the FeedTree weblog » Announcements

Bugfix release 0.7.2.

Dan Sandler — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 03:52:41 +0000

FeedTree version 0.7.2 is available for download. It is strongly recommended that all users update to the latest version, as it includes a number of fixes which improve the stability of the network (and which work best when more of the network is running the fixed code).

In this release:

Improvements to bootstrap selection, reducing the likelihood of “all bootstraps are faulty” messages: [184]
Fixes to the FreePastry p2p substrate: [188] [192]
Minor bug fixes and tweaks (see the project timeline for a complete list).

Bugfix release: 0.7.1.

Dan Sandler — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 04:40:52 +0000

Version 0.7.1 of the FeedTree proxy and publisher is out (download). This is a bugfix release containing improvements to the FreePastry layer (changes [179] and [180]) and the way FeedTree uses it [178].

For users with multiple network interfaces (and therefore multiple IP addresses on their local network), the command-line ftproxy client now supports the -I flag, allowing you to specify which address FeedTree should use [173]. When debugging connection issues, ftproxy also allows you to see Pastry networking traces (flag -D) and to save all that logging info to a file (flag -L) [176].

Bugs confirmed fixed since 0.7.0: #37 #38 #42.

Version 0.7.0 released.

Dan Sandler — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:37:53 +0000

Version 0.7.0 of the FeedTree software for users and publishers is now available for download. This version collects a number of bug fixes and new features; a complete list of checkins is here. Some highlights:

Proxy: New statistics and info in the web UI (screenshots)
Proxy: Support for conditional HTTP GET for feeds being polled
Proxy: All feeds are now formatted as RSS 2.0 on the client side for better compatibility with feed reading apps (this might be switched back to Atom 1.0 as adoption and toolkit support improve)
Proxy: More robust handling of content feed elements, so that RSS 2.0 fulltext feeds aren’t truncated for proxy users
Publisher: New one-time configuration script, as well as /etc/init.d-style run control scripts for Linux installations
Publisher: New, more flexible format for publisher.conf (based on JSON, see [141])
Publisher: Debian package installation option (see downloads page)

(It is strongly recommended that all current users download the new version; please report any issues to the mailing list or the developers.)

It’s worth noting that the website has received some attention as well; the new FeedTree for users and for publishers pages give a high-level schematic overview of the problems FeedTree solves.

Above: Diagrams from the new introduction pages, inspired by the original FeedTree poster.

WordPress plugin available.

Dan Sandler — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 03:33:05 +0000

This is pretty exciting! WordPress users who want to push out their blog updates with FeedTree now have a two-step process:

Install the FeedTree publishing tool. (This is easier than ever now that there’s a helpful configuration script.)
Install the new FeedTree plugin for WordPress. Tell the plugin the URL to your certificate and the certificate’s fingerprint, and it takes care of tweaking your RSS2 and Atom feeds to add the appropriate FeedTree tags.

Screenshot of the plugin in action (at home in the wp-admin interface, under “Options”):

Get published.

Dan Sandler — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:01:45 +0000

If you’ve been meaning to try pushing out feed updates but haven’t figured out the configuration, there’s a new configure-publisher console tool that will walk you through it. It asks you a few questions, calls keytool and openssl to do the crypto for you, and then emits a publisher.conf that’s ready to use with the FeedTree publishing tool.

You can read more about the configuration tool on the FeedTreePublisher wiki page, and you can fetch the latest version of the configuration tool directly from the Subversion repository.

By installing the publisher, you’ll ensure that FeedTree users see new feed entries the minute you publish them. By signing your feed, you ensure that those rapid updates can be verified to be authentic. Give it a try, and let us know if you have any problems by posting to the users list.

Version 0.6.2 and new wiki pages.

Dan Sandler — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 04:15:21 +0000

Version 0.6.2 of the FeedTree client software is now available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and any other Java 1.4/1.5 platform. Many minor fixes, including the elimination of a large memory leak (oops!) and an update to the latest version of FreePastry (which itself contains a number of performance-related improvements).

In addition to the new release, I’ve added a few new documents to the wiki, including improved FeedTree proxy documentation, a slightly expanded FAQ, and everyone’s favorite: screenshots!.

Direct 0.6.2 download links: Windows / Mac OS X / JAR and publisher tool

Mailing list.

Dan Sandler — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:29:57 +0000

The feedtree-users mailing list is finally up and running. If you’re a current user, or just curious about the project, please feel free to subscribe. I expect that the list will be fairly low-traffic, limited to releases and other important announcements, as well as the occasional “is it really supposed to work this way?” thread.

Version 0.6.1.

Dan Sandler — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 20:28:57 +0000

Hot on the heels of 0.6 is version 0.6.1 (changeset 89), a small update that fixes some bugs in the new statistics-reporting framework and as cleans up the Windows and Mac executables a little bit. It’s important for current users to update to 0.6.1 so that I can continue collecting good data from the network.

Updated Jar distribution

Dan Sandler — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 06:37:01 +0000

The 0.6.0 version of the “publisher+jar” archive (including the ftproxy.jar for command-line operation, ftproxygui.jar for GUI operation on Unix platforms, and ftpublisher.jar for signed feed publication) contained slightly out-of-date builds (for one thing, they still reported version 0.5.1+ instead of 0.6.0).

I fixed the build process in changeset 82; you can now get the fixed zipfile from the Downloads page.

Version 0.6.0 released.

Dan Sandler — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 08:08:05 +0000

The new 0.6.0 release includes a shiny new GUI and a double-clickable app for Windows and Mac users. Go download it already!