mhjort / blastr

Audible information radiator for commit messages

Blastr, the audible commit radiator¶ ↑

See the project website at Rubyforge to file a bug report or submit a feature request.

DESCRIPTION:¶ ↑

Blastr observes a version control repository for commits and makes audible announcements out of the commit messages. It currently supports Subversion, Git, and Mercurial on Linux and OS X, possibly on other UNIX-like operating systems as well.

FEATURES:¶ ↑

Blastr can observe a “branch” (identified by a URL) by polling the repository for a commit log. Any new commits will be announced. When starting Blastr, it can be told to start observing from a given revision or let it figure out the latest revision and start from that.

The supported version control systems include:

• Subversion

• Git

• Mercurial

The supported operating systems (for running Blastr) include:

• Mac OS X

• Linux (requires the eSpeak or Festival text-to-speech utility)

SYNOPSIS:¶ ↑

Subversion:

blastr http://svn.acme.com/foo/trunk

blastr http://svn.acme.com/foo/trunk 123

Git:

blastr git://github.com/lkoskela/blastr.git

blastr git://github.com/lkoskela/blastr.git e528509fddd57194f1c497ce6583f6869e8ed62c

Mercurial:

blastr hg:http://hg.serpentine.com/tutorial/hello

blastr hg:http://hg.serpentine.com/tutorial/hello 2

REQUIREMENTS:¶ ↑

Blastr depends on the git gem (>= 1.0.5). This dependency should be installed automatically when you install Blastr.

Blastr also depends on the standard command line client for the source repository in question being in the user’s PATH. For example, in order to observe a Subversion repository the “svn” executable needs to be in PATH. For Git, the “git” executable needs to be in PATH. For Mercurial, “hg” needs to be in PATH.

Furthermore, Blastr needs a text-to-speech utility for making those commit messages audible. On Mac OS X Blastr uses the built-in “say” utility so Mac users don’t need to worry about this. On Linux, Blastr can utilize Festival and eSpeak.

INSTALL:¶ ↑

First, install Blastr and its gem dependencies:

sudo gem install blastr

Then, download and install your chosen version control system’s toolset and make sure it’s on your PATH when running Blastr.

Then, if applicable, download and install a text-to-speech utility for your platform.

KNOWN PROBLEMS AND GOTCHAS:¶ ↑

• Blastr currently does a full clone operation on every poll for source repositories that don’t support a purely remote operation (like “svn log [URL]”). This may take a while if your repository is big.

• Blastr doesn’t treat non-ASCII characters in commit messages too well. In other words, the developers make no promises whatsoever regarding Blastr’s behavior when encountering weird Norwegian scribble.

• Some folks might want to monitor multiple repositories or multiple paths or branches within a repository at the same time. Currently, this is technically possible by running two instances of Blastr in parallel but every now and then those two instances will speak over each other (i.e. all you can hear is cacophony).

LICENSE:¶ ↑

(The BSD License)

Copyright © 2009, Lasse Koskela All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

• Neither the name of this software nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.