Release Notes

0.22

2/26/2009 – Plugins

This version completes the move to the setuptools module for installation which should simplify the install, removing the need to install the dependencies by hand. See the Installation page for the latest info.

Plugin support is ready for plugin consumption. Plugins should extend flashbake.plugins.AbstractMessagePlugin, see the Plugins page for more details on the protocol. The names and options for the stock plugins have also changed, see the Plugin page for these details too.

The feed plugin should now work with Atom as well as RSS. It uses the feedparser module so should work on many more feeds than the original code did.

This version adds support for a shared control file, ~.flashbake/config. If present, this file will be read and then the project’s .flashbake file will be read and added to it.

This version fixes an issue with running under Python 2.4.

0.21

2/23/2009 – Re-license

See the License page for the reasoning. The only thing that is different in this version is the license. This is to help make it clearer which perpetual license applies to which versions.

0.20

2/21/2009 – Many fixes.

• The control file is now named “.flashbake”. “.control” will still work but is deprecated. Eventually, I will drop support for “.control”.
• Stock plugins, see the Plugins page for information on how to configure. If you do not have a “plugins:” line in “.flashbake”, all of the stock plugins will be enabled. This is for backwards compatibility. A future version will drop this and complain when no plugins are configured.
• “notice_to:” is now optional. Leave it out of “.flashbake” to disable email notices.
• Figuring out the timezone on a Mac should work, please help me test. This will make the flashbake.plugins.timezone and flashbake.plugins.weather plugins work on OS X.

This version now has a dependency on the Python enum package, see the Installation page.

I have not started on Windows compatibility, yet, though I have several volunteers to help me test.

I am still working on the protocol for third party plugins, that should come soon.

I am also thinking about how to better detect the status of the network, though the offline message has been clarified in this release.

0.19

2/12/2009 – First public version, available as an installable Python project. This version has been tested on Linux and OS X with Python 2.5.2. Certain parts of it will not work on Windows. If anyone is interested in a Windows compatible version, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. This version has no external dependencies other than git. It does not use the git-python package though I am looking into that for a future release.

Once installed, you can run “flashbake —help” for information on how to run it. The project directory mentioned in the help must be a git repository and must have an additional .control file. It should give clear feedback on errors when you are running it.
Future Releases

The next big feature for flashbake is support for plugins. The four bits of information that make up the commit message (time zone, weather, uptime and rss items) are currently set up as stock plugins. I am working on the validation logic for vetting third party plugins and deciding on how to locate them. This would allow anyone who is comfortable hacking in Python to build their own plugins and to mix and match to generate their own customized, automated commit message.