Polarion Software Weblog

It’s a brand new year, and Polarion Software is excited to announce the release of a brand new Polarion: Polarion 2010. This release delivers many new features that customers have asked for. We’ll tell you more about these below, and also where you can have a look at the new release online, and where you can download it. Let’s begin with new features.

Improved Navigation

The first thing you’ll notice is the simplified navigation. A single Navigation pane provides all resources and shortcuts for a project or repository. New Open button and dialog, with Windows 7 style Favorites, make it quicker and easier to open the project, project group or repository you want to work with.

Even More Robust Modules

• Outline numbering: You can now optionally add automatic outline numbering to work items (e.g. Requirements). These appear both in the portal and in PDF exports.

• Multiple Module reuse: reuse multiple modules at once , establishing cross-module links in the new modules. For example, you can manage a requirements specification module and system test module (with test cases) in one place, and reuse both of them at once when implementing some variant of the base specification. In the new modules the test cases will be linked to requirements.

• Move items within Modules: New buttons in the Designer view let you move an item before or after, or as the first or last child another item in the module structure .

• Bulk Move to Module: Now you can move work items from any module (or from normal storage) to another module. If you ever import work items from a Word document, you’ll appreciate this capability.

• Export Home page revisions to PDF: Module revisions are in effect baselines. By rendering module work items on e.g the Module’s Home page, you can export any revision of the page to PDF. (Revision export works for other wiki pages too.)

(NOTE: Modules are a feature of Polarion ALM and Polarion Requirements.)

(more…)

The following statement will enable log rotation for Apache. The command is specified for installation in a Windows system. Please check paths for you own installation.
CustomLog “|C:/Polarion3.1.1/bundled/apache_2.0.59/bin/rotatelogs.exe C:/Polarion3.1.1/data/logs/apache/access.log 60″ common

Log rotation works by a pipe to the rotatelogs.exe, which itself can be configured to rotate logs by time or by size. Try rotatelogs -? to get help.

The given statement is suitable for the access log file, which receive most of the log output. Look for further log configuration in httpd.conf and adopt them appropriately to rotate all Apache log files.

Best Wishes
Matthias

If you switch on SSL, users have to type the URL beginning with https://<server name> /Polarion. If they miss the “https”, they will not reach the page. You can help your users with an automatic redirect in the Apache configuration.

httpd.conf

remove the comment on the line:
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Locate the following statement:
Listen 80

Add the following statements:
Listen 8888

The port 8888 will be used for communication between Apache and Polarion, since Polarion is not able to use SSL. In ssl.conf the access to this port is limited to localhost.

ssl.conf:
Append the following section to the file:

#– rewrite the standard page to the ssl page
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
#RewriteLog “path to logfile”
#RewriteLogLevel 9

####
# Only apply the rules, if the port is not SSL (443)
# or the local port (8888)
####

ReWriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} (443||8888)$

####
# Redirect only access to repo and Polarion to the
# SSL port. The other stuff is not sensitive and can
# remain on the old port.
####

RewriteRule (repo/.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule (polarion/.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [NC,L]
</IfModule>

Best Wishes
Matthias

The image folder is hidden in the Polarion installation. When you customize Polarion, you will need the images e.g. when you look up new icons for workflow states or work item types.

To make them easily accessible, you could copy the images to subversion and check out the images in the Apache configuration. By adding some statements in the Apache configuration, access to the icons becomes easy. Another advantage is you can modify the images and check them in. All changes will still be persistent if Polarion needs to be updated.

Location of the images:

<Polarion installation folder>/Polarion/plugins/ com.polarion.java2js.server_3.1.0/webapp/ria/images

Copy this folder and it content to subversion. Check out the folder in the apache configuration, for example in the subfolder “images”. You could also add a cron job (or a task in Windows) to do a nightly update on that folder.

To publish the folder in Apache, use the following section at the end of the httpd.conf:

Alias /images/ “C:/Programme/Polarion 3.1/bundled/apache_2.0.59/images/”

<Directory “C:/Polarion/bundled/apache_2.0.59/images”>
Options Indexes MultiViews
IndexOptions +FoldersFirst +IgnoreCase
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

<FilesMatch “Thumbs.db”>
Order deny,allow
Deny from All
</FilesMatch>
</Directory>

Best Wishes
Matthias

To start Polarion as service you should perform following steps:

• Download the Windows XP Professional Ressource Kit. There is a version, which Microsoft request Money for it. I searched with Google and found a resource kit for Windows Server 2003, which applies also for Windows XP Professional, which can be downloaded from the WEB.
• It contains a little tool, called sc.exe. It gives the possibility to install programs as service. Use the following arguments:
  sc create Polarion binpath= “C:\Programme\Polarion 3.1\polarion\polarion.exe” type= share start= auto depend= Apache2Polarion
  The identifier of the parameters include the ‘=’ at the end. The space to the parameter value is mandatory. The command inserts also the dependency to apache appropriately.
• The so created service will terminate when you log off. To hinder this, you need to add the option “-Xrs” to the java environment. With this option java will not listen to the terminal. The options for the java.exe are specified in the file polarion.ini file in
  /polarion/polarion.ini. Just append a new line with the option.
• In the next step I opened the Computer Manager and edited the newly created service. I assigned it to the local account “Polarion” and inserted the password of that account. The Computer Manager itself added the right for the account to run services.
  Pay attention that the account is set to “may not change password” and “password never expires”.

That’s it. You are now ready to start the service from the Computer Manager. It will not die, when you log off, it will start when the computer is started.

Attention: The Computer Manager will complain that Polarion does not start. Polarion takes a lot of time to start. The Computer Manager should be more patient, but it is not. Check the Task Manager to see Polarion running. It is a java.exe running on the account you assigned it to.

Attention II: The Computer Manager will not be able to stop Polarion, because it believes Polarion is not running. To stop Polarion you have to use the stop tool provided by Polarion.

Best Wishes
Matthias