Advise wanted on Ror software development and project management + my own github server?

As a 1 man ruby on rails developer I have several ideas / concepts for (near) future project and 1 active project im working on now. I found myself in the need of a nice good looking and simple project management to keep track of software development and features, goals and milestones and version releases. So I will be able to have a clear goal of which features to build in each new version and make some sort of planning / keep track of everything.

I have already expierience with several project management softwares such as Jirra and lighthouse but those seem to complex for my 1-man development needs now and seem overkill to setup and maintain.

Therefore my question Is there anything simple out that someone can advice me that facilitates in

# Some soft of github server to store my code locally on my dev machine ( I dont want my code up on github ) # Project management that looks nice, intuitive and is not overkill but helps me keeping track of my code, settings milestones, keep an eye on bugs, milestones, etc everything a simpele software development cylcle would need? # Some way to move from local to remote lateron and add more people when Im in the fase of needing that ( more people = more ror developers, designers etc )

I hope I phrase my question clearly enough and someone can advise me on any opensource or payed project management software solution for my 1-man development and options to upgrade in the future. What do you use at this moment or would be advisable?

I already make usage of Sass to globalize my CSS and speedup the development Im using mercury to create mockups and working prototypes for future ideas/concepts

Thanks in advanche

Well git itself can serve remote clients. If you want a web interface gitorious is opensource. I'd strongly reccomend that you don't just host this at home - I'd definitely want my important data offsite somewhere ( & backed up etc)

Fred

rubybox wrote:

As a 1 man ruby on rails developer I have several ideas / concepts for (near) future project and 1 active project im working on now. I found myself in the need of a nice good looking and simple project management to keep track of software development and features, goals and milestones and version releases. So I will be able to have a clear goal of which features to build in each new version and make some sort of planning / keep track of everything.

I have already expierience with several project management softwares such as Jirra and lighthouse but those seem to complex for my 1-man development needs now and seem overkill to setup and maintain.

JIRA: Overkill, hard to use. Lighthouse: not overkill, hosted, no setup. Redmine: not overkill, flexible, easy to set up.

Therefore my question Is there anything simple out that someone can advice me that facilitates in

# Some soft of github server to store my code locally on my dev machine ( I dont want my code up on github )

You probably mean a Git server, not a GitHub server (unless you want to pay thousands of dollars for GitHub's software). First of all, there's GitHub itself. Paid members can create private projects. Also check out Gitorious.

If you want your own Git server, Gitosis is the way to go.

# Project management that looks nice, intuitive and is not overkill but helps me keeping track of my code, settings milestones, keep an eye on bugs, milestones, etc everything a simpele software development cylcle would need?

Like I said, Lighthouse or Redmine.

# Some way to move from local to remote lateron and add more people when Im in the fase of needing that ( more people = more ror developers, designers etc )

This is easily done.

I hope I phrase my question clearly enough and someone can advise me on any opensource or payed project management software solution for my 1-man development and options to upgrade in the future. What do you use at this moment or would be advisable?

I already make usage of Sass to globalize my CSS and speedup the development

Good.

Im using mercury to create mockups and working prototypes for future ideas/concepts

Never tried Mercury. I'm using Mockingbird.

Thanks in advanche

Best,

Thanks for the Inputs!

Using redmine now for several days and its lovely, nothing more I could wish for

Just to say that on the private git server for a 1 man band, you can't do much better than get yourself a free dropbox account, stick your repository on it and then clone it to a local folder.

That's you backed up off site and you can access your 'sever' from all your computers.

Ginty wrote:

Just to say that on the private git server for a 1 man band, you can't do much better than get yourself a free dropbox account, stick your repository on it and then clone it to a local folder.

That's you backed up off site and you can access your 'sever' from all your computers.

Clever. Or just put it on your Web server.

Best,

Ginty wrote: > Just to say that on the private git server for a 1 man band, you can't > do much better than get yourself a free dropbox account, stick your > repository on it and then clone it to a local folder.

> That's you backed up off site and you can access your 'sever' from all > your computers.

Clever. Or just put it on your Web server.

Yep, in fact I have often wondered what I am missing wrt Gitosis or a paid Github account for that matter.

Even for a multi-man team what do they give you that just sticking your master repository on your private server doesn't?

Ginty wrote: [...]

Yep, in fact I have often wondered what I am missing wrt Gitosis or a paid Github account for that matter.

Even for a multi-man team what do they give you that just sticking your master repository on your private server doesn't?

Real user accounts in your repository. Even with one person and Capistrano, that's two users, and they should have separate Git repo accounts.

Also, can you push to a Git repo on Dropbox? If not, then it's not a good Git hosting solution -- and of course it doesn't speak the Git protocol.

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:

Ginty wrote: [...]

Yep, in fact I have often wondered what I am missing wrt Gitosis or a paid Github account for that matter.

Even for a multi-man team what do they give you that just sticking your master repository on your private server doesn't?

Amplification: Gitosis is server software that lets you easily serve a Git repo from your own server. It provides for easy Git user, key, and permission management. Github does likewise, plus you get that great Web interface.

Best,

Gintywrote:

[...]

> Yep, in fact I have often wondered what I am missing wrt Gitosis or a > paid Github account for that matter.

> Even for a multi-man team what do they give you that just sticking > your master repository on your private server doesn't?

Real user accounts in your repository. Even with one person and Capistrano, that's two users, and they should have separate Git repo accounts.

Also, can you push to a Git repo on Dropbox? If not, then it's not a good Git hosting solution -- and of course it doesn't speak the Git protocol.

Of course, you interface to dropbox via a regular dir on your local machine, push, pull, anything else you can do locally. In the background the Dropbox client takes the updates away into the cloud and mirrors them to all of your other machines.

Using it for this or not Dropbox is a truly great web app, and the paid versions are actually cheaper than you would pay S3 directly for the same amount of storage, plus 0 transfer charges.

Also thanks for the Redmine suggestion, been trying it out today, great stuff!

Ginty wrote:

Real user accounts in your repository. �Even with one person and Capistrano, that's two users, and they should have separate Git repo accounts.

Also, can you push to a Git repo on Dropbox? �If not, then it's not a good Git hosting solution -- and of course it doesn't speak the Git protocol.

Of course, you interface to dropbox via a regular dir on your local machine, push, pull, anything else you can do locally. In the background the Dropbox client takes the updates away into the cloud and mirrors them to all of your other machines.

In other words, you're not using the remote copy as a Git repo -- you're not pushing directly to it from your local machine? If that's the case, it's a huge disadvantage of Dropbox.

Set up a Github account and try pushing to it. You'll see the difference.

Using it for this or not Dropbox is a truly great web app, and the paid versions are actually cheaper than you would pay S3 directly for the same amount of storage, plus 0 transfer charges.

But that's just backup. It sounds like it isn't appropriate for repository hosting.

Also thanks for the Redmine suggestion, been trying it out today, great stuff!

You're welcome.

Best,

Gitosis seems to be "dead" no git commits for 1 year? Is it actually stable usable? Are there some themes like github.com to make it look a bit more decent? Thx for the great writeup on this topic very informative Dont want to use dropbox I want my code to stay private so I just host locally and have a multi backup strategy

We’ve been using gitosis for years now and it’s working flawlessly. Just because there’s no commits doesn’t mean it isn’t stable. Github does provide more features, especially with the browser part, but it all comes down to whether you need that or not.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

Ginty wrote: >> Real user accounts in your repository. Even with one person and >> Capistrano, that's two users, and they should have separate Git repo >> accounts.

>> Also, can you push to a Git repo on Dropbox? If not, then it's not a >> good Git hosting solution -- and of course it doesn't speak the Git >> protocol.

> Of course, you interface to dropbox via a regular dir on your local > machine, push, pull, anything else you can do locally. In the > background the Dropbox client takes the updates away into the cloud > and mirrors them to all of your other machines.

In other words, you're not using the remote copy as a Git repo -- you're not pushing directly to it from your local machine? If that's the case, it's a huge disadvantage of Dropbox.

Set up a Github account and try pushing to it. You'll see the difference.

Naw it's exactly the same workflow. Work on your local copy, push to Dropbox, pull from wherever else you have access to your Dropbox.

> Using it for this or not Dropbox is a truly great web app, and the > paid versions are actually cheaper than you would pay S3 directly for > the same amount of storage, plus 0 transfer charges.

But that's just backup. It sounds like it isn't appropriate for repository hosting.

It is.

Gitosis seems to be "dead" no git commits for 1 year? Is it actually stable usable? Are there some themes like github.com to make it look a bit more decent? Thx for the great writeup on this topic very informative Dont want to use dropbox I want my code to stay private so I just host locally and have a multi backup strategy

Your code is private with the Dropbox suggestion, it's a private account that's password protected. No difference vs. a private Github account in terms of access rights, apart from the fact the Dropbox one is free that is.

In general I would say the Dropbox approach is best if you are just starting out developing some apps and don't yet have a remote server setup. It's easy to set up, and lets you share a master repository to push and pull from with all your computers.

Here is a good blog on the setup:

http://blog.rogeriopvl.com/archives/using-git-with-dropbox

Once you have a server though you may as well just stick your master repository there. I still don't see any real need for the extra baggage of Gitosis or whatever if you are dealing with a 1 or 2 man team.

Will that work if two users 'push' the same files at the same time? With a true central git repository it would handle merging the changes, but will Dropbox know how to do this? I do not know enough about how git works under the hood to know the answer.

Colin

rubybox wrote:

Using redmine now for several days and its lovely, nothing more I could wish for

Redmine is as bloated as an app can get. I always wished I had time to code my own lightweight issue tracker...

Me neither, but I would think there is opportunity for problems under such a scenario.

Ginty wrote: [...]

Once you have a server though you may as well just stick your master repository there. I still don't see any real need for the extra baggage of Gitosis or whatever if you are dealing with a 1 or 2 man team.

Then, when you've got your server and aren't using Dropbox for your repo, what do you use to host it if not Gitosis? It's not extra baggage -- it's the easiest way to host a git repo from your own server.

Are you perchance confusing Gitosis with Gitorious?

Best,

Fernando Perez wrote:

rubybox wrote:

Using redmine now for several days and its lovely, nothing more I could wish for

Redmine is as bloated as an app can get.

Obviously you haven't used JIRA, which is a great example of bloat. Redmine is pretty simple and lightweight.

Then again, it's no surprise that I disagree with you on this point. I recently realized that I don't think i've ever agreed with a single post of yours in this forum.

(Not meant as an attack -- just an observation.)

I always wished I had time to code my own lightweight issue tracker...

No one is stopping you. :slight_smile:

Best,