codaset / Codaset / Blog / Site-wide Search, New Project Dashboard and Default Git Branch

posted by Joel Moss
6 months ago

Site-wide Search, New Project Dashboard and Default Git Branch

15 comments

Tags:

release

sphinx

git

Another late night of exciting hacking ended early this morning, with yet another weekly release.

Site-wide Search

Oft requested, and not rightly so; searching is now here, and working brilliantly thanks to the awesomeness that is Sphinx and Thinking Sphinx.

If you head on over the http://codaset.com/search or simply use the search box at the top of this page (if you are reading this on the site), you can search for anything on Codaset, and the busy little hamsters that live within the Sphinx full text search engine, will very quickly find all the projects, tickets, blog posts, wiki pages and users which match your search terms. Thanks to the genius that Sphinx, the search is insanely fast, and really very useful. Check it out now, you'll love it.

I will also be posting about how Codaset uses Sphinx and the Rails Thinking Sphinx plugin later this week.

New Project Dashboard

One criticism I received recently about project homepages on Codaset, was that they were too event orientated. The person who provided the feedback, felt that the most important part of a project - especially an open source project - was the code and the project's readme. He had a very valid point, and as I browsed around projects on Codaset, I began to see how limited the current project dashboard was. It was not immediately apparent what the project was about, how it worked and I how I could start using it.

So this release includes an all new tab based dashboard for your projects. If a project has a README file in the root of its master branch, then that readme will be served within the first tab, and as the first thing that the user sees. The project activity has it's own tab too, which gives it more room. And there are separate tabs for the project's tickets, network and community data.

This is a big change, and one which I think works brilliantly - even if I do say so myself ;)

Default Git branches

A few weeks ago, I forked qrush's GitReady project from Github to my account on Codaset (http://codaset.com/joelmoss/gitready), as I wanted to host a copy of this excellent Git resource on Codaset for you all to use. However, GitReady does not have a "master" branch, so Codaset coughed a little at this. So I promptly added an option within the project admin screen, to allow me to choose an alternative branch to use as my "master" or default branch that is shown by default.

This new feature was also pushed out last night, and is available to all projects. You should also noticed that the README support has improved, and recognises markdown and textile within your readme files, and then parses them accordingly. Take a look at my GitReady fork at http://codaset.com/joelmoss/gitready to see this in action.

Tom MacWright left a comment 6 months ago

I'd be interested to hear about plans of scalability here: the functionality of GitHub (minus it's insane case-tracking that sucks) is great for me, and Codaset will probably fit the bill really well too, but it's all about performance, that GitHub just doesn't have, and I'd be scared to switch to Codaset if it will get slow as it gets popular.

Joel Moss left a comment 6 months ago

Well right now, Codaset is very, very small, and is built by a team of one: me! Scalability has been a concern since day one, and more so since Github began their problems. But right now, Codaset is in beta, so is still in active development. But that also means that I have full control over how many people are using it.

At the end of the day, scalability can always be handled quite easily if you have the right resources available to you. I believe Github's problem is that they have never paid for their hosting. EngineYard has carried them for free since day one, and were never tasked with helping Github's scalability. If you get something for free, you are less likely to want to move away from that deal. I used to own and run a hosting company, and based on experience, I truly believe that had Github been paying for their hosting from the off, then they would have scaled much easier, and would not have experienced their current problems.

I am constantly thinking about the future of Codaset, and would love it if things really take off. But they are all "what if's" right now. But because of my experience with the hosting biz, I am fully aware of what is available to me, and how best to tackle scalability.

I thank you for your thoughts and concerns.