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<DIV>On behalf of the many people working on the latest version of the School
Server Community Edition I am announcing the release of 0.5.0 RC 1 for
testing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>To get started (assuming you have git setup):</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>git clone <A
href="mailto:git@github.com:XSCE/xsce.git">git@github.com:XSCE/xsce.git</A></DIV>
<DIV>cd xsce</DIV>
<DIV>git checkout 0.5.0-rc.1</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Then look at the docs section of the git repo.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The focus of release 0.5 is making it <STRONG>easier</STRONG> for
contributors to participate. This has been accomplished in three
ways:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1) <STRONG>Better Documentation</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The documentation concerning installation, configuration, and usage has
been greatly expanded and clarified. This includes information on
alternative networking configurations and urls and ports to exercise the various
services included. There are also an increased number of troubleshooting
tips.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The documentation is located at <A
href="https://github.com/XSCE/xsce/tree/master/docs">https://github.com/XSCE/xsce/tree/master/docs</A>.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2) <STRONG>Relocation of Source to Github</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>While the source code for the School Server has always been public, moving
XSCE to github encourages a workflow that is becoming standard in the open
source software industry wherein a git repository is cloned and contributor work
on their own branches and then create pull requests which allow code to be
rolled up to the master copy. Github facilitates this work flow and the
School Server community has adopted it.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The XSCE project is located at <A
href="https://github.com/XSCE/xsce">https://github.com/XSCE/xsce</A>.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>3) <STRONG>Use of Ansible for Installation</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The XSCE project has been restructured around ansible playbooks. This has a
number of benefits. First, it allows independent developers to work on
their individual contributions to the project (mostly) without tripping over
other developers. To further this aim an aggregate playbook 'addons' has
been created as a home for installing the playbooks of these individuals.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Secondly, the effort to perform a testing cycle is greatly reduced.
Because ansible installs from a git clone it is not necessary to create a new
rpm and install it in its entirety. A simple git pull gets the latest
version for testing and this version can be ones own branch or the master.
Ansible tags have been used widely throughout the playbooks so that it is now
much easier to test a subset of functionality rather than having to test the
entire install on each iteration.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Ansible is documented at <A
href="http://www.ansibleworks.com/">http://www.ansibleworks.com/</A>.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In addition to making it easier for a broader range of contributors, XSCE
0.5 includes the following:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Two Flavors</STRONG> - There are gateway and non-gateway flavors of
XSCE. The installation attempts to determine the mode in which the server
will operate based on attached network devices.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Platforms</STRONG> - XSCE has been tested on XO 1.5, 1.75, and 4 as
well as on i386 and x64.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Not included in the Release Candidate - full generation of an rpm from
ansible. This is still experimental at this point.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Testing</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Please help test this and file bugs at <A
href="https://github.com/XSCE/xsce/issues?state=open">https://github.com/XSCE/xsce/issues?state=open</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000">Tim</DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>