Sunday, January 27, 2008

Using Google Calendar to Monitor Software, part 5

Last, but least, here's a cheap trick I sometimes use with the code to make Google calendar entries from the command-line.

(1) Set up a calendar to monitor a set of events.

The instructions for setting this up are in the previous posts. Basically, you just create a Google calendar for each kind of event you want to monitor, and then stick the calls to the code into the scripts that run the events.

In my case, the events are nightly checkouts, builds, and tests, plus weekly CVSDude dumps, and releases.

(2) Make a file containing the code for embedding the calendar

Go to Google calendar, and click on:

Manage calendars -> Share this calendar -> Calendar Details

Then copy the HTML to embed the calendar and paste it into a file, like /home/jsh/bin/frog.html.

(3) Create a bookmark for that file.

In Firefox, go to that file [ e.g., file:///home/jsh/bin/frog.html ], and bookmark it. (I'm sure there's something analogous in IE, but I've never used IE so I
wouldn't know.)

(4) Make it into a sidebar.

Left-click on the bookmark, select "Properties", and check the box that says "Load this bookmark in the sidebar."

I have a folder, on my bookmarks toolbar, that contains all my monitoring sidebars. Whenever I want to see how something's been doing, and I don't want to load my entire calendar, I just open the folder and click on that sidebar.

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