Bicycle Repair Man

The name of the Python Refactoring Browser, which is under development. Work started on the project again in August 2001.

Phil Dawes is the new maintainer.

To download a copy, follow the sourceforge project page link on: bicyclerepair.sourceforge.net sourceforge.net

If you have the inclination to get involved, join the mailing list at lists.sourceforge.net

Bicycle Repair Man now has several refactorings. It integrates with IDLE, the factory-installed Python editor, Emacs Editor and Vim Text Editor. The project is going strong and more people are joining in. Go Bicycle Repair Man! and kudos to Phil for keeping it going.

Worth mentioning here if nowhere else that Peter Merel kicked the project off all those years ago as an exercise in Wiki Nature. Didn't write a lick of code. But made the Wiki Name so feels entitled to walk around with a big red S on his chest. Hey, works for Ted Nelson.


How is integration with an editor done?

The files in the ide-integration folder shows how. Basically Bicycle Repair Man needs the location of the region/point and the filename + it needs to be able to tell the editor to save and reload source files because Bicycle Repair Man works with the file system directly.


Bicycle Repair Man is from the Monty Python sketch of the same name (featuring in episode 4 of the TV-series). Bicycle Repair Man lives in a community of superpeople - everyone has super powers, and wears a uniform with a big S on it - but Bicycle Repair Man has a special power - he can repair bicycles! Bicycle Repair Man hears of somebody who has a broken bicycle so he runs to a phonebooth, changes outfits to striped, greasy coveralls with a toolbox, and walks slowly to the rescue. He arrives on the scene to see a Superhero with some trivial bicycle damage. Chain is off the gear thingy or something. He fixes it to the adulation of the superhero ("Thank you, bicycle repair man!") and goes back to his every day life.

Something like that. -- Corwin Light Williams

Yes, that's the one. Seem appropriate, don't you think?

He's mending it with his own hands!

See how he uses that spanner to tighten that nut!

Fun, but why does a superhero need a bicycle?


Bruce Sterling wrote a completely unrelated (but good; I hope he does more in this universe) story by this title.


The lack of any other suggestions implies to me that the Source Forge/Wiki combination is the best proposed alternative for Distributed Open Source Xp.

Here we go, stay tuned for further news...

Potentially Useful pages


See original on c2.com