Dev Update - Week Beginning 11th of August 2014

Hi there !

This past week we’ve had one common focus: chasing down bugs!  With the push to get the Authentication Example set up the week before, we actually regressed on code stability for the testnet. As we can’t compromise on our high code standards, this was the first objective for all developers. Of course we also examined how this happened in the first place and a thorough make-over of our code review process is under way.

Of course several other goals were addressed too.  In routing an important edge case got resolved.  A node that wanted to join the network through a node that also was its closest neighbour, could not because the requests would reflect back to itself.  This unlikely edge case got resolved by only adding the rUDP connection to the routing table after the public key requests have passed.

After the work done on encrypt last week, drive got minor updates for the new interface, and encrypt got subjected to full soak testing. On the rUDP level a lurking deadlock got removed - we want none of those.  The local network controller got some usage improvements (a signal handler to be more precise).

We are looking forward to three new developer interviews this week.  David S., Lee C. and Peter J. have been working hard for their job application and show exceptional coding skills. As MaidSafe keeps gathering pace reinforcements to the core coding team will be welcomed.

To close this weeks update one last word on the new continuous integration (CI) setup. In a first phase we are setting up Jenkins to manage our CI machines more efficiently, parallel with the existing CI.  This way the dashboard is never down.  Talks with codeship.io could further extend our CI infrastructure.  In a second phase we will use Gerrit to ensure that all pull requests into the next branch have passed rigorous testing and have been reviewed by a second developer. This streamlined code review process is equally crucial as more remote developers join the core team.

On Pivotal tracker you will find the current list of issues to resolve before we want to merge the authentication example into the testnet.  https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/852817#  Please note that as stated our first focus is on getting rid of all bugs; some might be trivial, some not so easy, so the automatically generated deadlines are not guaranteed.

A new week has started and everybody is hard at work, so see you guys next week for a new update.

Kind regards
the MaidSafe team

PS:  if you missed the Google Hangout on the Authentication example be sure to watch it here https://plus.google.com/events/cn26ao8ckv1ko5srbircldqs6lk

18 Likes

First! Thanks for the great update :wink:

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ohhh you are so fast couldn’t beat you!

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Hey guys that is against the guidelines of the forum to bump up very old topics with little reason, not fair 'cause I didn’t think of it first. :joy::stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes::stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Way to go @Dimitar

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