[kde-edu]: introducing synchrotron

[Aaron J. Seigo]

hi :)

(apologies for the cross-posting, but i want to reach both general KDE app 
devs as well as a couple of teams that i feel may be particularly interested 
in this... feel free to only reply to the "most local to you" list :)

on boxing day (which is what the Brits and Canuckistanis call the day after 
Christmas) i sent an email to this list with the subject "GHNS feeds for 
plasmoid addons". in it, i outlined an idea for a simple web service generator 
that would turn a git repository full of scripts, artwork, etc. into feeds to 
be used with knewstuff. well, i have it working on my laptop now :)

adding new feeds as well as adding, updating and removing content is all 
automated and follows the activity in the "sources" git repository. commit a 
new addon, wait for the cron job on the server to run, it appears. remove it 
from the git repo, it disappears from the feed. commit a change, it shows up 
as updated. voila. :)

it is not a user submission system, nor does it have any "social networking" 
features ala opendesktop.org. it is strictly meant as a simple way for us to 
deliver addons as upstreams directly to our users.

if you missed my blog entry on it, here it is with more information about the 
project:

	http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/01/fire-up-synchrotron.html

i've put in a request to the sysadmin team to move the git repo somewhere more 
appropriate, but for now the repositories are here:

	http://gitweb.kde.org/scratch/aseigo/synchrotron.git
	http://gitweb.kde.org/scratch/aseigo/synchrotron-sources.git

the first repository is where the actual web service bits are, and the -
sources repo is where we will put (and update) the content.

where to host it is something that will come next, and i'll also be working 
that through with KDE sys admin.

in the meantime, code review, patches, improvements, feedback, etc. for the 
code and/or usage of the -sources repository is very, very welcome.

it also opens up some new avenues of development for us (thinking most of 
plasma here, but other project may have similar needs and dreams), namely:

* how to automatically check for addons from synchrotron on first-run
* how to check for updates so we can offer an auto-update service

 it would be nice to see the foundational logic for this in libattica so that 
it can be shared by all kinds of application. 

imagine starting Palapeli and having a dozen or two puzzles available, new 
ones appearing all the time, via synchrotron in the start up listing! or when 
imageshack.us changes its web service next time, you just have to start a 
"plasma update" to get the fix!

 in the immediate future, while we work on these kinds of improvements, we can 
use the normal GHNS dialogs from knewstuff3 to test things out. if you think 
synchrotron is right for you or your project, please make some noise and get 
involved :)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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