[ANN] Instiki: There's no step three

ruby-talk
1

What is Instiki?

···

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Admitted, it’s Yet Another Wiki Clone[1], but with a strong focus
on simplicity of installation and running:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run "insticki.rb 2505"
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

You’re now running a perfectly suitable wiki on port 2505
that’ll present you with a textarea for the home page on entering.

Instiki lowers the barriers of interest for when you might consider
using a wiki. It’s so simple to get running that you’ll find yourself
using it for anything – taking notes, brainstorming, organizing a
gathering.

Instiki reserves a separate WikiSpace for each port number, so
you can run more than one wiki by keeping them on separate ports.
It also means that you can’t access the same wiki on another port
than the one you started it on (unless you move the directory in
storage).

Features:

  • Regular expression search: Find deep stuff really fast
  • Reference tracker: Which other pages are pointing to the current?
  • Speed: Using Madelein for persistence (all pages are in memory)
  • Textile formatting[2]: By ways of RedCloth
  • Embedded webserver: Through WEBrick

Missing:

  • Revision control (last in wins!)
  • Access control (there’s not even an explicit user concept)
  • File attachments

Download latest from:
http://rubyforge.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=186

License is the same as Ruby’s

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiClones
[2] Textile Syntax: http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/

David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://www.basecamphq.com/ – Web-based Project Management
http://www.loudthinking.com/ – Broadcasting Brain

2

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run “insticki.rb 2505”
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

Unfortunately there is a step 3 with this release: check out insticki.rb
from cvs because it’s not included in the download.

Cheers,
Carsten

3

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run “insticki.rb 2505”
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

Unfortunately there is a step 3 with this release: check out
insticki.rb from cvs because it’s not included in the download.

DOH!

That’s what you get releasing software in the middle of the night with
a cocky attitude :). It’s all better now. Even includes a zip package
for the unix-challenged.

···

–
David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://www.basecamphq.com/ – Web-based Project Management
http://www.loudthinking.com/ – Broadcasting Brain

4

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run “insticki.rb 2505”
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

Unfortunately there is a step 3 with this release: check out
insticki.rb from cvs because it’s not included in the download.

DOH!

That’s what you get releasing software in the middle of the night with
a cocky attitude :). It’s all better now. Even includes a zip package
for the unix-challenged.

Great, it works now and is looking good at first sight. Unfortunately
there’s a nasty problem when I try this on Windows: it starts up alright
(I created a shortcut to the instiki.rb with a port as argument), then I
create and edit some pages, and then I close the cmd-window that was
opened by the shortcut. Next time I try to start up instiki I get the
error from madeleine, that it can’t reload the database (data too
short). So I guess the database doesn’t survive the shutdown.

Otherwise I like the approach taken by you and it is lightning fast! One
suggestion: work with stylesheets in the templates and use them not only
for presenting a wiki-page but also for the list, changes and search
results to get an overall look to it.

Cheers,
Carsten.

5

Great, it works now and is looking good at first sight. Unfortunately
there’s a nasty problem when I try this on Windows: it starts up
alright (I created a shortcut to the instiki.rb with a port as
argument), then I create and edit some pages, and then I close the
cmd-window that was opened by the shortcut. Next time I try to start
up instiki I get the error from madeleine, that it can’t reload the
database (data too short). So I guess the database doesn’t survive the
shutdown.

Hmmm. The point about Madelein (and prevaylence in general) is that you
should be able to survive any sudden crash thanks to the combination of
command log and snapshots. It sounds like Madelein has a problem on
Windows, then (quick to pass the buck, he is :)). I can’t replicate
that behavior on my OS X machine. Could you see if it happens even if
you send it a nice ctrl-c request to stop?

Otherwise I like the approach taken by you and it is lightning fast!
One suggestion: work with stylesheets in the templates and use them
not only for presenting a wiki-page but also for the list, changes and
search results to get an overall look to it.

Right. It’s pretty unpolished. I have had it sitting on my desktop for
six months meaning to clean it up. Never got around to it, so I thought
it would be more use in a published, unpolished form than unpublished
and unpolished :).

I’m most welcome to patches, though. It shouldn’t be a big task to
apply the styles to the templates. They all reside in app/views/wiki.

···

–
David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://www.basecamphq.com/ – Web-based Project Management
http://www.loudthinking.com/ – Broadcasting Brain