Month: November 2014

WordPress usually needs plugins for things, but it’s a pain keeping them updated, unless you want to use the built in auto-updating (which I don’t use for various reasons)

That was until I discovered this method of using svn:externals to update them.[kovshenin.com]

cd public_html/wp-content/
svn propedit svn:externals plugins
<edit as required>
svn update

By adding third party plugins to the plugins directory svn:externals list, they all get updated at the same time as I update the wordpress install, which I already use subversion for anyway. The akismet plugin already gets updated by this method. It also allows changes to the version of the akismet plugin, which is good if it gets updated between major WordPress releases.

MoD releases code to GitHub

Well done to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the UK ministry of Defence. They’ve started to release code on github.

I can’t imagine that getting approval for this was easy, and it probably required a fair amount of negotiation to get this far; but it’s a good sign for openness in government and hopefully it will be a good thing for both the government and the wider community.

Given that governments aren’t trying to make money selling software, open source seems an excellent fit. Hopefully we’ll see more stuff from them. (I imagine not the classified things though!)