Shift is on Ohloh

Just a quick update:

Shift is now on Ohloh. Check it out at http://www.ohloh.net/projects/shift

Shift 0.5 in Development

About 4 days after 0.2 went out the door, Crossman and I had a planning meeting to discuss the future of Shift. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Crossman, this UI sucks. Bigtime.
Crossman: Yup.
Me: I mean it's horrible. Steve would cry.
Crossman: Yup.
Me: So we are in agreement? The UI has to go.
Crossman: Yup.
Me: Ok, so what are we going to do about it being a document application? I'm thinking we really want to move this to a source list and tab implementation.
Crossman: Uh huh
Me: This means total rewrite. You know that, right?
Crossman: Yup

So, a mockup or 2 later and some clever hacking by Crossman, Shift 0.5 development is underway. And we would like to introduce it to you now.

What you see below is version one of a Photoshop mockup of the general Shift UI. You can see we have moved to a favorites system where the databases are listed in a source list on the left-hand side in true iTunes fashion. The toolbar is minimal because most table operations will be handled either through contextual menus or actions at the bottom of the source list. External windows (Server vars, etc...) will be pushed out to HUDs. Functionality will be added to Shift to allow for the CRUD of stored procedures in RDMSs (note, we mean more than one...) that support it. View support as well. The schema view is probably the most experimental aspect and will be covered in-depth at a later time. However, think Quartz Composer for databases...

This (below) is where we currently stand. The source list is built out from your server favorites and is editable. Pref panes are in place. Sparkle auto-updating is already in place and will be set to update the alpha releases. We may even come up with a system to target your updates in a pref pane to grab the latest nightly or just point releases. Things are underway and we will be redesigning the entire database connection layer from CocoaMySQL to generalize the application. In other words, this isn't just about MySQL anymore. However, MySQL will likely be the only database engine supported to the 1.0 release stage.

This post has been a bit long-winded. I hope we can garner some support in the OS X database developer community and get some interest in this project. If you have any desire to contribute to the development effort ($, time, code, graphic design, beer, hugs, etc...) please let us know.

Oh, and if you want to build this mess that is Shift 0.5 and give us any feedback, grab it with:
svn co http://trac.shiftosx.com/shift_dev/branches/0.5

Shift 0.2 Released

Well, we know it's only been three days since 0.1 was released, but we really wanted to get 0.2 out the door as fast as possible. We did some more rebranding and built in some stuff that should make things easier from here on out.

Here is a full list of changes for 0.2:

• Sparkle auto-updating support. The feed isn't yet active (more news on that soon), but will be within a few days.
• New option in prefs that allows checking for updates on startup. (Wouldn't enable until we get the appcast feed up, however.)
• New logo. Until we get something custom and shiny, that is...
• Completed re-branding. All source files have been renamed to new conventions
• Removed non-functioning SSH support. Will come in a future build.
• Removed legacy code.

That's really about it. Grab the new build at the downloads page and we will push new updates via the auto-updater.

Thanks,
The Shift Team

Features for Shift 0.2

Here are some of the updates coming in version 0.2:

• Removal of SSH tunneling. This is actually a desired feature, but it is non-functioning under the latest code-base of CocoaMySQL. The way they were going about it was pretty messy so we decided to just can all the code and rewrite it properly down the line when we are more comfortable with cocoa and the project.
• Fully assimilated project files. Currently the application strings are all set for Shift, but we will be moving all the files and classes over to the new name as well.
• New logo. No clue what it will look like, but it will probably suck. Neither of us currently working on the project have any icon design experience at all, so whatever ends up being used for 0.2 will probably be temporary. This is just necessary to fully remove all CocoaMySQL branding.
• Auto updating with Sparkle. This will be by far the biggest improvement to Shift in this release. Sparkle is the same framework used in Adium for auto updates. Sparkle will allow us to push out the new releases with minimum fuss. We have the majority of this functionality operational.

As always, you can get the latest code from the 0.2 branch to get the latest updates. (There is no guarantee that this code will work perfectly or even compile, so caveat emptor.)

Shift 0.1 Released

Well, we have our initial release of Shift. The 0.1 release is merely a direct port of CocoaMySQL with a name rebrand. We wanted to get something out there so people could start using it and know that the project is underway.

We will have a 0.2 release coming soon which will include Sparkle support. Sparkle will provide us a seamless way to push out automatic updates to Shift. Because we hope to be releasing on a fairly regular basis, Sparkle is a big part of our future plans for Shift. Please keep an eye out here for the 0.2 release.

Download Shift 0.1