March 2015 retrospective

The time has gone by fast!

Much was accomplished last month.  Jiri modified the clusters.properties config, and we now have a "real" Python build again!  http://hg.netbeans.org/core-main/rev/95c14a4ab557

This has made building much more straightforward, and we can build NBMs locally as well. Debugging is working well for me using Netbeans 8.0.2 and tryme-debug

The conversion from GSF to CSL (Parsing & Indexing) was largely completed, and has been integrated and backported to the development repository at Netbeans.org with good results. Thanks to Ralph and Julio for this. 

Ralph has cleaned up several bugs, and is working on Project2 (Python Projects using Setuptools), and I have been working on PythonPlatformManager, particularly with Autodetect. I could use an engineer that has a Mac, since the typical Python setup appears to be different from both Windows and Linux, according to testing performed by Serhii.

Speaking of testing, last month I was happy to recruit Solaris Developer Tim Foster to perform QA of NetBeans Python support on the Solaris platform.

While Geertjan and Ralph were at NetBeans Day Netherlands, they met Vincent Van Der Leun, who subsequently volunteered to be an Engineer on the Python Project! Vincent is a Java OCPJ and skilled Python developer who has worked for many years at a Netherlands-based startup.

Please give Vincent and Tim a warm welcome [thunderous applause]!

Upcoming tasks - In addition to working through the bugs at bugzilla, in the coming month we will be onboarding new Engineers and QA Analysts, upgrading our bundled platform to Jython 2.7 and making some substantial improvements to our NBPython.org website.

Stay tuned...

A Busy February at the Python Project!

First, let me say how pleased I am to announce that Ralph Benjamin Ruijs (ralphbenjamin) has joined the Python Project as a volunteer Engineer! Ralph currently works on the Java and Editor team at NetBeans. In his spare time, he helped to craft NetBeans Python 8.0.2 plugin for his students at the  Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, where he is a lecturer.

Please give Ralph a warm welcome [great cheers]!

As a result, the conversion from GSF to CSL (Parsing & Indexing) is largely complete, and is being integrated (Julio) and tested internally (Lou, executing Python regression tests) with good results. It is ready to be backported to the development repository at Netbeans.org

My/our sole focus now is to make the NBMs (NetBeans Modules that makeup the plugin) available for our testers. I've spent a lot of time struggling with the current build system to that end. As well, we've had a number of internal discussions regarding the current source code repository and build system used for Python support. Perhaps we'll make some resolutions concerning this.

Stay tuned...