rubyworks is a full rails stack put together also by thoughtworks. this time it’s all open source. it features haproxy (supposed to be much faster and light weight than apache_mod_balancer) as load balancer, mongrel as application server, monit and runit for monitoring and controlling mongrel, mysql/postgrs/oracle ruby bindings for database connectivity and also bindings for ferret, libxml, hpricot and rmagick.

everything is nicely packaged as rpms and debian packages so it can easily be installed within 5 minutes (it really works). even better, the packages at the same time pretend to be ruby gems, so you can safely install other debian packages *and* gems that depend on one of the libraries provided by rubyworks.

now we had already set up a cluster of 6 servers for autoki with everything set up more or less perfectly so why would we need rubyworks? answer: to steal the config files for runit/monit and haproxy. our mongrel setup has always been a bit shaky, especially when it came to restarting the mongrels after a deployment. after using the rubyworks setup with runit now everything is stable. (btw runit can run and supervise any process in *nix and is ready to be the successor of the old init which is used by most linux distros to start up all the processes. one advantage is that it starts all processes at once instead of piece by piece, plus runit handles putting a process in the background and keeping it alive there, something mongrel is especially bad at).

Mingle is the new agile project management tool from thoughtworks studios. it’s not open source but it’s free for up to five users - sounds like a fair offer to me. for everyone who thinks differently - it’s written in ruby and deployed using jruby, but the class file decompiler is part of the jdk. i wonder how long they can actually make people pay for it. hello open source business models?

anyway, when thilo installed mingle from one of the cds given out to all conference attendees we first were a bit disappointed. after the installation you basically get a nice looking but totally empty screen leaving you with not much more than a big question mark over your head. we didn’t have much time then so that was it for mingle until i attended the corresponding session where things got a bit clearer: mingle is a completely customizable tool. the only thing that’s hard coded are users and cards/stories/tickets/you-name-it and that everything is a wiki page - the rest is up to you. the main features are these:

• define your own attributes for your cards: you can add new attributes to your cards and in place edit all of them - auto complete shows you a list of values that have been entered into that field before
• filter cards by any combination of attributes and save the filter, after which you can add it as a tab on the top
• card transitions - create a set of transitions where a card with a specific state can be transitioned to another state, e.g. from status open to status accepted and assigned to a person. this enables the project team to map their work flows into mingle
• create graphs and tables from the cards - multiple graph types are supported for easy tracking of iteration progress or number of bugs etc.
• project templates - so you don’t have to sit in front of a blank screen as we did

mingle looks like it could become a really cool tool. after all, trac is getting a bit boring after all these years(?) and we’ve actually stopped using its ticketing system, because it wasn’t easy enough to change it to our needs.

Ich benutze seit Jahren Trac für Projektverwaltung und Dokumentation. Bugs und Requirements zu den Tickets, Milestones anlegen, ein paar custom Reports, alles andere ins Wiki. Alles ganz schön und gut, aber das Gefühl, dass da noch mehr geht, wollte nie so richtig weichen.

Ein Tool, das agile Prozesse direkt unterstützt oder gar .. quasi einfordert. Das mir all die Zahlen liefert, die ich schon immer haben wollte. Ein Tool mit eingebauter Planning Game-Unterstützung. Was auch immer.

Und nun kündigen ausgerechnet Thoughtworks, die Altmeister des Agilen, so ein Tool an. Und es soll Mingle heissen. Außer Werbegefasel gibt’s noch nix zu sehen, aber ich bin hochgradig gespannt.