
  fi

Restart your terminal, Rvm should be working by now.

2 – Installing ruby inside your rvm

$ rvm install 1.8.7

Will install ruby 1.8.7

$ rvm install ruby-head

Will install ruby 1.9.2 or newer.

3 – Setting up rvm to use your specific ruby version

$ rvm use 1.8.7

To use just this time.

$ rvm use 1.8.7 --default

To use always this version.

If you are using any other ruby replace the “1.8.7” for your version.

4 – Installing rails 2 and rails 3 RC inside different gemsets

You can separate your rails versions inside gemsets:

Rails 2:

Create the gemset:

$ rvm gemset create rails2

Setting up rvm to use always this gemset:

$ rvm use 1.8.7@rails2 --default

Installing rails 2:

$ gem install rails

Rails 3:

Create the gemset:

$ rvm gemset create rails3

Setting up rvm to use always this gemset:

$rvm use 1.8.7@rails3 --default

Installing rails 3:

$ gem install rails --pre

5 – Switching between different rails versions

Switching to rails 2:

$ rvm use 1.8.7@rails2
$ rails -v
Rails 2.3.5

Switching to rails 3:

$ rvm use 1.8.7@rails3
$ rails -v
Rails 3.0.0.rc

I was playing around with “SPREE COMMERCE”after a long term on my windows machine , before this have always used my linux box for Spree commerce .

However got stuck at the very first step after bootstrapping a fresh application .

Error :

After scratching head for long and loosing 20 hairs atleast drilled down to source of error and monkey patched the error .

Moreover after a little digging, it was evident that the ‘relative_path_from’ method in ‘/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/pathname.rb’ file had the problem. The problem was also described as a ticket at http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1366 and the excerpt of the issue is shown below:

Monkey Patch :

I added the capitalize! keyword at the end of the two lines so that both the paths are in uppercase, so that later in the code ( ) shown below does not barf and give us the error we got shown in the first error of the post.

Overriding original :

If you need an easy way to setup email for your company or for a client it’s hard to not love Google Apps. (The ’standard’ ie free version is here).

It is very likely that at some point you will need to send out emails from your application. Don’t cry. Gmail can do this for you. Rails 2.3.2 makes it easier than ever with the addition of ‘enable_starttls_auto’. Put the following code in production.rb, development.rb or environment.rb and you ’should’ be able to send out emails:

If you are one of the lucky ones this will actually work. It didn’t work for me but since I still needed to get email working here’s what I did:

First be sure to activate the email account that you are using. To do that you only need to login. Google will walk you through entering a captcha etc.

You might get this error:
Net::SMTPAuthenticationError: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first.

If you do then check your Ruby version. Ruby 1.8.7 has this built in but Ruby 1.8.6 does not.

The next best thing is to get action_mailer_tls. Most of the links you will find in forum and blog posts are broken. The code is on github and neatly packaged as a gem: http://github.com/openrain/action_mailer_tls/tree/master. Follow the directions to install and configure the plugin there and you should be able to send email.

Here’s a couple of handy conversations for reference:

http://www.railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=28480

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/184137

I saw someone on twitter tweet about this useful tool that helps create diagrams with sentences you type.

Watch how easy it is:

1. First, type in a sentence along like:

   

2. After hitting , you get this diagram

   

3. Try typing another

   

4. Easy yeah?

   

5. Now try to link 2 items together with a verb

   

6. Awesome, it resizes itself nicely!

   

Try it out for free at http://diagrammr.com

Created by Freshlog Storyteller

From a long time we have been using “yaml_db” as a plugin for taking backups of DB .
Obviously, lots of people will say when a simple rake command and a sql command can do the same then why a plugin/gem , but when theres a bread already baked then concentrate on the curry why think about baking a new one .

Anyways , the following are some steps .
Source : http://www.railslodge.com/plugins/830-yaml-db

1. ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/adamwiggins/yaml_db.git

2. rake db:data:dump   ->   Dump contents of Rails database to db/data.yml
rake db:data:load   ->   Load contents of db/data.yml into the database

From the readme
= YamlDb

YamlDb is a database-independent format for dumping and restoring data.  It complements the the database-independent schema format found in db/schema.rb.  The data is saved into db/data.yml.

This can be used as a replacement for mysqldump or pg_dump, but only for the databases typically used by Rails apps.  Users, permissions, schemas, triggers, and other advanced database features are not supported – by design.

Any database that has an ActiveRecord adapter should work.

== Usage

rake db:data:dump   ->   Dump contents of Rails database to db/data.yml
rake db:data:load   ->   Load contents of db/data.yml into the database

Further, there are tasks db:dump and db:load which do the entire database (the equivalent of running db:schema:dump followed by db:data:load).

== Examples

One common use would be to switch your data from one database backend to another.  For example, let’s say you wanted to switch from SQLite to MySQL.  You might execute the following steps:

1. rake db:dump

2. Edit config/database.yml and change your adapter to mysql, set up database params

3. mysqladmin create [database name]

4. rake db:load

I use script/console to play with any new features that I’m doing before they even make it into my app. I love using irb and script/console, but there were a few things that frustrated me.
1. Exit and reload the console when I make model changes
2. Command history was blown away on exit

So I decided to take some time to see if I could come up with solutions for the above. Luckily I found solutions for both of my problems.
Issue #1. After you make changes simply type “reload!” at the prompt to reload the app. This solved most of my problems, but still if I exit I lose all my previous commands.

Issue #2. Create the file ~/.irbrc to configure your irb settings. Include the following settings:

require 'irb/ext/save-history'
IRB.conf[:SAVE_HISTORY] = 200
IRB.conf[:HISTORY_FILE] = "#{ENV['HOME']}/.irb-history"

Voila, you now have a saved history just like a bash console. Use the “Up” and “Down” keys to browse your old history.

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