BeeSeek Blog

We now have a new service for our developers (or aspiring developers): the handbook! Available at dev.beeseek.org, it is composed of the technical documents and the source code documentation already available in the code branch, but in convenient HTML that makes everything nicer and easier to read.

If you find it useful and would like to improve it, you may try to implement some of the features requested on Launchpad.

Yesterday Andrea Corbellini, our Developers Team Leader, published the official roadmap for the BeeSeek development.

As you can read in the BeeSeek Development Announces mailing list, you can find the roadmap in the wiki.

The developers' team leader, Andrea Corbellini, just wrote a wiki's page and officially opened the new BeeSeek Noticeboard.

The noticeboard is intended as a place where to leave short notices to inform the community about members' work and as an easy and fast way to follow important update.

Of course only users that are registered on Launchpad and belong to a BeeSeek team are allowed to write in it. This represents the first implementation of the idea to use Launchpad's teams' membership to easily manage users privileges also on the other BeeSeek services.

To know more about how to use the noticeboard, read the wiki's page or come ask us questions on IRC ;)

The alpha 2 version of Hive has been released and the main changes is the adoption of a modular structure. That means faster and easier development without adapting the main code every time, but it makes also upgrades and code reading easier and improves the stability. This also gives the possibility to personalize easily your own server writing your modules.

~ HoneyBee ~

Currently the only module developed already is HoneyBee, that is in alpha 1 version. This module collects all the statistics needed for the future page ranking.
But let's see how it saves the data in /hive/var/stats.log:

Extract sample from stas.log


Time: 1200939792
ID: 1196464515-54220160-65216570
MovTime: 4
StatTime: 18
Scrolls: 0
Url: http://127.0.0.1:50007/blog.beeseek.org/
Referer: http://localhost:50007/?query=beeseek%20blog


1. Time: records date and time of the search.
2. ID: identify the user who perform the search. The ID remains in the browser's cookies for 1 hour after the last use.
3. MovTime: records the time that the mouse moves.
4. StatTime: records the time that the mouse remains static.
5. Scrolls: records how many times the page was scrolled.
6. Url: records the address the stats are for.
7. Referer: records the address you came from.

~ Installation ~

To get the latest release you can use this page, where are available .deb packages and tarballs.

For Ubuntu users are also available our
repository:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/beeseek-core-devs/ubuntu/ hardy main devel
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/beeseek-core-devs/ubuntu/ hardy main devel

Even if the packages are for Hardy, they are perfectly compatible with all the previous Ubuntu releases since Edgy. Anyway specific packages for Edgy, Feisty and Gutsy are going to be added too.

~ The future ~

The plans for the future are:
Hive: solve two blueprints (ipv6 e apport).
HoneyBee: set up the p2p network wich BeeSeek is going to be based on.

HoneyBee is the part of the project that is going to become our stable web application and will provide the BeeSeek service to everyone.

This is the HoneyBee's homepage:

As you can see, is the same as beeseek.org.
But have a look at the following screenshot: the results' page has just been updated to a new theme that reflect the style of our network:

All the restiling work was done in the BeeSeek Forum-it, where everyone can suggest new ideas to improve BeeSeek.

~ Installation ~

The page is now working installing Hive and HoneyBee as a module, using bazaar as already explained in the previous article Debugging.

Once downloaded both the programs, you need to copy all the items contained in the HoneyBee directory:

• ball-blue.png
• fireresult.html
• honeybee.py
• separator.png
• firepage.html
• head-bg.png
• honeybee.js
• logo.png

theese files (the list could change in the time because of the development activity) have to be copied to:

/hive/etc/modules

and the file:

• honeybee.conf

has to be copied in:

/hive/etc/

For all the Ubunutu users are also avalaible our repository:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/beeseek-core-devs/ubuntu/ DISTRO main devel

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/beeseek-core-devs/ubuntu/ DISTRO main devel

In the place of DISTRO put the name of your distribution: Edgy, Feisty, Gustsy or Hardy.

~ Start up ~

Now is possible to use HoneyBee launching Hive (read here) and connecting your browser to:

http://localhost:50007

Happy BeeSeeking to everyone!

After the announcement to ask for more debuggers, BeeSeek is finally ready to officially start Hive debugging also because bug #172810 has been fixed.
Let's see what we have to do:

~ Setup ~

Hive can be installed in any Linux distribution, or any Unix-based system like Mac OS X, and it can be used in Windows as well. You just need:

- Python 2.5
- Bazaar >= 0.90

Most linux distributions already have python installed or they've a quick method to install it. If you have troubles, take a look at the end of this post to find community links to get help.

~ Installation ~

You can install Hive using Bazaar NG:

bzr branch http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~beeseek-core-devs/beeseek/hive

This command creates a folder, named hive, in which you'll find all the needed software. If you don't want to download it in your home folder, create another folder and move hive there, like this:

mkdir ~/foldername
cd ~/foldername

~ Start up ~

Go in the folder in which you downloaded hive:

cd ~/foldername/hive

Change permissions:

chmod a+x hive

and launch it:

./hive -vfa

-v = verbose (shows more informations)
-f = foreground
-a = keep alive (keep hive open in case of noncritical errors)

The option -t is useful because you can close Hive with ctrl+c or ctrl-d.

~ Debugging ~

You can test Hive looking for bugs, reporting them on Launchpad. For
further help and informations, look at our wiki page about Bugs.
Most important things are:

• do not report an existing bug (look for something similar before posting it)
• add as more details as possible (software version, operating system, what you did, bug effects, special configurations)

It could also be useful to register in our developers mailing list or chat with us on IRC.

If you'd like to become an active debugger and help us constancily, you have to register in the Quality Assurance Team and read the page about Bug Triaging. For further informations on how to register in a team, visit the wiki Community page.

-------------------------

EDIT: correction under Startup section of option -t = not daemonic, now this has been replaced in developing Hive with -f = foreground.

It isn't a movie title, but the people who will make the immediate future of BeeSeek: we are looking for debuggers.
After the bug 172810 will be fixed, as the developer Andrea Corbellini says, will begin the debugging period of Hive.

To become a protagonist:

- read the Community page
- subscribe the Developers' mailing list

You can find all the help pages about bug-hunting on the wiki:

- bug triaging
- debugging

Good luck!

andrea-bs, developers team leader, recently decided to modify the structure of the team to favor a division in two separate entities, Core Developers and Quality Assurance.

The two team will have the following goals:

BeeSeek Core Developers (beeseek-core-devs on Launchpad): will improve and develop every beeseek application, being able to autonomously upload code and check security bugs.

BeeSeek Quality Assurance (beeseek-core-bugs on Launchpad): must track down bugs, giving them priority and changing their status accordingly to fixes and contributions. Still, they don't have access to security bugs, like the Core Developers do.

N.B. Both teams are moderated by the Developers Team.

For more informations, you can look at Launchpad pages, and the wiki webpage dedicated to the Developers Team.

Translated by Ubuntista

As already reported in andrea-bs's personal weblog, the developers team leader tried to flood hive, after implementing new features, and the application was able to pass the test without troubles.

Simone Brunozzi forecasts that Hive can probably reach about 40 requests per second in the next following months, while Andrea did his tests with 200 concurrent queries and the responseness was very quick anyway.
Thank to the good job of the Developers Team, Hive is going to rock!

Translated by Ubuntista

A new decision has been recently made on Developers Team's Mailing List: the browser extension for Beeseek will be no more! Andrea Corbellini, on 5th october, after a virtual meeting with SABDFL Simone Brunozzi, proposed to trash firefox extension to avoid a futile proliferation of browser plugins, choosing instead a web application.