Making a WordPress.org plugin: SVN, GitHub, PHPUnit and Travis-CI [Part 1]

This is my first experiment to publish an open-source code. It was quite a "challenge", after years of working exclusively for corporate clients and myself, to write something that can go to "the wild" :-))

WordPress version:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/tivwp-dm-development-manager/
GitHub version:
https://github.com/TIVWP/tivwp-dm

Here is a shortened list of what's involved in making a public plugin and publish it on WordPress.org site:

• Write a bullet-proof PHP code (mission impossible, but approach as close as you can)
• Organize the code in a special way: names of the files, folders, special headers, screenshots, readme.txt and so on.
  
• Place your plugin somewhere so that WordPress staff can check it out and approve. (Hint: GitHub is a good place for that)
• Apply here: http://wordpress.org/plugins/add/. Note: the name of your plugin will become it's "slug" in the URL, so choose carefully!
• Wait for the approval, and if you never used SVN before, take this time to learn the basics.
• SVN-Commit your code once approved.
• Wait for reviews and support request.............. :-)

Notes:

• Folders structure and readme.md on GitHub are not exactly the same as on WordPress.org
• You can setup Travis-CI calling PHPUnit to test your code automatically. It's not an easy thing to setup - but highly recommended.

To Read:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_Submission_and_Promotion

http://code.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-publish-to-the-wordpress-plugin-repository--wp-20637

I'll try to find time and write more details [Part 2,3,...] soon.

Netbeans 7.0.1, SVN (Subversion) 1.7, CYGWIN and TortoiseSVN

Environment: MS Windows


I upgraded the CYGWIN, and the version of SVN upgraded to 1.7

$ svn --versionsvn, version 1.7.0 (r1176462)   compiled Oct 11 2011, 10:36:16

Everything went smooth with "svn upgrade" of the folders.

$ svn help upgrade: Upgrade the metadata storage format for a working copy.usage: upgrade [WCPATH...]

NetBeans, however, gave me an hour of headache.

Here are my discoveries (things to do are marked in bold)

1. By default, NetBeans uses internal SVN client and not the on specified in Options - SVN command line.
2. To use the command line client, there is an option:
   -J-DsvnClientAdapterFactory=commandline
3. Adding that option to NetBeans config file did not help. Had to add this as a parameter to the shortcut launching NetBeans
4. CYGWIN does not like being called from NetBeans. First, it complains about MS-DOS paths (C:\blah-blah), and when it is fixed by setting CYGWIN=nodosfilewarning, still produces some weird error messages
5. http://tortoisesvn.net/ worked perfectly, however. Do not forget to install the command-line client (which was unchecked in the default setup). You still have to run NetBeans with that -J switch.