User Documentation

DevAssistant is developer’s best friend (right after coffee).

DevAssistant can help you with creating and setting up basic projects in various languages, installing dependencies, setting up environment etc. There are three main types of functionality provided:

• da crt - create new project from scratch
• da mod - take local project and do something with it (e.g. import it to Eclipse)
• da prep - prepare development environment for an upstream project or a custom task

DevAssistant is based on idea of per-{language/framework/...} “assistants” with hierarchical structure. E.g. you can run:

$ da crt python django -n ~/myproject # sets up Django project named "myproject" inside your home dir
$ da crt python flask -n ~/flaskproject # sets up Flask project named "flaskproject" inside your home dir
$ da crt ruby rails -n ~/alsomyproject # sets up RoR project named "alsomyproject" inside your home dir

DevAssistant also allows you to work with a previously created project, for example import it to Eclipse:

$ da mod eclipse # run in project dir or use -p to specify path

Last but not least, DevAssistant allows you to prepare environment for executing arbitrary tasks or developing upstream projects (either using “custom” assistant for projects previously created by DevAssistant or using specific assistant for specific projects):

$ da prep custom custom -u scm_url

So What is an Assistant?

In short, assistant is a recipe for creating/modifying a project or setting up environment in a certain way. DevAssistant is in fact just a core that “runs” assistants according to certain rules.

Each assistant specifies a way how to achieve a single task, e.g. create a new project in framework X of language Y.

If you want to know more about how this all works, consult Yaml Assistant Reference.

Assistant Roles

There are three assistant roles:

creator

creates new projects

modifier

modifies existing projects

preparer

prepares environment for development of upstream project or custom task

The main purpose of having roles is separating different types of tasks. It would be confusing to have e.g. python django assistant (that creates new project) side-by-side with eclipse assistant (that registers existing project into Eclipse).

You can learn about how to invoke the respective roles below in Creating New Projects, Modifying Existing Projects and Preparing Environment.

Using Commandline Interface

Creating New Projects

DevAssistant can help you create (that’s the crt in the below command) your projects with one line in terminal. For example:

$ da crt python django -n foo -e -g

da is short form of devassistant. You can use any of them, but da is preferred.

This line will do the following:

• Install Django (RPM packaged) and all needed dependencies.
• Create a Django project named foo in current working directory.
• Make any necessary adjustments so that you can run the project and start developing right away.
• The -e switch will make DevAssistant register the newly created projects into Eclipse (tries ~/workspace by default, if you have any other, you need to specify it as an argument to -e). This will also cause installation of Eclipse and PyDev, unless already installed.
• The -g switch will make DevAssistant register the project on Github and push sources there. DevAssistant will ask you for your Github password the first time you’re doing this and then it will create Github API token and new SSH keys, so on any further invocation, this will be fully automatic. Note, that if your system username differs from your Github username, you must specify Github username as an argument to -g.

Modifying Existing Projects

DevAssistant allows you to work with previously created projects. You can do this by using da mod, as opposed to da crt for creating:

$ da mod eclipse

This will import previously created project into Eclipse (and possibly install Eclipse and other dependencies implied by the project language). Optionally, you can pass -p path/to/project if your current working directory is not the project directory.

Preparing Environment

DevAssistant can set up environment and install dependencies for executing aribtrary tasks or development of already existing project located in a remote SCM (e.g. Github). For custom projects created by DevAssistant, you can use the custom assistant:

$ da prep custom -u scm_url

The plan is to also include assistants for well known and largely developed projects (that, of course, don’t contain .devassistant file). So in future you should be able to do something like:

$ da prep openstack

and it should do everything needed to get you started developing OpenStack in a way that others do. But this is still somewhere in the future...

Custom Actions

There are also some custom actions besides crt, mod and prep. For the time being, these are not of high importance, but in future, these will bring more functionality, such as making coffee for you.

help

Displays help, what else?

version

Displays current DevAssistant version.

Using GUI

DevAssistant GUI provides the full functionality of Commandline Interface through a Gtk based application.

As opposed to CLI, which consists of three binaries, GUI provides all assistant types (creating, modifying, preparing) in one, each type having its own page.

The GUI workflow is dead simple:

• Choose the assistant that you want to use, click it and possibly choose a proper subassistant (e.g. django for python).
• GUI displays a window where you can modify some settings and choose from various assistant-specific options.
• Click “Run” button and then just watch getting the stuff done. If your input is needed (such as confirming dependencies to install), DevAssistant will ask you, so don’t go get your coffee just yet.
• After all is done, get your coffee and enjoy.

Currently Supported Assistants

Please note that list of currently supported assistants may vary greatly in different distributions, depending on available packages etc.

Currently supported assistants with their specialties (if any):

Creating

• C - a simple C project, allows you to create SRPM and build RPM by specifying -b
• C++
• Java - JSF - Java Server Faces project - Maven - A simple Apache Maven project
• Perl - Class - Simple class in Perl - Dancer - Dancer framework project
• PHP - LAMP - Apache/MySQL/PHP project
• Python - all Python assistants allow you to use --venv switch, which will make DevAssistant create a project inside a Python virtualenv and install dependencies there, rather then installing them system-wide from RPM - Django - Initial Django project, set up to be runnable right away - Flask - A minimal Flask project with a simple view and script for managing the application - Library - A custom Python library - PyGTK - Sample PyGTK project
• Ruby - Rails - Initial Ruby on Rails project

Modifying

• Eclipse - add an existing project into Eclipse (doesn’t work for some languages/frameworks)
• Vim - install some interesting Vim extensions and make some changes in .vimrc (these changes will not affect your default configuration, instead you have to use command let devassistant=1 after invoking Vim)

Preparing

• Custom - checkout a custom previously created project from SCM (git only so far) and install needed dependencies