Tuleap Overview =========================== Tuleap Home Page ---------------------------- Tuleap Homepage is the global welcome page of the forge. It aims at helping new users to create an account, join or create a project. It gives also activity streams and news of the hosted projects. You can customize some areas with your own logo for example .. figure:: ../images/screenshots/sc_homepage.png :align: center :alt: The Tuleap HomePage :name: The Tuleap HomePage The Tuleap HomePage Main Menu ---------- The Tuleap main menu is a permanent piece of information that you'll always see on your screen wherever you are in the Tuleap site. Its content can vary according to where you and who you are. In other words it is context sensitive. Let's take 2 examples: - If you are visiting the Tuleap site as an anonymous user the upper part of the menu invites you to login or to create a new account whereas if you are logged in you'll be given access to other functions like Logout, Account Maintenance, Personal Page, etc. - Similarly if you decide to visit a given project hosted on Tuleap, the menu at the top of the screen will also show you the list of services available for this project. In the rest of this section we only review those items that are permanent and context independent. Other menu items are described later in the document in the related service description. .. figure:: ../images/screenshots/Sitemap.png :align: center :alt: Tuleap Web Page Flow Chart :name: Tuleap Web Page Flow Chart Tuleap Web Page Flow Chart .. _software-map-(or Project Tree): Software Map (or Project Tree) ```````````````````````````````` The Software Map is a pivotal service in Tuleap that you can (should) use to determine if there are some pieces of software that you can re-use for your own work. The Software Map is one of the 2 ways by which you can search for existing software projects. The other one relies on the Search Facility. .. figure:: ../images/screenshots/sc_softwaremap.png :align: center :alt: Software Map sample browsing :name: Software Map sample browsing Software Map sample browsing When a project is created it is classified by the project creator according to 7 criteria: - **Development Status**: How mature your project is (alpha, beta, stable,...) - **Environment**: in which environment your software is being used (Web, Win32, X Window, text mode,...) - **Audience**: The target audience of your software (developers, end-users, system administrators,...) - **License**: License of your software. In most cases this is going to be the SYS\_ORG\_NAME Code exchange Policy - **Operating System**: Operating system(s) your software runs on - **Programming Languages**: the programming languages you used to develop your software - **Topic**: The field of use of your project. This criteria describes the area in which your software operates (Printing, Scanning, Information Technology,...) Each criterion can have up to 3 values for a given project (e.g. you can select up to 3 programming languages for a given project). Values of the various criteria are taken from a list of predefined values defined by the site administrator. The "Topic" criterion reflects the domain covered by your project (Printing, Scanning, Information Technology, etc.) and it follows a hierarchy of domains and sub-domains that the Tuleap Team constantly refines as more projects are coming. Using the Software Map you can browse Tuleap hosted projects according to any of these criteria. As you explore the map, projects matching the criteria are listed on the screen with their name, description, creation date, activity percentile, and other information. The values of the 7 criteria for a given project are listed right after the project name and description. Notice that next to each criteria value is a [Filter] hyperlink. Clicking on any of these filters will result in restricting the project list to those that match the filter. Tuleap project templates or test projects (see :ref:`project-type`) are not listed in the Software Map. A Software Map browsing sample is shown on `Software Map sample browsing`_. In this example, the user has first opened the Programming Languages Criteria and then selected C as a language of choice. This probably led to a large number of projects and so she then decided to narrow the set of projects by specifying 2 additional filters: the first one specifies that the Development Status must be Production-Stable and the second one requires that the projects runs on the SunOS/Solaris operating system. As a result of this multi-criteria screening, the user ends up with a list of 9 projects (only the first one is shown on `Software Map sample browsing`_ to save space). Filters have another interesting property: they are sticky. It means that if you decide to browse the projects from another angle (say by opening the Topic folder), the selected filters will constantly apply. In order to release the search constraint you must explicitly remove the filter by clicking on the [Remove this Filter] link in the upper part of the screen. **Tip** If you repeatedly execute the same browsing operation on the Software Map you can save it in your Personal Page. To do this, first execute your software map request as explained above and when you are happy with the selection criteria, click on the Bookmark This Page item in the Tuleap Main Menu. This will make a new link appear in your Personal Page that you can then edit to give it an appropriate description. Code Snippet Library ``````````````````````` A project hosted on Tuleap has the ability to use a large spectrum of services. However not all pieces of software worth sharing require such a rich environment. Sharing a very short piece of source code like a macro, a function or a shell script has to be quick and easy. This is precisely the role of the Code Snippet Library. The Code Snippet Library can be accessed via the Tuleap Main Menu on the left hand side of the screen under the Software section (see `The Tuleap HomePage`_) Code Snippet Browsing ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The welcome page of the Code Snippet Library classifies the code snippets by category and by programming languages. The figures next to each label indicate the number of code snippets available in each category. You can browse code snippets in 2 different ways: - Navigate through the categories or programming languages classification - Use the Search box in the Tuleap Main menu on the left hand side or on the upper right corner of the screen. Keywords typed are search in the code snippet title and in the code snippet description. Matching snippets are shown in a list along with their code snippet ID number, title and short description. If you navigated through the categories, there is also a detailed description as well as the author's name. Please note that by clicking on the author's name you can immediately send a question or a suggestion to the author of the code snippet. .. figure:: ../images/screenshots/sc_codesnippetsearch.png :align: center :alt: List of Code Snippets in the 'HTML Manipulation' category :name: List of Code Snippets in the 'HTML Manipulation' category List of Code Snippets in the 'HTML Manipulation' category Code Snippet Submission ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To submit a new code snippet click on the "Create a new Snippet" link in the Code Snippet Menu at the top of the screen. Provide the code snippet title and description. You can use Web locations (URLs) in the description field. Tuleap will automatically turn them into hyperlinks in the final version. Also provide the code snippet type, programming language and category as requested. Should a category or a programming language be missing when you submit a new code snippet please contact the Tuleap team. It is highly recommended that you provide a version number as well. This version number is a free text field and can have any kind of value. Using a version number is useful if you want to post a newer version in the future. We also recommend that you indicate the same version number in the source code associated with the snippet so that Tuleap users can determine whether they already have the latest version the next time they visit the Code Snippet Library. The code snippet itself can be submitted either by simply copy-pasting the source code in the text area or by uploading a file. We do recommend that you copy-paste the source code to make it directly visible when users browse the Code Snippet library. However there are cases where it is ok to upload non human readable files. Typical examples are when your code snippet is a made of several files that you may want to deliver in the form of an archive (zip or compressed tar). Another example is when the code snippet is not human readable: simulation software (e.g. LabView) use proprietary and non human readable format for their source files. In any case *do not* post pure binary code like compiled C, C++,Java,... The Code Snippet Library, like Tuleap, is about sharing and reusing software code not binary. Updating a Code Snippet ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To update a code snippet with a newer version of the source code, select the original code snippet either by browsing the code snippet category or by using the search mechanism. Click on the Code Snippet in the result list and proceed to the "Submit a new version" link at the end of the screen. Provide a change description, a new version number and copy-paste the source code associated with the new version. **Note** Please note that even though this is still the same code snippet, Tuleap assigns a new code snippet version ID number to each version. So referencing a new version in a Code Snippet Package (see section Grouping Code Snippets below) will require that you delete the old version and add the new one. Deleting a Code Snippet ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Select the code snippet as indicated above. Then click on the appropriate code snippet in the result list. From here you can click on the waste basket icon (|image4|) next to the code snippet version to delete one or several versions of the code snippet. Grouping Code Snippets ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have submitted several code snippets that relate to the same topic, are written in the same language and belong to the same code snippet category it might be a good idea to group them together under a common umbrella. This is what Code Snippet Packages are for. To create a code snippet package click on the "Create a Package" item in the Code Snippet Menu at the top of the screen. Provide a title, a description, type, category and version as requested. After you submit the form, a new window will pop up asking you for the ID numbers of the Code Snippet versions that must be added to the package. So before you create a package make sure you have the code snippet version ID numbers available. Please note that there is a Snippet ID and a Snippet Version ID. If you upload a new version of a snippet, the Snippet ID won't change, but the Snippet Version ID will. So when you create snippet packages, make sure that you use the Snippet Version ID. Updating a Code Snippet Package ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Like code snippets, packages can be updated. To update a package just proceed as for an ordinary code snippet. First search for it, select it and finally click in the Edit icon. From here you can add/delete code snippet to/from the package. If you want to update the package with a new version of a code snippet, first delete the old version and add the new one which has its own specific code snippet version ID (see `Updating a Code Snippet`_). Help `````` Help Index ~~~~~~~~~~ Tuleap comes with a comprehensive User Guide that fully describes all the Tuleap tools and services. A click on the "Help Index" link will direct you to the table of content of the Tuleap User Guide. The same user guide is used throughout the Tuleap site in the "Help" links that you'll find in almost every menu appearing on Tuleap. Site Documentation ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The "Site Documentation" pointer is the entry point to the Tuleap documentation. The Tuleap documentation is entirely managed via the Document Manager service of the Administration project, which is of course hosted on Tuleap. The documents on this page cover all the Tuleap site. It includes presentation material, the user guide and other important documents. Read them carefully. Tuleap Developers Channels ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One of the top priority objectives of the Tuleap site is to become a discussion forum for the software developers regardless of the organization they belong to and the country they work in. To this end the Tuleap Team has created a series of mailing lists (called Developers Channels) where anybody, including non-Tuleap users, can subscribe. Each channel is dedicated to a given software related topic. The creation of a new channel is under the responsibility of the Tuleap Team. The Developers Channels managed on Tuleap offer a number of interesting features: - Subscription and Un-subscription are entirely user driven and it can be done through the Tuleap Web interface without any assistance. - All messages posted to the channel are archived forever and can be browsed at any time. (In the future they will probably be searchable as well). - Subscribers can decide to receive digests from the mailing list rather than individual messages. Tuleap Discussion Forums ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Discussion Forums are an alternate way to keep in touch with the Tuleap community. The Tuleap Discussion Forums were created primarily as a communication vehicle between the Tuleap users and the Tuleap Team. These are general purpose Forums where you can ask for Help with Tuleap, suggest new features, new categories for the software map, etc. These Forums are entirely Web based which means that you have to use the Tuleap Web interface to post and read user messages. However Forums also offer the ability to be monitored, which means that all traffic will be sent to you via e-mail. Contact Us ~~~~~~~~~~ In addition to the Discussion Forums, you can always use the "Contact Us" link to get in touch with the Tuleap Team. Do not hesitate to bug the "Contact Us" link. We are here to help. Search area ````````````` Tuleap allows you to search almost any piece of Tuleap information through a keyword search mechanism. When you are on the Tuleap Home Page you can search for keywords in the following resources: - **Software Projects**: a match is attempted with project names as well as their short and long description. This search mechanism is very complementary with the Software Map (see `Software Map (or Project Tree)`_). Notice that a private project will never appear as a search result. - **Code Snippet Library**: Code snippets are small pieces of code that you can post on Tuleap (see `Code Snippet Library`_) along with a description. You can search this description by keywords are see if there are code snippets that you can re-use to ease your job. - **People**: keywords will be searched in the Tuleap user database and matched against the user's login name, real name and e-mail address. - **Wiki**: Wiki is a collaborative authoring tool (see :ref:`wiki`). You can perform a full text search by keywords in wikis. - **This tracker**: If you enter any tracker in any Tuleap project, the "This Tracker" item will show up in the search box, allowing you to actually search this tracker database. News and activity streams --------------------------- Tuleap homepage is a sort of a fish-eye view of the global Tuleap activity. Several indicators are available: - **Statistics**: give the total number of hosted projects (excluding those that have a private status, as well as template and test projects), the total number of registered users, the total number of software packages downloaded and the total number of Web pages browsed by Tuleap users since the site opening. - **Latest News**: these are the last news of the hosted projects on the forge. Project members wants to share with you their work and keep you informed. Don't hesitate to do so! - **Newest Releases**: shows a list of the most recent software releases (also known as new versions) that have been posted on the Tuleap site by the various projects. If you want to keep aware of new incoming releases visit this page on a regular basis. Tuleap also allows you to monitor the new software releases posted by a given project. To do so go to the Project Dashboard of this project by clicking on the project title and then select the monitor icon (|image5|) next to the release name. Once you monitor a project release, e-mail notification will be sent to you whenever the project team posts a new software release. - **Newest Projects**: the last 10 registered projects. Looking at this part of the dashboard on a regular basis will help you to keep informed on the new projects hosted on Tuleap. We advise you to visit the Tuleap Home Page on a regular basis for it gives you an excellent idea of what is going on in terms of software development across SYS\_ORG\_NAME. *Bookmark This Page*: Make Tuleap your browser home page :-) .. |image4| image:: ../images/icons/trash.png .. |image5| image:: ../images/icons/mail16d.png