Integration between tools

For the documentation, communication and development of the FieldTrip project we use various tools. This page lists the tools and the integrations between them.

Jekyll

We use https://jekyllrb.com for our website. The markdown documents are hosted on GitHub and use a webhook to trigger the rebuild of the static html files on the web server. The web server is hosted as a virtual machine at the DCCN.

Mailman

We use this for a number of email discussion lists. It is hosted by C&CZ at http://mailman.science.ru.nl.

Mastodon

We use https://fosstodon.org/@fieldtriptoolbox to notify people about new releases and other updates.

Bitly

We use https://bitly.com to automatically create short URLs that are included in the tweets.

Shields

We use https://shields.io to generate badges for the DOIs, PMIDs and PMCIDs.

YouTube

We use a YouTube video channel that contains video recordings of lectures. The videos are embedded in some tutorial pages and listed as an overview on their own page.

GitHub

We use git and GitHub for version control of the software and of the website, and for managing external contributions. More details can be found here. We also maintain a copy of the repository on BitBucket and on Gitlab.

If changes are pushed to GitHub, a webhook is triggered. The code for that is maintained at https://github.com/fieldtrip/automation.

Bitbucket

A copy of the git repository of the FieldTrip software is maintained on https://bitbucket.org/fieldtriptoolbox/fieldtrip, although the primary site is on GitHub.

Gitlab

A copy of the git repository of the FieldTrip software is stored on https://gitlab.com/fieldtrip/fieldtrip, although the primary site is on GitHub.

We use Google to provide the search functionality on the website and discussion list archives.

Plausible

We use Plausible on a self-hosted server to count website visitors and to see which pages are visited most.

Central storage

At the DCCN we have a central storage system (i.e. a large shared network drive) on which an up-to-date copy of the software is maintained. Also the test data used for development and regression testing with the dashboard is on central storage.

Dashboard

We have a set of MATLAB and Bash scripts for regression testing. This allows to do semi-automatic runs of all the test scripts on the DCCN compute cluster. We refer to this as the test dashboard. The code is hosted on GitHub and the MATLAB interface is implemented in ft_test, which you can find in the utilities folder.

Mixpanel

We are experimenting with MixPanel for software usage tracking. More details are here.

Slack

We are experimenting with Slack as a messaging tool for the development team.

Webdav

We use a webdav server to distribute the software releases and tutorial data.

Ftp - obsolete

We used the DCCN download server to distribute the software releases and tutorial data.

Bugzilla - obsolete

In the past we used Bugzilla as an “issue tracker” to maintain to-do lists, distribute work, and to support follow-up communication with users. Our bugzilla server has been discontinued in 2024. The archived bug reports and discussions are still available on http://bugzilla.fieldtriptoolbox.org.

Dokuwiki - obsolete

In the past we used dokuwiki as the CMS system for our website. In 2018 we switched to Jekyll and GitHub.

SVN - obsolete

We used to do the development with Subversion (also known as SVN). As of February 2016 we have moved all development over to git and GitHub.

CVS - obsolete

We initially used Concurrent Versions System (CVS) as the version control system. At a certain point we followed the example from the SPM developers and switched to SVN to facilitate collaboration between more contributors.

Google Code - obsolete

We used to maintain a copy of the SVN repository with the software on Google Code but in 2015 Google stopped support for it. Right now there is only a link to the FieldTrip website.

Google Analytics - obsolete

We used Google Analytics to collect website usage statistics. In January 2022 we switched to Plausible.

Sourceforge - obsolete

We used to maintain a copy of the SVN repository with the software on SourceForge but are now not actively using it any more.

Facebook - obsolete

We used http://facebook.com/fieldtriptoolbox to announce events and to post photos and messages that relate to the social interaction between developers and users. The Facebook page was never used to provide support. In the past we also listed people who like our Facebook page on the start page, or linked from news items to photos in Facebook albums. Due to privacy concerns we stopped using FaceBook.

Twitter - obsolete

We used http://twitter.com/fieldtriptoolbx to notify people about new releases and other updates. For some time we also tweeted an automatic update for every commit. We are now using Mastodon instead of Twitter.