XP-Dev.com

rs on Wed 05 May, 2010 04:48:57 +0000

XP-Dev.com will be down for half an hour tonight (5th May 2010) for some essential maintenance. It will be around 6.30 pm BST till 7 pm BST.

Please to follow @xpdev where I will be posting (almost) real time updates.

Update 7.20 BST: maintenance complete. Everything should be back online.

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rs on Tue 04 May, 2010 03:51:23 +0000

There are number for new enhancements that have been released.

Mercurial Hosting

Mercurial has always been on the wishlist, and now its supported by XP-Dev.com.

I’ve put up a full blog post about Mercurial and hosting it on XP-Dev.com:

http://www.xp-dev.com/blog/1847/mercurial-hosting

DoneDone Integration

If you use DoneDone as your choice of issue tracking tool, you can now integrate your XP-Dev.com Subversion, Git & Mercurial repositories with it.

You will be able to link changesets in XP-Dev.com with DoneDone issues.

For full details including screenshots head over to http://docs.xp-dev.com/user-guide/donedone.html.

Project Groups

You can now group your XP-Dev.com projects into groups. This is really useful if you have plenty of projects and feel that your Projects page is getting too cluttered.

To get started with this, head on to your Projects tab and click on Manage Project Groups.

Recent Changes RSS Feed

All projects have a new RSS feed that shows 30 latest changes. Here’s an example of the feed for XP-Dev.com’s Open Source Amazon S3 tools.

Reducing Noise on Basecamp

You can now reduce the length of messages posted to Basecamp by removing the list of files affected on every changeset. To enable this:

• Head to your project’s Source Control tab
• Click on Edit Basecamp Integration Options
• Ensure that the option Skip changeset details in Basecamp message ? is enabled
• Click on Save

The messages posted will only contain the user, date & time of the commit, the commit log message and a link back to the full changeset at XP-Dev.com.

Hide External Integration Passwords on Source Control Page

External integration (Fogbugz, Fixx, Basecamp & DoneDone) passwords on the Source Control page is now hidden. You can view it by editing the related integration option. In the past, these passwords were only shown to the project owner, but hiding it away can avoid those prying eyes from glancing over and reading your password.

Bugfixes

A number of bug fixes worth mentioning:

• Wiki pages and #<ticket id> links have been restored
• Latest topic on the Forums summary page should show the correct topic

If you have any problems with any of these enhancements, feel free to drop a comment below or just raise a support ticket

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rs on Mon 03 May, 2010 15:46:40 +0000

Mercurial hosting is finally here! Its enabled on all paid accounts, and supported via SSH access (the same as Git hosting here at XP-Dev.com)

All Mercurial repositories are as feature rich as Subversion and Git repositories. That means that your Mercurial repositories will integrate nicely with Basecamp, Fogbugz, Lighthouse, Fixx, DoneDone and even Twitter.

Additionally, your Mercurial repositories will play nicely with your XP-Dev.com hosted Trac projects and supports intelligent commit messages that can control your Trac or even XP-Dev.com tickets/bugs/stories/tasks.

Even Direct file hosting works uber nicely as well!

To top it off, all these repositories are backed up in real-time as well as an extra nightly off-site backup. (All of these features are available on Subversion & Git repositories as well)

Getting Started with Mercurial Hosting on XP-Dev.com

The first thing to do is to head over to your account’s Settings page to setup your SSH public key: http://www.xp-dev.com/settings

There’s a text box under the heading Your Public Key where you can enter your public key. Put the whole thing in there and click on Save. Your public key needs to start with either ssh-dsa or ssh-rsa. Only DSA and RSA public keys are supported at the moment:

Once you’ve done that, head over to your Source Control tab of your project. You should see a new option called Mercurial under type of repository:

Click on Save and the repository should be created.

The URL that you use to clone/push from/to is listed as well:

In this case you would issue commands like below to interact with your repository (using the example from the picture above):

• Clone: hg clone ssh://hg2.xp-dev.com/my-first-hg-repo
• Push to the repository: hg push ssh://hg2.xp-dev.com/my-first-hg-repo

If you’re having problems with getting started with Mercurial, feel free to drop a comment below, or just raise a support ticket.

Update: I’ve just added some documentation on how to get started with Mercurial hosting on XP-Dev.com:

• Importing existing repositories to XP-Dev.com: http://docs.xp-dev.com/user-guide/hg-import.html
• Cloning existing repositories from XP-Dev.com: http://docs.xp-dev.com/user-guide/hg-export.html

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rs on Fri 23 Apr, 2010 06:07:29 +0000

Yet another reminder that XP-Dev.com will be offline for 5 hours from 7pm BST tonight (23rd April) as some equipment is getting moved to a new datacentre.

Please do follow @xpdev to get updates as things progress.

UPDATE 23rd April 2010 23:52 BST: All equipment has been moved successfully.

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rs on Sun 18 Apr, 2010 08:12:25 +0000

I’ve just renewed and installed all XP-Dev.com SSL certificates, do raise a support ticket if you’re having any issues.

In some ways, this does mark a milestone in XP-Dev.com’s history: it was around this time last year that the Pro accounts were announced, and XP-Dev.com started accepting payments. So, in some ways, its the first anniversary of the full Pro version of XP-Dev.com.

It has been a long ride – the past year felt more like 10 years! There are some really uber awesome stuff coming up in the coming year, and XP-Dev.com is here to stay for the long ride. So, hang in there!

Reminder! XP-Dev.com will be offline for 5 hours on Friday 23rd April 2010 from 7pm BST (thats this Friday!) onwards as some equipment is being relocated to a new datacenter.

XP-Dev.com needs a Web Designer - and you’ll be paid $$$ as well!

UPDATE 23rd April 2010 23:52 BST: All equipment has been moved successfully.

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rs on Wed 14 Apr, 2010 07:18:25 +0000

XP-Dev.com needs you!

I’m looking for a web designer who can work on improving XP-Dev.com’s UI. Initially, it will only be on big win improvements, and later on will extend into specific cases & areas. Moving forward, there might be work on XP-Dev.com’s main web site and other services that will be launching soon under Exentrique Solutions. This is not a full-time gig – its on a contract basis, but there’s always scope to go full-time (no promises!).

I’m not looking for anyone specific – you can be a graphic design student, a freelancer, or even someone who has a full-time gig but wants to earn some mulah on the side (or whatever else!). I really don’t mind. You don’t need to be a CSS3/HTML ninja, I’m perfectly fine with receiving your design ideas in PSD or any other popular image format. You do need to have a good eye on design (something I clearly lack!), and need to know how to convey those ideas into concrete examples.

And you’ll be paid well for your work! On top of it, I’ll make sure you get good credit on XP-Dev.com for your work!

All you have to do is drop in a copy of your CV to jobs@xp-dev.com. give examples of recent work. If you did work on something internal, a screenshot (do get permission to distribute it!) would be perfectly acceptable. Oh, and do state your desired daily/hourly rate as well.

If there are any questions, do drop a comment below, or just raise a support ticket.

P.S. No agencies please!

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rs on Mon 12 Apr, 2010 07:46:09 +0000

As XP-Dev.com is currently expanding, I managed to get a brand new rackspace in a new datacenter to host most of XP-Dev.com/Exentrique Solutions' equipment. At the rate things are moving, the service will outgrow the current providers soon. Additionally, the new rackspace will include some network topology changes that will hopefully bring about an increase in service performance.

The equipment move will happen on Friday 23rd April 2010 from 7pm (BST, GMT+1) onwards. Whole of XP-Dev.com will be offline for 5 hours (it all depends on how traffic in London is on a Friday night).

I would personally prefer to move the equipment on a Sunday morning as that’s the least busiest time, but the current providers only allow me to collect my equipment Monday-Friday during working hours (I’m really upset with them, and thankfully don’t have to deal with them anymore! This is an interesting, long story which I hope to be able to blog about soon on my personal blog).

How will this affect you ?

Access to projects & repositories: You won’t be able to access your Git, Subversion, XP-Dev.com or Trac projects during the equipment move.

Change of IP Address: If you’re using Direct File Hosting on XP-Dev.com, and have mapped virtual domains, you will need to change where your DNS ‘A’ records of your virtual domains point to (if you use a ‘CNAME’ record, you won’t need to do anything):

• Domains hosted on 1.xpdev-hosted.com will be moved to 195.74.55.37
• Domains hosted on 2.xpdev-hosted.com will be moved to 195.74.55.38

You should change your DNS addresses around the time of the equipment move.

Do give a shout if you have any concerns, either post a comment below or raise a support ticket

UPDATE 23rd April 2010 23:52 BST: All equipment has been moved successfully.

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rs on Mon 08 Mar, 2010 05:48:13 +0000

The long awaited Git Hosting is finally here! However, it’s only enabled for paid account holders.

Subversion hosting here at XP-Dev.com, follows a simple model – as a free user, you don’t get a secure link to your repository. As a paid account user, you get a secure link to your repository, and additional goodies like real-time backups and nightly off-site backups.

Git hosting is traditionally done over SSH, and as that’s a secure link, it is only enable for paid account holders. I will try to get some work done to support non-secure HTTP for Git repositories in the future, but right now, I’ll be focusing on getting Mercurial hosting out of the door.

The good news is that Git hosting here in XP-Dev.com is as feature rich as the Subversion hosting offering, which means that your Git repositories will integrate nicely with Basecamp, Fogbugz, Lighthouse, Fixx and even Twitter. On top of it, your Git repositories will play nicely with your XP-Dev.com hosted Trac projects and supports intelligent commit messages that can control your Trac or even XP-Dev.com tickets/bugs/stories/tasks. Heck, even direct file hosting works uber nicely from your Git repository. If that’s not enough, we’ve enabled real-time backups and nightly off-site backups on your Git repositories as well. (All of these features are available as Subversion repositories as well)

The only thing I feel is somewhat rudimentary is the online Git repository explorer. You should be able to browse your repository online, perform diffs and do some basic actions, but it has a few draw-backs for e.g. only browses the master branch of your repository and can only diff between two trees (useful when you’ve merged many trees). Naturally, all of these will be improved in due course.

S3 backups for Git repositories are not enabled yet, only Subversion repositories.

Summary of features released on 6th March 2010:

1. Getting Started with Git Hosting on XP-Dev.com
2. svn2 moves to bigger hardware
3. Force SSL only connections for Subversion access
4. Trac Upgrades

Getting Started with Git Hosting on XP-Dev.com

The first thing to do is to head over to your account’s Settings page to setup your SSH public key: http://www.xp-dev.com/settings

There’s a text box under the heading Your Public Key where you can enter your public key. Put the whole thing in there and click on Save. Your public key needs to start with either ssh-dsa or ssh-rsa. Only DSA and RSA public keys are supported at the moment:

Once you’ve done that, head over to your Source Control tab of your project. You should see a new option called Git under type of repository:

Click on Save and the repository should be created.

The URL that you use to clone/push from/to is listed as well:

In this case you would issue commands like below to interact with your repository (using the example from the picture above):

• Clone: git clone ssh://git2.xp-dev.com/my-first-git-repo
• Push to the master branch: git push ssh://git2.xp-dev.com/my-first-git-repo master
• Add it as a remote repository: git remote add xpdev ssh://git2.xp-dev.com/my-first-git-repo
• Add it as the origin repository: git remote add origin ssh://git2.xp-dev.com/my-first-git-repo

If you have any problems with accessing your Git repository, just raise a support ticket.

I’ll be updating the documentation soon with more elaborate instructions/examples with Git hosting on XP-Dev.com

svn2 moves to bigger hardware

Part of the release done on 6th of March 2010 was to move svn2.xp-dev.com to bigger hardware. At this point all hardware that powers XP-Dev.com conforms to the following minimum specifications:

• Quad core/threads
• 8GB RAM
• 2x1.5TB hard drives in RAID1 configuration

At the moment there’s about 1.7TB of space remaining across the board, so, there’s plenty of room left!

Force SSL only connections for Subversion access

You can force only SSL access to your Subversion repositories as this will help your fellow collaborators avoid using a non-secure connection.

To enable it, head to your Source Control tab and click on Edit Repository. Ensure that the box next to Force only secure SSL connections is turned on and click Save.

Naturally, this feature is only enabled for repositories created by paid account holders.

Trac Upgrades

You should be able to enable e-mail notifications for your Trac projects . You can even force the Assigned To: fields in Trac to display a drop-down list of users (rather than a free-form text field).

Both features can be enabled/disabled under the Trac tab of your project page in XP-Dev.com.

If you have any problems with any of these feature releases, do just raise a support ticket or drop a note in the support forums

3 comments

rs on Thu 04 Mar, 2010 19:42:11 +0000

There will be a new release of XP-Dev.com on Saturday 6th March. As its a pretty big release, there will be a downtime of 6 hours between 9am and 3pm GMT.

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rs on Thu 03 Dec, 2009 18:46:46 +0000

I’ve just released a new version of your favourite subversion hosting provider XP-Dev.com which brings Fixx integration, WebDAV & a number of smaller bug fixes.

Fixx Integration

If you happen to use Fixx as your issue tracking tool, you can now get your Subversion repository changesets posted to your Fixx issues as comments. Full documentation details (inc. screenshots) are provided in the XP-Dev.com documentation site.

http://docs.xp-dev.com/user-guide/fixx.html

Example Fixx comment

WebDAV

You can use a regular WebDAV client (Windows operating systems support WebDAV quite nicely, they’re called Web Folders) to download & upload files to your XP-Dev.com Subversion repositories. WebDAV has been enabled on all paid accounts.

Bug Fixes & Other Enhancements

A number of bugs have been fixed and some other enhancements have been implemented as well:

• Trac projects can now edit the estimated hours field and add hours to tickets.
• Fixed the upload progress bar when uploading files for attachments or importing repositories.
• Increased font size: you no longer have to squint to read your bugs, stories, forums, wiki pages, etc.
• Creation of initial Subversion directories (trunk, tags, branches) when creating repositories. Just turn on the checkbox for Create Initial Directories when you’re creating a new source control repository for your project.
• Better looking Subversion repository browsing. Have a look at http://svn.xp-dev.com/svn/xpdevdocs/ as an example. (You’ll need to use a browser that understand XML Stylesheets)

Feedback is much appreciated. Just drop a comment here, or raise a new support ticket.

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