• You can have your product backlog, sprint backlog and tasks all in one place
• Agilo manage your backlogs and provide fancy metrics of how your sprint is doing
• SVN ties well into trac which means you can tie commits back into sprint tasks, which means you have a traceability matrix of the tasks/defects and the code changes made to close it
• Trac also helps you manage a milestone so you can have a high-level view of how you are doing against your deadlines to meet a milestone

You can read more about them here Agilo and Trac

You first need to enable repoforge for your RHEL install and then install the required packages

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/x86_64/rpmforge/RPMS//rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
[root@localhost ~]# yum -y install subversion trac mod_dav_svn mod_python

Now you need to create the directories for svn repos, trac project and auth directory. I choose /var/www/ but you can choose anything else you want.

[root@localhost ~]# mkdir -p /var/www/svn/svnrepos #holds the svn repos
[root@localhost ~]# mkdir -p /var/www/trac #trac base folder
[root@localhost ~]# mkdir -p /var/www/svn/auth #holds the htaccess files
[root@localhost ~]# htpasswd -c /var/www/svn/auth/svn.htpasswd svnuser
[root@localhost ~]# svnadmin create /var/www/svn/svnrepos/secret-project #create svn repo

Now create the initial svn folders/files in the repo

[root@localhost ~]# svn mkdir file:///var/www/svn/svnrepos/secret-project/branches  \
file:///var/www/svn/svnrepos/secret-project/tags  \
file:///var/www/svn/svnrepos/secret-project/trunk  \
-m 'creating directories for initial import'

Committed revision 1.

Now create your first trac project

[root@localhost ~]# trac-admin /var/www/trac/secret-project \
permission add tracuser TRAC_ADMIN

You will need then require to go the settings of trac to give it the svn repo patch and then using trac-admin to call resync.

[root@localhost ~]# trac-admin $ENV repository resync "secret-project"

You would also require a post commit hook to ensure that trac gets updated every time a new commit is made. There is plenty of information available on http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/CommitTicketUpdater, but basically you need is an svn post commit hook which calls trac-admin $ENV changeset added 'secret-project'.

Installing Agilo can be done using a plugin. If you have easy_install installed even better. Just follow the instructions as follows

[root@localhost ~]# easy_install <agilo>.egg
[root@localhost ~]# cd /var/www/trac/britebill-holepunch/conf
[root@localhost conf]# trac-admin /var/www/trac/secret-project/ upgrade #upgrade trac post plugin install
Creating Product Backlog...
Creating Sprint Backlog...
Upgrade done.
[root@localhost conf]# trac-admin /var/www/trac/britebill-holepunch/ wiki upgrade #upgrade trac wiki as well

Now you can use the web interface to configure the project even more, adding your backlogs, tickets etc. Agilo also allows you to import your backlog from an xls sheet which is great as most product managers are still stuck in the xls era and refuse to let it go.

$ svn update
svn: This client is too old to work with working copy '.'; please get a newer Subversion client

So this is what my development setup looks like, I run a vm of JeOS and mount it on my mac using macfusion. So I have access to my code on both via ssh and via terminal. I got the above error as I accidentally did this update on the host machine side which had svn version 1.6.5 running where as on my vm I was still running 1.4.6. So searching for a couple of mins on the internet, I managed to update my version of svn on JeOS (which is actually another version ubuntu but for servers). I am documenting the steps below just in case anyone else might find it useful.

Open the sources.list and update it with the new source.

$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

and add the following two lines at the bottom

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu hardy main

hardy can be replaced by your version ubuntu, I am still on ubuntu as its just a development server with the latest version of apache, mysql and it works very well for me, so no reason to upgrade yet. Also JeOS is available on the not so latest version of ubuntu anyway.

Add the related key signature

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 413576CB

413576CB is the signing key on the home page of the project https://launchpad.net/~anders-kaseorg/+archive/subversion-1.6.

Signing key:
1024R/413576CB
Fingerprint:
026491A5DD081BDC6CDFC0DE6298AD34413576CB

Now all you need to do is update your aptitude cache and upgrade the version of svn.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get --reinstall install subversion

Creating svn directories

svn mkdir -m "create default directories" http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/trunk http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/tags http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/branches

Checkout these directories locally:

svn co http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/ .

Move to the trunk directory

cd trunk

Creating a new project

$  symfony generate:project brp
$ php symfony generate:app --escaping-strategy=on --csrf-secret=s3cr3t fe

Clear cache and log and add that to svn

rm -rf cache/* log/*
chmod 777 cache/ log/
svn add *

svn propedit svn:ignore cache
svn propedit svn:ignore log

Enter * in both the cases so that no files in cache and log get commited to svn

Add the new files to svn

svn ci -m 'adding the initial set of files'

Update the database settings, add the doctrine plugin and disable the propel plugin instead, edit the file config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php
and update the line with the following line:

  $this->enableAllPluginsExcept(array('sfPropelPlugin', 'sfCompat10Plugin'));

Publish the plug-in assets

rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk$ php symfony plugin:publish-assets
    plugin    Configuring plugin - sfProtoculousPlugin
    plugin    Configuring plugin - sfDoctrinePlugin

Delete the files for the propel plugin:

svn delete web/sfPropelPlugin
svn delete config/propel.ini
svn delete config/schema.yml
svn mkdir config/doctrine

Create new schema file and remove the default schema file.

rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk$ cd config/doctrine/
rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk/config/doctrine$ touch schema.yml
rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk/config/doctrine$ svn add schema.yml
A         schema.yml
rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk/config/doctrine$ svn ci -m 'adding schema for app'

svn delete config/databases.yml
svn ci -m 'removed the default databases.yml file'

Add database configuration settings:

php symfony configure:database --name=doctrine --class=sfDoctrineDatabase "mysql:host=127.0.0.1;dbname=project1" root password

Link to externals so that the latest version of the plugins and symfony gets checked out:

cd lib/
svn mkdir vendor
svn propedit svn:externals lib/vendor
svn ci -m 'updating symfony to version 1.2.7'
svn update lib/vendor/

That pulls out the most updated tagged version of symfony.

Update the configuration file config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php to use the local symfony version instead of the site-wide settings.

require_once dirname(__FILE__) . '/../lib/vendor/symfony/lib/autoload/sfCoreAutoload.class.php';

I trolled through the svn manuals and some really interesting blog posts and summarizing the steps that I took to put my code base back into control. Its rather unusual that none of the steps below are anything special its just that I hadnt had to work on a situation where I had to work on a feature which might or might not see the daylight of being pushed to production.

So the first thing to do was to create the trunk, branches and tags directory.

$ mkdir ~/websites/secret-project/trunk \
            ~/websites/secret-project/branches \
            ~/websites/secret-project/tags

I now use dreamhost for my svn but you can replace this with any other repo (local or remote) to manage your code. So I would start by creating the initial directory structure in the repo.

$ svn import -m 'Importing the initial directory structure' \
                http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/trunk \
                http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/branches \

http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/tags

Now checking out the empty directory locally to setup the local directories we created locally.

$ svn co http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/trunk \
               ~/websites/secret-project/trunk

The next step is to ensure that you are always using the most recent version of symfony. I like this feature about svn. You can have multiple directories pointing to multiple repos, that we can always ensure that your project can benefit from the most recent versions. We start that by setting up the lib/symfony and marking that as having an external repo.

$ cd  ~/websites/secret-project/
$ mkdir trunk/lib
$ mkdir trunk/lib/vendor
$ svn propedit svn:externals lib/vendor
symfony http://svn.symfony-project.com/tags/RELEASE_1_2_4/

(1.2.4 being the most recent release at the time of writing this post)
This is a good time to commit this to the svn and get the latest code.

$ svn ci -m 'updating symfony to 1.2.4'
$ svn update lib/vendor

With the most recent codebase available in the vendors directory, now is a good time to do any sanity checks if you fancy.

php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/check_configuration.php
php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony -V

If all works fine then there is one other configuration change that is required, after which you can start generating the basic stub of your code base. The change is to update the path sfCoreAutoload.class.php so that its picked up relative to where its placed.

require_once dirname(__FILE__).'/../lib/vendor/symfony/lib/autoload/sfCoreAutoload.class.php';

With that done and your basic symfony apps and modules created, you can now update the svn configuration so that you can ignore the cache and logs directory.

$ rm -rf cache/*
$ rm -rf log/*
$ chmod 777 cache
$ chmod 777 log
$ svn add *
$ svn propedit svn:ignore log
$ svn propedit svn:ignore cache
$ svn ci -m "updating the codebase with new apps/modules"

Its also a good idea to ensure that the auto generated files dont make it to the repo, which is clearly a waste as its usually good to generate them on the server after deployment, that way you are usually sure about your configurations and settings.

svn add --non-recursive lib/model
svn add --non-recursive lib/model/om
svn add --non-recursive lib/model/map
svn propedit svn:ignore lib/model/om
svn propedit svn:ignore lib/model/map

You can also do the same for forms and filters any other auto generated file like sql files). Obviously needless to say, you need to commit your files as often as possible and tag after each release.

This post has been heavily adapted from a post on Stereo Interactive which is a blog I usually end up on when I get stuck on symfony problems. Worth reading it as well. This post would usually form as my own pointer when starting on the next project on symfony.

Download Information available at:
http://git.or.cz/#download

Before you start, set some git variables.

# set your name and email, used for commit messages
$ git config --global user.name ""
$ git config --global user.email ""

# enable nice colorful output
$ git config --global color.diff auto
$ git config --global color.status auto
$ git config --global color.branch auto

You can see the other configuration settings using the command:

$ git config -l

Assuming you are in your working directory, initialize the repository using the command:

$ git init

and you should see the following echoed back to the screen:

Initialized empty Git repository in .git/

Now you can add all your current files to the repository using the command:

$ git add .

This is now saved in a temporary staging area which git calls the ‘index’, this can be made permanent by calling the following command:

$ git commit

Now you have a functional repository which you can use to track your changes. The following the basic commands for your usual daily actions.

Adding files to the repository:

$ git add file1 file2 file3

To see the status of the current files, modified or un added files.

$ git status

You can also see the difference in the modified files.

$ git diff --cached

Commit the file automatically (adding new files and then committing them to the index can be done using the following command:

$ git commit -a

And here are the most interesting bits, the ease of branching and merging that might make you fall in love with this.
Creating a new branch:

$ git branch wacky_idea

Listing all the current branches

$ git branch

wacky_idea
* master

If you now want to work on the new branch you need to set the mode to the new branch by checking out the branch.

$ git checkout wacky_idea

Modify and commit your files using the standard $git commit -a and then you can merge it back into master by first checking out master and then doing the merge.

$ git checkout master
$ git merge wacky_idea

it will show you the summary in case of no conflicts or give you an opportunity to fix them before doing the merge. You obviously would need to do a git commit -a to add your changes to the index and then if you want to remove the branch run git branch -d wacky_idea

There are loads of other interesting features that I will post back to the blog but its surely an interesting version control system. The reason I like this so much is because I do a lot of my development during travelling and by far this is the only CMS that I am aware of that allows you to work offline and online as well. There are always work around to run your repo locally on cvs but that doesn’t serve the purpose of code centralization.

Some interesting links for further reading:

• http://git.or.cz/
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/everyday.html
• http://jonas.nitro.dk/git/quick-reference.html
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gittutorial.html