RIP : Raj “Oldmonk” Mathur :(

I got to know about sad demise of Raj Mathur, first through fossdotin (https://twitter.com/fossdotin/status/278914457109921792 ) on twitter and then on ilgud email list : http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/msg29557.html . This news came as of shock to entire FOSS community of India. He was a legend hacker in Indian community and a great personality, always helping and motivating others.

I got the opportunity to meet Oldmonk once, in one of the ilugd meeting in Delhi Haat. At that time I was a student. We talked about entrepreneurship and UIDAI in that meeting. He shared many of his experience that how much he struggled in his initial days and how people used him in beginning of his career. He shared many of his learning as a freelancer and one of his learning that he shared with me was following

“If you think that other person with whom you are doing business is not good, never do business with him. Never ever. Never undervalue yourself. Whenever you quote for projects always calculate cost on your worth not on what other person think your worth is. Its always yes or no, nothing in between”.

Now, its more then 1.5+ years that I am working in industry and I think whatever he said is equally valid. I think what he taught me in that short meeting is something I will remember for lifetime. His mentoring will be remembered throughout the community for lifetime. His emails are always interesting and unique, he will always be remembered as a person of values, motivator and a great hacker.

Rest in Peace, Raj “Oldmonk” Mathur.

Raj Mathur Memorial page on Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/RajMathurLinux?fref=ts

A Tribute To Raj Mathur: A Brilliant Hacker And FOSS Contributor from EFY : http://news.efytimes.com/e1/96578/A-Tribute-To-Raj-Mathur-A-Brilliant-Hacker-And-FOSS-Contributor

Note : Above image of oldmonk is taken from foss.in website.

W00t !! Got the JIRA Project for FDBK :D

Yesterday over the IRC I got to know through Ben Wolfe that for every module there is a different JIRA project , so that anyone can file bug , request new feature etc etc .Then I created a ticket in JIRA ITSM . Although then through the comment of Michael Downey , I got to know that their are other things that also need to be in pace before getting JIRA project.As soon as I edited the description to incorporate all the changes I got a JIRA Project.

A Great Learning Curve

When I got access to SVN and become a new member of the ever growing OpenMRS community, I realized that I have full Read/Write access to whole of the SVN and asked my mentors following thing :

"

1. I want my write access to be "LIMITED" only to http://svn.openmrs.org/openmrs-modules/feedback/ . How this can be done ?

Then Burke Mamlin (My Co-Mentor) replied me with one of the best statement that I have heard so far :

"We purposefully don't try to manage a social problem (i.e., svn code of conduct) through a technical solution."

And then I realized the actual meaning of the fact that great power come with even greater responsibilities.Although the snip from the Burke's  mail is following :

Just limit your commits to that code.  If you check out that folder it will be very difficult – if not impossible – for you to accidentally write to other parts of the repository.  That said, if a couple months go by and you notice an obvious misspelling or typographical error in the code, you won't have to ask for privileges to change it.

We purposefully don't try to manage a social problem (i.e., svn code of conduct) through a technical solution.  You know what you should be doing & what you shouldn't be doing and we trust you.  If you make a mistake, the repository keep track of each change so it's very easy to fix.  If someone abuses their access to the repository, then that's easy to fix too. 🙂


Welcome to the family #openmrs

I requested the access to the repository by sending a mail at the Subversion Administrators <code_AT_openmrs_DOT_org> , and within some days once the module id conformed as the *feedback*, I got the access to SVN of OpenMRS with the mail from my own Mentor Ben Wolfe that states

"Welcome to the family!  You now have write access to the repository using the same credentials as you do for the wiki and jira sites. Please be sure to read about our repository conventions, including the code of conduct: ".

After that I gone through the Subversion Code of Conduct and http://openmrs.org/help/developers/#Subversion_Code_Repository as asked by the Ben Wolfe.At the same Ben's mail contain a quick small tutorial for the same which is following :

——(Snip from Ben Wolfe mail)—-


If you have already written your code, the easiest way to get your project into svn is using the "share project" link.

1) "Team–>Disconnect" your current project
2) Then "Team–>Share Project" your project
3) Specify a folder name (from the http://svn.openmrs.org repository) of "openmrs-modules/feedback/

trunk" as the directory name
4) Enter a commit comment like "Creating initial directory for feedback"
5) Choose "Team –> Commit" from the root of your project
(For some reason, this only adds the parent folder, so you'll have to now add all the files)
6) Choose "Team–>Commit" on the root of your project
7) Enter a commit comment like "Initial commit of all feedback files"

If you haven't written any code, the easiest thing to do would be to branch another module that you want to start from.  basicmodule, helloworldmodule, devexamples/simpleservicemodule are all good candidates.

1) Open the SVN Repository Exploring Perspective in Eclipse
2) Add http://svn.openmrs.org as a repository
3) Find the module you want to branch, right click on it and choose Branch/Tag
4) Enter http://svn.openmrs.org/openmrs-modules/feedback/trunk as the "Copy to URL"
5) Choose the "HEAD" revision
6) Enter a commit comment like "Initial commit of all feedback files"
7) Now do an svn checkout of that new trunk folder and start editing, adding, and then committing!

For all subsequent commits, choose "Team–>Commit" from the root of your project and check/uncheck the files that you want to send to the svn server.



——

On 2011-05-18 16:11:01 +0000 (Wed, 18 May 2011) , I have done my first commit to the OpenMRS repository although that was just a test before the actual work actually start. Although in a hurry I forgot to ignore the target folder which is then corrected with the help of a reminder from my mentor :).