Of Blogs and Logs

About a week ago, I sat down to finally figure out how to get Postfix to relay mail through a server using SMTP AUTH. It turned out to be quite easy and straight forwad once I was willing to read through the postconf manpage. However, after I was done I realized that I should write down my experience. Lately, my cowoker has been nagging me to write down my adventures. So I went looking for some blog software. I basically had two requirements:

I'm not picky, or anything. Needless to say, my journey down that path left a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. I couldn't believe the dearth of python powered blog software. What a shame! Because I have been working with Trac lately, I decided to see what it had to offer. There did exist a blog macro and I gave it a whirl, but I didn't like it much. I didn't like the fact that the post info (author, date, etc) was above the post instead of below it, and I didn't like summary stuff above the posts.

Now, while contemplating how I could hack the macro and modify it to my preferences, I found the wonderful Tags Plugin. This got me to thinking that being able to tag arbitrary wiki pages and make them part of a blog was a great idea1. After some encouragement from #trac on freenode, I mustered up the will to start coding. Thus was the beginning of the Trac Blog Plugin.

Onto the logs ...

Because of the blog plugin, I've been spending a bit more time in #trac than usual. As I try to be a good boy and share of my knowledge2, I answer questions on the channel if possible. One such question was about an error when trying to load the webadmin plugin. The strange thing about it was that the issue appeared to be in setuptools rather than the plugin. What was more frustrating was the fact that another user had experienced this same issue, but I couldn't remmeber what the solution was3. It was then that I yearned for a log of #trac that I could search, but, alas, it did not exist.

Because of this sense of loss, I set out on yet another journey: find a bot for the #trac channel. Per the suggestion of nuge, I decided to try SupyBot. The most wonderful thing about SupyBot is that it is written in Python. That means I can hack it. After a fairly painless install and a little help from #supybot, I was able to bring to life evil_twin. So now I have a bot that is logging #trac. All I have left is to make those logs accessible via the web. You know what that means, right?

Yup, more Trac integration!

  1. 1. it appears that at least one person thinks this is a bastardization of all that is blog
  2. 2. since many have shared their knowledge with me, for which I am very grateful
  3. 3. if not a complete solution, the work around was to install the webadmin plugin globally using python setup.py install instead of using it as an egg