As I’ve ported ClockingIT to use Sphinx/Ultrasphinx instead of ferret/acts_as_ferret, I figured I’d give jruby a shot to see how it compared to MRI when running ClockingIT. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but the reliance on ferret/acts_as_ferret for search has made it impossible to do until now, as native C extensions don’t work with jruby.

The test machine is an Intel Core2 Quad @ 2.4Ghz with 8GB memory and SATA2 Raid5 disks running ArchLinux x86_64 and a 2.6.27 linux kernel. The benchmark consists of 23 different web pages from ClockingIT, requested 100 times each, using real data from my own hosted instance.

MRI 1.8.7 p72 / mysql / mongrel

Initial run: 6m46.396s
 Second run: 6m43.450s

jruby 1.1.5 –server / jdbcmysql / mongrel

Initial run: 6m8.400s
 Second run: 5m20.322s

jruby 1.1.6RC1 –server / jdbcmysql / mongrel

Initial run: 5m50.992s
 Second run: 4m59.823s

MRI 1.8.7 p72 / postgresql / mongrel

Initial run: 7m21.408s
 Second run: 7m17.608s

jruby 1.1.5 –server / jdbcpostgresql / mongrel

Initial run: 6m37.021s
 Second run: 5m55.811s

The PostgreSQL is mostly just there for comparison, and is not nearly as tweaked or optimized as the MySQL version, but it contains the same data.

Em minha jornada em busca de mais conhecimentos na área de Gestão de projetos, encontrei também esta ótima aplicação feita em Ruby on Rails (Powered by FreeBSD \m/) chamada ClockingIT.

Encontrei referências sobre esse projeto inicialmente no BR-Linux e no log4dev que fizeram um bom texto introdutório sobre a plataforma.

ClockingIT funciona como uma ferramenta colaborativa online, onde você se registra no site deles e faz tudo online. Podem ser integrados ao projeto outros usuários, e todos monitorados, cada um com seus acessos, o que torna a ferramenta ainda mais produtiva.

Tanto para uso pessoal quanto para corporativo, creio que ClockingIT é uma ótima opção de graça para quem quer manter seu projeto na linha!

I’ve integrated TinyMCE when editing Wiki pages and Notes. This means that you don’t have to muck about with Textile/Markdown to add formatting to your pages, as a lot of people have problems understanding how that works and getting the formatting right.

I’ve also added support for wrapping code and such in <pre></pre> which turns off all WikiWords, autolinkification and task linking.

There’s been some changes to the GANTT view, and you can now drag a task-bar or milestone indicator to change the due dates.

All changes done to the chart are kept temporary, until you either save the new schedule or revert back to the last saved state. Saving the schedule creates Acitivity Log entries, and send out email notifications if you want and have those enabled.

Editing a task outside of the GANTT view will reset the temporary data to the new values, if they change.

I’ve had a go at making the ajax GANTT chart respect dependencies, which turned out to be quite tricky as this is happening on a webpage, and I can’t really spend much processor-time laying it all out.

It seems to work just fine on my test-cases, but I’m sure I haven’t thought of everything.

I’ve added a small auto-saving text box to the right menu, which pops up whenever you’re working on something. Whatever you enter in there will be logged to your current work log, so it’s even easier to remember what you’ve done.

When I added translations to ClockingIT I went with a really simple system where all the strings to be translated are defined along with their translations in a file, with one file per language. This worked great for initially translating the whole thing to a new language, but it’s broken down as I’ve added more and more languages, changed strings, and added new strings.

To get some new text translated these days, I’ve had to add the strings to 13 different files, and contact 13 different people to do update the translations, some of which don’t have Git and need to have the complete file emailed back and forth.

No more! New strings are now automatically added to a table in the database, and I’ve added a simple form to update the translation of your language. I’ve also added a couple of rake tasks to dump/restore this information to/from the normal language files so you have a backup in case someone makes a mistake.

I’ve been running ClockingIT for quite a while now, and at some point something was introduced which made the memory usage grow and grow over time. I installed God to monitor and restart my Mongrels whenever they grew too big, but I can’t say I’ve been very comfortable with that solution.

Then, when I bought a new server to run on, I figured I’d get a bit more RAM and go 64bit to be able to use it. And found out that Ruby uses ~ 2x the memory, due to addresses in every object taking double the space.

I took some time to look for a better solution, and found something which works really great for me.

Enter Thin, Slim Attributes, Erubis and a Ruby GC patch:

Setup                        Time   VIRT    RES
-----------------------------------------------
MRI/Mongrel             0m37.607s 181660 120720
MRI/Mongrel/Erubis      0m37.536s 181660 120920
MRI/Mongrel/Slim        0m36.399s 181672 119300
MRI/Mongrel/Erubis/Slim 0m36.020s 182696 120064

GC/Mongrel              0m37.416s 177560 119268
GC/Mongrel/Erubis       0m37.260s 172440 114484
GC/Mongrel/Slim         0m35.024s 164260 105656
GC/Mongrel/Erubis/Slim  0m35.049s 163236 104656

MRI/Thin                0m36.828s 172624 111512
MRI/Thin/Erubis         0m36.878s 175696 114724
MRI/Thin/Slim           0m35.457s 175708 113532
MRI/Thin/Erubis/Slim    0m35.087s 176732 114700

GC/Thin                 0m36.208s 166476 108888
GC/Thin/Erubis          0m36.121s 166476 108724
GC/Thin/Slim            0m33.854s 155224  97060
GC/Thin/Erubis/Slim     0m33.832s 155224  97080

Keep in mind that this is on a 64bit platform, so a 32bit version would use ~ half the memory.

I’m getting a lot fewer restarts of my webservers with this setup, which can only be a good thing. It’s also been rock solid after ironing out a couple of problems with Slim Attributes.

I’ve had a bit of fun lately, adding a way to easily see your schedule and make changes. It’s not a strict gantt chart like MS Project uses, but rather an automatic one which shows remaining work as time passes and work is logged.

Whenever an estimate or due date is changed, the chart is automatically updated and re-scheduled to try and accomodate your wanted schedule.

If multiple people are assigned to the same task, it’ll be scheduled for when everyone has time free. This will probably be possible to specify with an option later on.

I’m also not sure if filtering the list makes a lot of sense, as you’d end up with either a bogus schedule (consider only the shown tasks) or strange gaps in the schedule (occupied by hidden tasks).

Hope you find it as usefull as I do.

As I’m at home with my young daughter these days on paternity leave, I needed something to do while she had her naps in the mornings. I really liked the idea of a Facebook-ish messaging system, which someone suggested on the forums, and started last Tuesday.

On Saturday, it was ready for launch, and is now live.

Total implementation time, 9.5 hours including styling and fiddling with IE6.

I’ve started working on making ClockingIT a lot more customizable, as it’s too rigid and geared towards software development at the moment.

Giving you control over the task types, as well as making most attributes / fields of a task customizable would give you a lot of flexibility for how you work. Adding a flexible and customizable workflow would really give you a system where you can work exactly like you want.

My local development branch (living in a git branch at the moment) is moving along nicely, and I’ve got support for custom task types, custom text fields and select boxes. I’ve still got loads to do before this is anywhere near done, but it’s coming along nicely.

The hardest part will be to integrate all of this flexibility into the browsing/filtering/views while not making the interface overly complicated and making sure I don’t forget any hardcoded properties from before this big change.

Another challenge will be to make the admin interface for all of this, and keep it simple enough to use. I’ll also have to provide project templates now, as configuring a new project take a lot longer than before if you have to start from scratch each time.

I’m also a tiny bit concerned about increased rendering time, as I need to do more database lookups per task than before, but by introducing caching again it should end up being faster than it currently is.

I’ve been trying git locally for the past few weeks, and I must say I’ve grown quite fond of the easy branching and stellar merging. As ClockingIT doesn’t run on Windows anyways, I guess there’s not much stopping me from switching from darcs to git.

.. after committing my (somewhat) large changes, the whatsnew and diff commands went back to normal speeds.

Although, now that Git has git add --interactive the main reason for staying with Darcs seems to have disappeared. I’ve managed to import my Darcs repository into Git via tailor, and will try to use both Darcs and Git for a while to see which one I end up liking the best.

time darcs whatsnew -ls
real    3m35.948s

time git status
real    0m0.450s

I’ve added and modified a few hundred files, but still..

I’ve been busy the last couple of days, and it’s now possible to collapse/expand a client on the Overview page, Browse supports task grouping and sorting, users can have custom avatars, and both Overview and Browse have gotten a speedup.

In my case, Overview went from 1.7 seconds to 0.7 seconds, and Browse from 1.2 to 0.5 seconds. Quite nice for an evenings worth of optimizing (mostly :include but also a few TimeZone fixes, and rewriting so I use user.project_id.to_i == 0 instead of user.project.nil?

For some reason, Darcs has started insisting that I’ve removed / emptied out some files that most certainly are there. This happened after I moved a plugin temporarily to disable it, then did some records, then moved the plugin back to re-enable it.

And now, I’m told the plugin is gone every time I record some changes. Git is still doing the right thing and didn’t get confused at all.

I guess it’s time to switch soon.

I’ve integrated Beast into ClockingIT, allowing for installation/company/project-wide discussions. Looks great, and seems to work without any problems. I did have to munge it a bit to make it work with my current model, but no major surgery was needed. I also had to add some more security to limit regular administrators from messing with the public forums.

Anyways, here’s a simple screenshot from my development version.

I’ve been mostly happy with my choice of Darcs for ClockingIT source control, even though it’s gotten slower and slower. But, today I ended up with a broken repository after aborting a conflicting pull. That’s not supposed to happen ever. So, I’ve converted the whole history to Git with Tailor, and am going to try using that for a while before I possibly swap.

I just need to wrap my head around all the git commands and try not to break things too often.

Last weekend I sat down and implemented iCalendar feeds for your projects. There are several to select from, both personal and for all people in your ClockingIT company.

After finding the icalendar gem for Ruby and reading a bit of documentation, implementation was a breeze. What took most time was finding an export format that contained correct information so that Google Calendar could parse it. It seems that if you use an end time of less then an hour, Google Calendar sets it to one hour, but if you specify a duration it gets it right. The gem also output the wrong tag for a VTODO percentage, but that was easily fixable with a gsub.

The end result is that Google Calendar now polls my feeds once a day, and I get a nice view of the work I log and the tasks I close. And as I split different information into different feeds, I can filter the view easily to see just the information I’m looking for.

It’s been a while since I’ve written any thing here, so here’s a short run down of what’s happened to ClockingIT lately.

• Tasks can have dependencies
• Tasks can repeat daily, weekly, monthly, on a specific day, on a specific day of a specific week, or after a number of days
• Files are no longer stored in the database, making for easier backups and allowing for larger uploads
• Uploaded logos are resized if they’re too large
• Some of the filtering select boxes are merged into a single one, with highlights and indenting to easily find what you’re looking for

It’s all committed to my darcs repository, so feel free to test before I deploy in a couple of days.

After promising to open up the source for ClockingIT for quite a while, I finally found the time and energy to do it this weekend. There is now a public Darcs repository available for all interested parties. Have a look at the wiki if you’re interested.

It’s not hard to get it up and running, but I’m looking to automate the installation process a bit before creating an archive and offering up a general download.

Feel free to attempt to install it on your own servers, and let me know if you run into any problems. Patches and contributions are most welcome, too – I really want ClockingIT to keep improving all the time.

The reports rewrite reached a usable state this weekend, and I deployed the first version of the new reports system yesterday. It’s turned out to be quite flexible, and also sports CSV downloads for those Excel moments.

.. has gotten a makover as well. After meaning to clean it up for quite a while, I finally had both the motivation and energy to get it done. This will also go live on the next deployment, which will be soon unless some new problems surface during further testing.

Next up will be some kind of schedule/calendar, showing task and milestone due dates, and probably some simple event registration. We’ll see what happens once I get started.

I’ve added support for assigning multiple users to a task, which means that the task will show for everyone assigned when viewing their tasks. This is already being used on my install at work, and I expect the change to go live after a couple of more days of testing.

There will also be a new report, Users by Date, when I deploy the next time. This report lets you easily see how much time people have logged for a date range, and you can easily see who needs more to do, or who is overworked.