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App-bif-0.1.0_25
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/ bif

NAME

bif - distributed project management tool

VERSION

0.1.0_25 (2014-06-14)

SYNOPSIS

  bif COMMAND [...]

STATUS

Bif is still under active development. Much of the functionality is missing, documentation is incomplete (or in some cases ahead of the implementation) and test coverage is lacking and/or failing. DO NOT USE BIF FOR REAL DATA!

DESCRIPTION

Bif is a project management tool with a command-line interface. It helps you track tasks, issues and bugs using a local database, exchanging updates with remote databases on demand. The tool has several features of interest to distributed project teams:

Offline Operation

Many bif actions work offline; you can create and update tasks and issues while disconnected from the network.

Inter-project Cooperation

Bif issues (and tasks) can be linked with (or copied to) multiple projects, mirroring the inter-project relationships that exist in the real world.

This document is the bif manual and includes design background, terminology, general concepts and a complete usage guide. Those who are impatient to get started may prefer to begin with one of the following:

bif-doc-intro

A very quick hands-on introduction to bif.

bif-doc-faq

A list of common questions and answers.

bif-doc-index

An overview of every piece of bif documententation for both users and developers.

Reference documents for bif commands have titles like bif-command-name, which can also be displayed by running bif doc command name.

Command Structure

Bif commands are structured where possible the same way an English speaker describes actions, verb followed by subject. The entire set of bif commands and their arguments are listed below:

    bif doc [COMMAND...]
    bif drop ID
    bif export PATH... HUB
    bif import PATH... HUB
    bif init [DIRECTORY]
    bif list ITEMS
        bif list hubs
        bif list issue-status PATH
        bif list issues
        bif list project-status PATH
        bif list projects [STATUS...]
        bif list task-status PATH
        bif list tasks
        bif list topics
    bif log [ITEM]
        bif log ID
        bif log hub NAME
        bif log issue ID
    bif new ITEM
        bif new issue [TITLE...]
        bif new project [PATH] [TITLE...]
        bif new task [TITLE...]
    bif push ID PATH [HUB]
    bif register LOCATION
    bif reply ID.UID
    bif show ITEM
        bif show ID
        bif show hub NAME
        bif show project ID [HUB]
    bif sql [STATEMENT...]
    bif sync
    bif update ID [STATUS]
    bif upgrade [DIRECTORY]

In addition to the above commands a couple of useful aliases are created by default:

    bif l          # bif list projects run
    bif ls         # bif list topics --status open
    bif lss        # bif list topics --status stalled

Global Options

The following options are common to all commands:

--debug, -D

Turn on debugging statements, which are included in the stdout stream.

--help, -h

Print a full usage message and exit. Some arguments and options are only shown when this option is used; a normal usage/error message may keep some rarely used options hidden.

--no-pager

Do not pipe a command's output to a pager.

Command Interaction

Input

Some arguments and options not supplied on the command line are prompted for. An editor based on the $EDITOR or $VISUAL environment variables may also be invoked for certain types of input.

Output

Normal output is printed to stdout or sometimes paged with less(1) when stdout is connected to a terminal. Error messages are sent to stderr.

Connectivity

The only commands that involve network communication are register, import, export, and sync. Everything else is a local action.

Exit Status

An exit value of zero indicates success.

DESIGN BACKGROUND

Communication is a core component of project management. Email, a decentralized system, often plays a major role

a part in fulfilling the communication requirements of projects up to a certain scale. Tasks, issues, feature requests and the like can exist in multiple inboxes as shared conversation topics. Throughout a topic's lifetime we want to assign it various kinds of meta-data (status, priority, due date, etc), but this information must be stored either in our own memories or using an external tool. It is partly because of this lack of ability to deal with structured meta-data that email on its own doesn't do the job.

Managing data is exactly what relational databases are designed for, and bif takes advantage of SQLite for this purpose. A database schema helps ensure the integrity of the data, and relevant and insightful queries can be created using the full power of the underlying engine. SQLite gives us fulltime local reporting and data modification - a wonderful independence from the network when we need it.

But a database on its own is also not a tool for communication. SQL in its various implementations generally provides no built-in functionality for the efficient exchange of updates between repositories. Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) on the other hand provide a useful model for the efficient tracking and exchange of updates between repositories. The DVCS ability of mapping textual differences to tree structures unfortunately doesn't translate well to row-based relational data sets.

Bif therefore is an attempt at applying some DVCS princples to a standard Create, Retrieve, Update and Delete (CRUD) database application. The end goal is a distributed communication system that carries both conversations and structured meta-data. The finer details of the advantages and trade-offs with regards the bif design can be found in bif-doc-design(3).

TERMINOLOGY

Repository

A bif repository is simply a configuration file and an SQLite database inside a directory named .bif. All bif commands find the "current" repository by searching upwards through the file-system for such a directory. The database contains the history, status and relationships of a set of topics. The terms repository and database are often used interchangeably.

Topic

Topic is is a catch-all term for any task, issue, bug or feature etc which has a conversation (the history) plus associated meta data (status). Topics are identified by an integer ID, which is unique to the local repository and/or project. The status associated with a topic is can sometimes be project specific.

Project

A project is also considered a topic, but one that comes with some extra functionality. The key property of a project is that it is a container for grouping together other topics and the status they can have. Multiple projects can be managed within a repository, and can be defined hierarchically. Projects are identified by their path (name) which includes the parent's path.

Hub

A bif hub consists of one or more repositories that act as synchronisation points for exchanging project activities. Hub repositories are usually located on remote servers and accessed through a ssh(1) tunnel. A hub can be referred to by its globally unique) name (typically an organisation's domain name) after it has been registered with the local repository.

TUTORIAL

Initialization

Initializing A Repository

A bif repository is created with the init command. The default location is in the current directory.

    #!sh
    bif init
    # Database initialised (v99) in /home/mark/src/bif/.bif/

You do not have to remember this location if you are working in a subdirectory as it will be found automatically. An initialized repository always starts out empty; projects must be manually imported or created.

Initializing Your Identity

Some bif commands record the identity of the person making the change - i.e. the owner of the repository. Rather than ask for this information each time, the user's name and email address are prompted for the first time bif init is run.

Creating Topics

Creating Projects

The new project command asks for a project path (like a name for identification), a title, and an initial comment. That information can be given on the command line if desired, otherwise it will be prompted for.

    #!sh
    bif new project

    # Path: [] todo
    # Title: [] Things to do
    # An editor is invoked for the comment

Projects can be nested by defining them with a parent path and a "/":

    #!sh
    bif new project

    # Path: [] todo/today
    # Title: [] Things to do today
    # An editor is invoked for the comment

Apart from visual organisation, the main impact of having nested projects is that child projects are included when importing or exporting. Also, child projects will not be displayed in list commands if the parent project will not be displayed.

A project has three different types of status associated with it. Project status is for the status of the project itself. Task and issue status is obviously for the status of tasks and issues associated with the project. New projects can be created using different status templates, given specific initial status, or copied/forked from other projects. See bif-new-project(1) for details.

Creating Tasks and Issues

Tasks and issues are created similarly to projects, with a summary and a comment. As they exist only in the context of a project they may also require a project path if more than one project exists in the repository.

    #!sh
    bif new task

    # Project: [todo] todo/today
    # Title: Take out the rubbish
    # editor invoked - describe the task in more detail

A task or an issue, like a project, is created with the default status for that type according to the project. An different initial status can be set with the --status option:

    #!sh
    bif new issue --status needinfo

    # Project: [todo] todo/today
    # Title: Don't feel like taking out the rubbish
    # editor invoked - describe the task in more detail

A comment can be provided directly with the --message option if desired instead of having the editor invoked.

Template Projects

Do you have repeatable projects?

Retrieving Information

Tasks and issues can be viewed, commented on and updated with the appropriate commands:

Updating Topics

You can add comments to a topic with the update command.

    bif update ID [--message MESSAGE]

If the --message option is not used an editor will be invoked. A second argument can also be used to change the status of the topic, and a --title option can be used to modify the topic summary.

    bif update ID [STATUS] [--title TITLE]

Comments on a topic can also be nested. That is, you can reply to a previous update (or a previous reply).

    bif reply UPDATE_ID [--message MESSAGE]

The UPDATE_ID argument is actually a full ID.UPDATE_ID value that you see with the log command. A reply cannot modify a topics status or title.

Editing

There is no mechanism for editing available in bif at this time. Be as wild in your comments as you like, but as with the rest of the internet, once your changes have been shared, you most likely can't alter them or take them back. First rule of commenting is: take a deep breath first.

Deletion

Of course, even after taking a deep breath you may anyway make a change to your repository that you didn't mean to. You are not alone; this happens to all of us. As long as you have not already synchronised your changes with a hub, they can be removed[1].

The drop command can be used to remove a particular comment, or an entire topic.

[1] There is nothing magical or otherwise to stop you from dropping any change. However you will find that as soon as you re-synchronise with a hub that has those changes they will return to haunt you like the undead.

Collaboration Via A Hub

So far we have covered local-only operations, which are sufficient for managing simple, completely self-contained projects. However the real value of bif comes from its collaboration capabilities.

Hub Signup/Authentication

As previously mentioned, a remote repository known as a hub is the mechanism for exchanging updates with others. You can either self host a hub on a server you control, or you can use a commercial provider. Regardless of who is hosting, the communication with the server is via ssh, for which you will want your own ssh keypair.

Read the ssh-keygen(1) manpage for how to create a keypair, and ssh-copy-id(1) for how to transfer the public key to your own server. Commercial providers will probably use another method (such as the bifhub(1) tool) for transfering the public key during their signup process.

Registering A Hub

The reason for registering with a hub is to obtain the list of projects hosted there.

    #!sh
    bif register my.org@provider.com

By default the my.org part of the provider address can be used as the hub name in other commands. To view the list of projects we give the hub alias to the list projects command:

    #!sh
    bif list projects my.org

Importing Projects

If you are joining an established team with a pre-existing hub then you can import any of their projects into your local repository straight away. The import command has the general form:

    bif import PATH... HUB

So to import the stable project from the hub located at bifax.org/bif we run:

    #!sh
    bif import stable bif://bifax.org/bif

Importing a project is a one-time activity. Updates to a project that occur after an import are exchanged with the sync command (described below).

Exporting Projects

The inverse of import is export which has the same general form:

    bif export PATH... HUB

So to mirror the todo project from the local repository to the hub located at bif@bifax.org (which we registered as "bif") we run this:

    #!sh
    bif export todo bif@bifax.org

As with importing, doing an export is a one-off activity; further updates are exchanged with the sync command.

Synchronising Updates

Even after you have imported or exported a project, updates will not be exchanged until you run the sync command.

    bif sync [ID] [HUB]

By default all topics will be synchronised to all relevant hubs, but you can limit that as desired.

    #!sh
    bif sync unstable   # ignore all other projects

[TODO: describe the merge algorithm for meta data]

Inter-Project Cooperation

Collaborating Internally on Issues

An issue is not necessarily only associated with just one project. Consider what happens when a software team makes a new stable release from their development version. This is effectively an internal fork - a new project that kicks off as the first project continues along the same path. At the time of the fork both projects will have exactly the same set of issues. From that point on the issue status may diverge based on project activities, but the issues they have in common have themselves not inherently changed.

The new project command lets us deal with the above situation. The --fork option can be used to define an existing project from which the new projects issues will be derived from.

    #!sh
    bif new project v2 --fork devel

There are also occasions when an issue reported in a project is actually in the domain of another project, possibily managed via a different organisation (and therefore a different hub). This can happen when a project has external dependencies, also seen regularly with software.

Bif therefore has the ability to manually copy/link an issue to other projects. In contrast to a one-off copy/duplicate however, comments made on the issue in one project will propagate to the other projects, as if there was only a single issue, which is in fact the case. The push command is the way to ask another project for support on a particular issue:

    bif push ID PATH [HUB]

The push command asks for (or can be given) an update message the same way that the update command does:

    #!sh
    bif push 13 todo2 --message "Can you help us with this?"

As was mentioned in the introduction, issue status are tracked on a per-project basis. That means one project can consider the issue solved, and another project can still consider the issue to be blocking. The show command reveals the details.

Collaborating Externally on Issues

You probably noticed above that the push command also takes a HUB argument. Bif makes it possible under certain conditions to push an issue to non-local projects hosted on a hub.

    #!sh
    bif push 16 project3 other.hub

This command is local - the change will be propagated during the next sync call.

Task Collaboration?!?

It does not make sense to distribute tasks across projects the same way issues can be. A single task cannot have multiple status: it is either done or it is not, regardless of which projects are interested in the outcome.

There are however reasons for migrating tasks from one project to another. The obvious one is simply that they can be defined (by accident or circumstance) in the wrong place. The default push action on a task therefore results in a move.

Alternatively the --copy option to push does what it says on the label, which can be useful if you have a template task in a project that you regularly want to use in other projects. Once again however, new project probably has more interesting mechanisms for copying template-style projects.

How projects may track the outcome of a remote task with bif is still to be determined.

Administration

New versions of bif will necessarily require changes to the database structure, and possibly the data itself. The upgrade command exists to advance the database status to match that required by the bif software version. It is safe (but pointless) to run upgrade when the versions already match. When and how this command is run should be described in the release notes of newer versions of bif.

One other command which is more about the repository than project management is sql. This is more of a developer or debugging aide for querying the database directly. This is needed as the bif software architecture prevents the SQLite command-line tool sqlite3 from working for some statements.

FILES

.bif/config

Per-repository configuration file.

.bif/db.sqlite3

Per-repository SQLite database.

$HOME/.config/bif-user/config

Global configuration file.

SEE ALSO

bifhub(1), bifsync(1)

SUPPORT

Bif is community supported software, and the community expects (and should offer) respectful communication with all of its members.

Website:

http://bifax.org/bif/

Code Repository:

git://bifax.org/bif.git/

Issue Tracker:

Doesn't exit yet.

Mailing List:

Subscribe via http://www.freelists.org/list/bif-devel and then send mail to <bif-devel@freelists.org>.

If you have an issue with bif please first make the effort to read the documentation and/or search for an answer to your issue in the internet. If you are still stuck send us a message as if you were answering the following questions:

  • What does bif show VERSION print?

  • What are you trying to achieve?

  • What (output) did you expect (to see)?

  • What (output) actually occured?

We will most likely need to ask for more information from you. You can probably speed things along by already running your commands with the --debug flag turned on.

AUTHOR

Mark Lawrence <nomad@null.net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2013-2014 Mark Lawrence <nomad@null.net>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.