Update: OpenMRS Test-a-Thon (May 16 - 17)

What the heck is the OpenMRS Test-a-Thon?
The OpenMRS Test-a-Thon is a code-a-thon event that allows people to collaboratively increase and improve our testing process in order to make the OpenMRS platform a more stable and robust piece of software (click here for more details).

When is it going down?
We'll be starting at noon (EDT) on Saturday, May 16 and ending at noon (EDT) on Sunday, May 17. You can come and go as you wish. I'll be hanging out in our IRC Channel all day Saturday and will be taking in a feature film on Saturday night (9 - 11pm CDT). So no pressure. Come inside, submit yourself a junit test, and then go back out and finish your Saturday chores.

Where is the event going to take place?
The test-a-thon will take place online. You can join us on the OpenMRS IRC Channel. Contact me via Skype (jmiranda) or on the IRC channel to discuss how you might be able to help out.


Who can participate?
Anyone. Developers, implementers, supporters, documenters ... people who are bored.

Who should participate?
Everyone.

Why should you participate?
Because ...

• You love OpenMRS.
• You want to learn about test driven develement (TDD).
  
• You want to learn about behavior driven development (BDD).
• You want to learn about cool unit testing frameworks (i.e. JUnit).
• You want to learn about cool web testing frameworks (Selenium).
  
• You want to learn about continuous integration.
  
• You want to write documentation for OpenMRS.
• You want to meet the team.
  
• You want to make Ben Wolfe happy.
• You want to win a prize.
• You have nothing better to do on a Saturday.
  

How can I participate in this once in a lifetime (more like bi-annual) event?
You can head over to the OpenMRS wiki for more details.

Thank you,

The OpenMRS Team

Warning: DO NOT INSTALL Subclipse 1.6 for Eclipse 3.4.x

The Problem
Save yourself a few days of headache ... don't do it! More details to come.

So Mike (mseaton) and I recently upgraded to Eclipse 3.4.2 because of some messed up issues with JSP/XML Validation within Eclipse 3.4. We also both installed Subclipse 1.6 thinking it would bring us joy. Three days later, with lots of back-and-forth collaboration on a project that we have sitting in Subversion, we've experienced nothing but headaches. When he's committed code to the repository, I'll update my working copy only to find that the only changes that come through are ones that are non-conflicting. So when I then try to commit my changes, I get warnings that my working copy is not up-to-date. I think the problem might be the fact that the new "SVN Update to HEAD" feature does not do a --force (but that's just a hunch). I just finished reverting my Eclipse upgrade to Subclipse 1.6 and have successfully reinstalled Subclipse 1.4.7.

Now the issue is that Subclipse 1.6 (which uses Subversion 1.6 wc format) has upgraded all of my working copy metadata to Subversion 1.6. Installing Subclipse 1.4.7 (which uses Subversion 1.4 wc format) means that I cannot use Subclipse on my currently checked out code. Since I have about 30+ projects checked out, this is kind of a problem. I can't waste hours

Here's the error you'll get when

root@jmiranda-laptop:~/Workspace/module-birtreport# svn diff
svn: This client is too old to work with working copy '.'. You need
to get a newer Subversion client, or to downgrade this working copy.
See http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#working-copy-format-change
for details.


So thankfully, the subversion folks have a downgrade script:

http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#working-copy-format-change


Download the script and run the following command:

root@jmiranda-laptop:~/Workspace# python change-svn-wc-format.py module-birtreport --force --verbose 1.5
Converted WC at 'module-birtreport' into format 9 for Subversion 1.5


Now, at least, I can run svn commands on that directory.

root@jmiranda-laptop:~/Workspace/module-birtreport# svn diff
Index: .project
===================================================================
--- .project (revision 7566)
+++ .project (working copy)
@@ -1,18 +1,18 @@
...

However, when I open Eclipse I can no longer see the very helpful icon overlays on top of files that are "unchanged" or "dirty". I just get unadorned, naked file icons.

Anyone have any ideas on how to fix it?

"Taste my sad, Michael" -G.O.B Bluth

Update:
So the "icon overlay" was looking more and more like an Eclipse issue, so I decided to start Eclipse with the "-clean" option.

/usr/lib/eclipse3.4.2/eclipse -clean


That fixed it. And still a few hours short of what it would have taken to reinstall Eclipse, plugins, and re-download all source code.

"Taste the happy, Michael" -G.O.B Bluth

Update:
It's still broken. Only the top-level folders were successfully restored after the -clean restart. After a few restarts and rebuilds, none of the files or folders have the icon overlay. So we're back to square one.

Following Ben's advice, I tried to install Subversive, but this did not help either. This seems to be a problem with Eclipse. It's as if Eclipse is blocking the icon overlay feature of any plugin (except the core plugins that mark files with "build errors". Checking the properties of any of the files definitely shows that they are "managed" and should have at least the "managed" icon.

One last thing (check the error logs again) and then I'm going to re-install Eclipse.

Last Update:
Ok, so some combination of the above instructions, as well as closing all projects and dealing with them one at a time, while drinking coffee, and threatening to reinstall Eclipse while shaking your fist at your computer, on top of the Celtics winning Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals has seemed to fix the problem.

I can't explain it folks. Just keep playing around until it works. The one project at a time helped me focus on what I was doing.

(1) Run the script to convert from svn 1.6 to svn 1.5
(2) Clean project
(3) Build project
(4) If that fails to work, close Eclipse and restart with the (-clean) option.

The last thing I was going to try was to create a brand new workspace and move one project over at a time (running the svn convert script). It didn't come to that thankfully.

As I mentioned earlier, the last resort option would have been to reinstall Eclipse and download all of my project source code. Given that half of my day was spent troubleshooting this, I would recommend going that route when you're confronted with this issue and can't get it resolved within an hour.

Walk MS 2009: Part 2

This is my mom (the one whose head is being covered by my giant hand). Her name is Claudia Angel Miranda. She's 56 years old. And she has Multiple Sclerosis.

Her middle/maiden name is no accident -- she had to be an angel to put up with the crap that we put her through when we were kids. But aside from possibly being an angel, she is also one of the greatest moms I've ever known. Heck, she's one of the greatest people I've ever known. Her strength, kindness, sensitivity made me the person I am today. I love the heck out of this woman.

My mom started having symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis in her mid-20's. She was diagnosed with MS around her 30th birthday. Multiple Sclerosis is one of the more confusing and misunderstood diseases out there. You need an M.D. just to understand the Wikipedia article about MS. But here are some facts:

There is no cure.

There are no known causes.

It physically and mentally debilitates people.

It affects each person in different ways.

It is painful to cope with MS.

It is painful to watch someone you love cope with MS.

---

This is a difficult subject for me - I’ve never been comfortable talking about my mother's condition. And it's never been easy for me to ask for help. However, I've realized over the years that my silence is not helping and that it’s extremely important for me to begin talking about MS in order to make more people aware of the disease.

Last year, with the help of friends, family and co-workers, I raised $3000 (ranking in the top 100 for the Wisconsin Chapter of the MS Society).

Thank you to everyone who donated last year.

This year, Megan and I are hoping to raise $5000. Yes, I realize that's quite a bit of dough, but $3000 seemed like a lot last year and we did it!

We don't need large donations. We just need lots of small donations. So donate $1, $5, $10, $25. It all adds up.

Donate $1, $5, $10, $25

OR

Join us for the MS Walk in Madison

Thank you so much for reading.

Walk MS 2009: Part 1

In a few weeks (Sunday, May 3^rd 2009), Megan and I are going to be participating in the 2009 MS Walk in Madison, WI. I’m blogging to ask you all for a donation (of any size) to help in the fight against Multiple Sclerosis. Last year, with your help, we raised: $2500.00. Not bad for our first year.

But this year we want to double that. For the mathematically challenged, that means we're looking to raise a whopping:

$5000.00

So please help us achieve this goal by making a tax-deductible donation to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society! Any amount will help. Give $1, $5, $10, $20. Every dollar counts.

Thank you for your support,

Justin and Megan

Some useful links:

• What is Multiple Sclerosis?
• Where does my donation go?
  
• View donations
  
• Join the MSfits
  
• View the MSfits
  

On MySQL Being Confused

So I've been using MySQL Query Browser and Administration Tools for years now and I've never been able to figure this one out. I have a user ('openmrs') that was created within the Administration tool and granted all privileges to the 'openmrs' schema on all possible hosts ('openmrs'@'%', 'openmrs'@'localhost', 'openmrs'@'127.0.0.1'). I have verified that the 'openmrs' user can connect to the 'openmrs' schema via the MySQL command-line client and the Query Browser. Yet, the 'openmrs' user used to connect to the database via JDBC within the OpenMRS webapp cannot connect. What gives? I keep getting the following error:


Attempted reconnect 3 times. Giving up.
Could not connect to database using url 'jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/openmrs?autoReconnect=true&sessionVariables=storage_engine=InnoDB&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8', username 'openmrs', and pw '*******'. Connection properties can be set with runtime property: 'connection.username', 'connection.password', and 'connection.url'


I'm guessing there might be a mismatch between the mysql.db and mysql.user table that is causing the confusion. I have a workaround, but I really want to know what's going on inside MySQL's brain. For those interested, here's the simple workaround.


grant all on openmrs.* to openmrs;