OTrunk IRC channel

There is an OTrunk IRC channel (public multi-user chat) for any topic related to OTrunk development hosted on the freenode.net IRC network.

In addition to communication between developers all the log messages for source code commits to the Concord Project's repository are also sent to the #otrunk IRC channel

A number of core OTrunk developers are often logged in to the channel however we often keep the window in the background. If you login to the channel and see that another developer is logged in you will more easily get thier attention if you use their displayed IRC username in your message. This will cause the IRC client to notify that user that a new message was directed to them.

Archives of conversations and messages sent to the #otrunk channel are available here: http://irclogs.dev.concord.org/otrunk/

Setting up IRC chat (Generic instructions)

1. Get an irc client for your system
2. Open your irc client and connect to the IRC server: irc.freenode.net
3. Join the chat room: otrunk
4. Register a nickname with freenode by following these instructions:
   What is the recommended way to set up my IRC nickname?
5. Setup your irc client to automatically register your nick when you login:
   What's the easiest way to identify to nickserv when I connect to freenode?

IRC Clients

Resources

• An IRC Tutorial
• freenode faq
• List of Internet Relay Chat commands
• irc channel administration

Using IRC Examples

In the screenshot below you can see that these developers are connected with an IRC client to the otrunk channel:

When I used Noah's nick knowuh in my message this Growl notification appeared on his Mac.

Growl_ is a generic notification system that can be installed on Mac OS X computers. The message appears for a short period of time if the notifying application is in the background and then fades away.

The other users logged in are bots of various types that either just listen to the channel or send messages to the channel when an event happens.

Sharing code in an IRC channel

Content shared directly in an IRC channel is usually shared in line-length chunks – it doesn't work well at all to paste in a multi-line code segment.

What does work very well are web services for easily sharing code segments which can be referenced with a url:

http://pastie.org/

Pastie is also integrated into the #otrunk IRC channel via the pastie bot. You can easily have Pastie send you a link in a private channel which Pastie will then send to the #otunk channel when you have completed editing it. Find out more about how to use this integration effectively here: http://pastie.org/help/.

http://gist.github.com/

Gist is integrated with github so if you have an account you'll be able to find and edit older gists. Github also supports forking other folks public gists so you could fork one code fragment, edit it with your suggestions and share that new gist.

Source code commit message are also sent to the #otrunk channel

Commit messages to the OTrunk, DIY, and SDS Subversion repositories are also sent to the #otrunk channel using the external web application cia.vc.

A message sent to the #otrunk irc channel from the CIA bot might look like this:

CIA-63: ==> otrunk :: aunger * r16611 /trunk/common/java/otrunk/otrunk-examples/Overlays/overlay-wrapper-activity.otml
http://trac.cosmos.concord.org/projects/changeset/16611
CIA-63	A test activity for the on-the-fly saving of changes to an overlay.

That log message sent to IRC indicates:

1. the commit was to the main CC project repo (which is called otrunk here)
2. the commit was by the user aunger
3. it was svn rev 16611
4. only one file was updated: overlay-wrapper-activity.otml
5. a link to the Trac visualization of the changeset is provided
6. the log message that describes the commit

Example of IRC conversations

Many types of conversations can take place on the channel. Here are some examples of longer forms:

Conversations about how to get OTrunk working in Eclipse:

• otrunk/2008-10-08: Stephen Bannasch and Chad Dorsey
• otrunk/2008-11-23: Stephen Bannasch and Ali Ajellu

Technical and pedagogic details and design about a creating a new OT1DMotionModel for LOOPS:

• otrunk/2009-01-06: Stephen Bannasch and Aaron Unger

Administrative details

• irc channel administration
• irc channel integration with SCMs

notes

Stephen Bannasch
I use Colloquy on the Mac: http://colloquy.info/
I also highly recommend installing Growl this will coordinate notifications from all programs on your mac.
I registered: 'stepheneb' which is the same nick I use many other places

Aaron Unger
I registered: 'aunger' and 'psndcsrv', which is the same nick I use many other places. I think 'aunger' is my default.

Shengyao Wang
I registered: 'sywang'.

irc_dialog1.png (image/png)
growl_notificiation.jpg (image/jpeg)