CUCC Expedition Handbook

Troggle - Maintenance Manuals

Troggle is the software which runs the the expo cave survey data management and website.

If you are looking for how to manage or correct cave survey data then this is not the right place. You want the Data Maintenance manual.

Troggle attempts to be an exemplar of best-practice in Research Software Engineering. See The Society of Research Software Engineering founded in 2019. See also the the UK Software Sustainability Institute.

"From short, thrown-together temporary scripts to solving a specific problem, through an abundance of complex spreadsheets analysing collected data, to the hundreds of software engineers and millions of lines of code behind international efforts such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Square Kilometre Array, there are few areas of research where software does not have a fundamental role."

This part of the handbook is intended for people maintaining the troggle software:

• Annual tasks: preparing for next year, finishing last year.
• Regular tasks: housekeeping as surveys are digitised.
• Reimporting data: reloading the database from scratch.
• Maintain troggle itself. The code is public on repository :troggle:
• Other scripts - photos, folk, wallets - not integral parts of troggle.
• Troggle and database architecture: how it all fits together
• Design decisions inc. troggle replacement e.g. new systems for website menus
• Troggle and django - Upgrading to later django versions
• Programmers' guide - and index to other documentation

Troggle is completely unlike any other django installation: it has a database, but the database is rebuilt from files every time it starts.

Most of the data entry into troggle happens during or just after the expedition: i.e. once a year. >

but do also scan

• Index of all troggle documents - list of everything you can do with troggle.

* "Troggle eats just one very big meal a year."