Something useful for work downtime – Bazaar, Python

glennji | Feb 8, 2007 min read

So I’ve applied for a job with Canonical, that wonderful company that (in cooperation with the community of course) brings us Ubuntu.

In an effort to brush up my development skills I’ve now installed Bazaar and Python on my (Windows) workstation. In theory, this means I’ll be able to learn something useful during lunchtimes and the inevitable weekend conference calls. I’ve done a little Python before, but it’s been a while and I wasn’t exactly a guru even then. This must change!

Of course, nothing is easy when you’re stuck behind a couple of firewalls — Bazaar uses CURL (or libCurl) to do it’s remote connection/retrieval stuff, and I can’t seem to get it to go through the work proxy. Some Microsoft pish, no doubt. CURL should be able to do proxy authentication, but I can’t quite figure out how you do the SSPI stuff, i.e. pick up my authentication details from my Windows profile.

Oh well, there’s always the NTLM Authentication Proxy Server. I’ve used that to good effect before.

When I get some time I’m going to try using Bazaar for my home backup scheme too (at the moment it’s Subversion running on the Linkstation). I wonder if it would work as a generic synchronisation tool for the Nokia as well? Wow, the possibilities really are endless when you start thinking about them!