It’s update time and we’ve been working hard so let’s dive into what’s been done this last week.
Release 0.1.0
Another milestone reached and we’ve tagged a release! Release 0.1.0 is focussed on a complete bottom to top stack, for Contacts, that starts to define correct development patterns. All the work from the last tech update has been pulled together and as a quick summary here are some of the big changes:
- New look for the dashboard
- Data store integration, starting with Mongo
- A data query system
- A new merged contacts viewer app
- Cleaned up connectors
- Bottom to top data flow for Contact data
Developers gain the most from this release, getting a much clearer picture of how the system is supposed to work. The Merged Contacts Viewer gives a real world app on top of the data and using all of the correct APIs.
This release also ushers in a more end user friendly system. We’d love everyone to start using this and giving us more and more feedback so that we are truly creating your Locker.
Testing Updates
Post release has seen a lot of work around testing. We’re working on more coverage, simpler tests, better tests, and more. Also, we’re setting up a continuous integration system so we are constantly monitoring the status. Expect notices from it to show up in IRC soon.
Virtual Machine Exploration
Virtual machines have been in our heads as a vital part of the Locker Project since the start. Being able to isolate data, potentially running services in other places, or even relocating your Locker, are just a start of the reasons we’ve been thinking about VMs. We’ve begun our early investigation, playing with Xen instances that are hosting LXC instances inside of them.
We hope that this exploration will lead to us offering developers space to use lockers in soon.
New Connectors
We had a slew of new connectors come up this week so here’s a short rundown of what we got.
- Dropbox: Stores and retrieve files from your Dropbox account. The first of a few connectors that explore data store like connectivity.
- Twitpic: Syncs photos posted to your Twitpic account.
- FitBit: Syncs data from your FitBit account.
- Simple Journal: Store and retrieve user pushed basic JSON objects with a timestamp. Check out the Blood Pressure Tracker app as an example of using it.