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Apr 3, 2013 

phpMyAdmin 4.0 is Coming Soon!

PhpMyAdmin_logo phpMyAdmin 4.0 is coming soon! At our team meeting in February 2012, we had decided that it was time to replace the frames-based interface with an Ajax-based page loader. Therefore, one of the Google Summer of Code 2012 projects undertook this task and now, a few months later, we are in late beta phase.

The interface still offers the familiar navigation and main panels, but the navigation panel always contains a hierarchical tree of databases and all their content, fetch dynamically depending on the user’s actions.

This design choice means that Javascript is now mandatory to be able to run phpMyAdmin 4.x.

Version 4.0 also has smaller new features and many bug fixes, that were evaluated as not critical enough to be part of the 3.5 family.

Finally, the documentation has been revamped by moving it to Sphinx. This also means that it can be downloaded in a number of new formats like PDF, Epub and manpage.

Download the 4.0.0 release candidate here.

Dec 17, 2012 

Five-star reviews coming to your project

For a long time, we’ve had a simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down review system for projects, allowing for users of your project to make an assessment as to whether they like it or not.

Although this is useful to get a sense of how popular a project is with users, we’ve discovered over the years that when trying to make an assessment as to what product to use for a particular task, something a little more granular is required. We’re making some changes to the rate and review interface, to allow users to express more specifically their approval of the project, using a five-star system.

Existing ratings will be converted to stars in a way that accurately represents the intent of the original voters, in as much as we can tell.

More importantly, you’ll also be able to rate a project on various criteria, such as features and ease of use, …

… so that we can know when a project excels in one area, but not so much in another.

You’ll then be able to compare one project to another, based on these criteria.

We already let you indicate whether particular reviews are helpful or not …

… so that you can compare helpful high-rated reviews with helpful low-rated reviews, to get well-rounded insight into a projects strengths and weaknesses.

We feel like these enhancements will really help the IT manager choose the right CRM for their helpdesk, and the gamer choose the best shoot-em-up for their weekend gaming.

We’re hoping to release this functionality in the next two or three weeks. We’d love to hear your feedback on these new features, and we really hope that you’ll take few minutes of your visit to leave a review of your favorite projects. Or your least favorite. Both ways, it’s helpful.

Nov 16, 2012 

November 2012 newsletter

In case you missed our November newsletter …

Subject: Rigs of Rods is Project of the Month; Help Wanted; SourceForge is hiring; More …

Thanks for being part of the SourceForge community!

Rigs of Rods is Project of the Month

After four months of thoroughly practical POTMs, it’s time for something fun. November’s Project of the Month is Rigs of Rods. Rigs of Rods is a softbody physics simulator. To physicists, that means that it simulates the way that most objects, like, say, cars and trucks, are constructed of mass points, rather than being a single solid block. To the rest of us, that means that Rigs of Rods is a cool game where you can watch what happens when you crash those cars and trucks into things.

RoR has a huge user community around it (http://www.rigsofrods.com/) – people who are passionate about creating models of their favorite vehicles – including planes, boats, and trains, as well as cars and trucks. And because physics doesn’t lie, these vehicles behave just as they would in the real world. You can see some great videos of this on YouTube. Then, go download RoR and play with it yourself.

Looking forward, we have some great candidates on the ballot for the December Project of the Month. Please have a look at them, and go vote!

Help Wanted

The response to our “Help Wanted” newsletter sections, and blog posts has been overwhelming, with every one receiving responses from interested developers, as well as further email from other projects wanting to be added to the list.

We’re going to keep doing these things, but we recognize that the approach doesn’t scale to quite the level we need it to. So we’ve launched a Help Wanted forum where projects can look for developers, and developers can look for projects. You can still email us directly, if you prefer, but posting directly to that forum will let you engage with the conversation, and receive notifications when someone has responded.

SourceForge is Hiring

As you may remember, SourceForge recently acquired Dice. (They see it the other way around. It’s all a matter of perspective.) This month we’re using the Dice website to look for a new member of our team here at SourceForge.
We’re looking for a Systems Programmer/Analyst to work on the Slashdot, SourceForge, and Freecode sites. You can read all the details at Dice.com.

Upgrade to the new SourceForge

As we’ve mentioned in other mailings, we’re working towards retiring the old SourceForge platform, so that we’re not maintaining two platforms, and can move forward faster. In order to do this, we’re trying to get everyone migrated to the new platform this year.

If you’d like to move to the new platform on your own time, time’s running out. You can look through some of the new functionality at https://sourceforge.net/create/#feature-holder You can upgrade your project by clicking the “Upgrade” button at http://sourceforge.net/p/upgrade. If you’re concerned about the upgrade process, or about the functionality of the new platform, please don’t hesitate to contact us (communityteam@sourceforge.net) to discuss your concerns.

Top Twenty Growth

Every month we highlight projects that have seen substantial growth in the last month, as measured by downloads. This month, there’s a lot of familiar names and projects that have been with us a long time.

Ares Galaxy: Filesharing-Bittorrent p2p client http://sourceforge.net/projects/aresgalaxy

Azureus / Vuze: Vuze (formerly Azureus) is a P2P file sharing client using the bittorrent protocol. Search and download torrent files. Play, convert and transcode videos and music for playing on many devices such as PSP, TiVo, XBox, PS3, iTunes (iPhone, iPod, Apple TV). http://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus

DeSmuME: DeSmuME is a Nintendo DS emulator. http://sourceforge.net/projects/desmume

Classic Shell: Classic Shell adds some missing features to Windows 7 and Vista like a classic start menu, toolbar for Explorer and others. http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell

KompoZer: KompoZer is a wysiwyg HTML editor using the Mozilla Composer codebase. As Nvu’s development stopped in 2005, KompoZer fixes many bugs and adds a few useful features. http://sourceforge.net/projects/kompozer

SABnzbdPlus: The automatic usenet download tool http://sourceforge.net/projects/sabnzbdplus

FreeNAS: FreeNAS is an Open Source Storage Platform and supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems. It includes ZFS (high storage capacities and integrates file systems and volume management into a single piece of software) http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas

UltraDefrag: Increase your system performance with this simple to use tool http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultradefrag

4k Download: Free video and audio download from YouTube and other services http://sourceforge.net/projects/four-k-download

Rigs of Rods: softbody physics simulation http://sourceforge.net/projects/rigsofrods

Orwell Dev-C++: A portable C/C++/C++11 IDE http://sourceforge.net/projects/orwelldevcpp

StarUML: StarUML is an open source project to develop fast, flexible, extensible, featureful, and freely-available UML/MDA platform running on Win32 platform. The goal is a compelling replacement of commercial UML tools such as RationalRose, Together and so on. http://sourceforge.net/projects/staruml

LOIC: Low Orbit Ion Cannon. The project just keeps and maintenances (bug fixing) the code written by the original author – Praetox, but is not associated or related with it. http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic

cm10i9100vsync: Yet another android ROM distribution. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cm10i9100vsync

PNotes: PNotes is light-weight, flexible, skinnable manager of virtual notes on your desktop. It supports multiple languages, individual note’s settings, transparency and scheduling. Absolutely portable as well – no traces in registry. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnotes

eMule Plus: eMule Plus is an evolution of the original eMule project, created to improve its abilities and features, in both work efficiency and user interface. http://sourceforge.net/projects/emuleplus

DreaMule: It´s a ed2k file sharing client, done for easy of use and speed. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pootzmod

SugarCRM – commercial open source CRM: Affordable and easy to use customer relationship management http://sourceforge.net/projects/sugarcrm

PyQt: The GPL licensed Python bindings for the Qt application framework http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyqt

pseint: A tool for learning programming basis with a simple spanish pseudocode http://sourceforge.net/projects/pseint

Network Spoofer: Change websites on a Wifi network http://sourceforge.net/projects/netspoof

In Closing

As always, thanks for being part of the SourceForge community.

If you want more frequent updates than this newsletter, there’s several places where we make those updates. We’re on Twitter. We’re on Facebook. We’re on Google+. And if you follow the opensource and software Reddits, http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource and http://www.reddit.com/r/software respectively, you’ll see the occasional post from us there, too.

And, of course, there’s our blog – http://sf.net/blog – where we post longer articles about our projects and our platform.

Keep coding.

The SourceForge Community Team
communityteam@sourceforge.net

Oct 29, 2012 

Featured Projects, October 29, 2012

Another week, another set of cool projects to tell you about. The best thing about working at SourceForge is that every single week I come across a project and say, hey, I should start using that right away. Here’s some of those projects.

  • JStock – Free Stock Market Software

    JStock is a free stock market software for 26 countries. It provides Stock watchlist, Intraday stock price snapshot, Stock indicator editor, Stock indicator scanner and Portfolio management. Free SMS/email alert supported.

  • Subsonic

    Subsonic is a web-based media streamer, providing ubiquitous access to your music and video collection. More than 20 apps are available for Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Roku, Chumby, Sonos etc. Supports virtually all media formats, converting files on the fly. Also includes a Podcast receiver and jukebox feature allowing you to control what’s playing on your computer from your mobile phone.

  • wxWidgets

    wxWidgets is a free open source framework for development of cross platform GUI applications in C++ and many other languages via its different bindings (Python, Perl, Ruby, D, …).

  • SamyGO

    This project created for research on Samsung TV Firmware Hacking

  • UFO:Alien Invasion

    It is the year 2084. You control a secret organisation charged with defending Earth from a brutal alien enemy. Build up your bases, prepare your team, and dive head-first into the fast and flowing turn-based combat.

  • Fugu SSH

    Mac OS X frontend for OpenSSH’s sftp/scp tools

  • Digital Paint: Paintball 2

    Paintball2 is a fast-paced first-person game with capture the flag, elimination, siege, and deathmatch (free-for-all) styles of gameplay. This project focuses on enhancing the Quake2-based engine it uses.

  • TCPDF – PHP class for PDF

    TCPDF is a PHP class for generating PDF documents without requiring external extensions. TCPDF Supports UTF-8, Unicode, RTL languages, XHTML, Javascript, digital signatures, barcodes and much more.

  • Little Registry Optimizer

    Little Registry Optimizer is a part of Little Apps` Little Registry Cleaner. This project is aimed to analyze the windows registry and optimize it so it will be smaller and run smoother. This program is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Oct 10, 2012 

Verifying Downloaded Files

When you download a file from SourceForge (or, indeed, from anywhere), there are often mechanisms for verifying that you’ve downloaded the right thing – ie, that nobody has tampered with the file, and that you’re getting what the developers intended for you to download.

The most common way to do this is with a file hash that gets generated with the file is created.

Verifying downloaded files

Each time a file is uploaded, we generate an MD5 hash, and a SHA1 hash of that file, so that you can quickly check whether a file has been tampered with.

In the files interface, click on the “I” information icon next to the file, and you’ll see, as in the image above, two strings labelled SHA1 and MD5. These are cryptographic strings generated from the file itself, which you can verify on your end to ensure that the file you are downloading hasn’t been tampered with somewhere between us and the mirror, or between the mirror and you.

We will also, very soon, be adding those checksum strings to the file download page itself, so that you don’t have to go out of your way to look for it.

Once you have downloaded the file, check to see that the MD5 checksum, or SHA1 checksum, of that file, matches what we list on the site. If they don’t match, notify us, then try downloading from a different mirror.

On Windows, we recommend a tool like md5deep to generate the hashes from the downloaded file. There are also browser plugins that will calculate the checksums on a file as you download it, so that you’re less likely to forget to do it yourself.

On Linux, at the command line:

$ md5sum download.tar.gz
84a3d6aa561b112058ad9aa08a352044  download.tar.gz

$ sha1sum download.tar.gz
b6133cbc973faf908f83fa950574db0fa268480c  download.tar.gz

On Mac OS X, at the terminal:

$ md5 download.tar.gz
MD5 (download.tar.gz) = 84a3d6aa561b112058ad9aa08a352044

$ shasum download.tar.gz
b6133cbc973faf908f83fa950574db0fa268480c  download.tar.gz

Again, if you discover that a checksum doesn’t match, please tell us so that we can do something about it as quickly as possible.

We also strongly encourage project admins to verify your files yourselves on various mirror servers, after you’ve uploaded them, ensuring that what’s on the server matches what you uploaded.

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