PSP++ log generator

Automates the creation of PSP++ log text files from CSV files. PSP++ information, instructions, and source code can be found here.

Running the log generator

If you don't have Python installed, download the appropriate zip file for your platform from the releases section, unzip, and double-click the file psppp_log_gen. (The programs might not work on 32-bit systems.) For now, you'll have to type file paths relative to your home directory, so you might want to temporarily put your PSP files there or at another path that's easy to type.

If you have Python 2.7 installed (Mac OS X >= 10.8 and recent versions of Linux should by default), download psppp_log_gen_py.zip from the releases section and run from the command line with python psppp_log_gen_py.zip [args]. You can view the possible arguments using python psppp_log_gen_py.zip -h.

If you only want to make a time log, you can ignore the prompts for paths to defect and object CSV files.

Team vs. individual mode

"Team mode" means that the program will generate a PSP report for an entire team. If the "name" column is present in the input time and defect CSV files, team members' names will be prepended to time and defect entry comments. "Individual mode" means that only entries associated with the user's name (or entries not associated with any name) will be used. This could be useful if your team records their PSP data in the same spreadsheets, but you would like to produce a file with only your data.

CSV file creation and formatting

One possible way to generate CSV files is to make a Google Form with all the required fields for a given part of the PSP report. Whenever you want to make a PSP entry, fill out the form. The responses to the form will be saved in a Google Spreadsheet, which can be downloaded as a CSV file. Here's an example Google Form.

Formatting requirements for CSV files:

• The CSV files must have a header row, and the column names (question names in Google Forms) generally must correspond to the names used for each field in the PSP++ log text file. Capitalization doesn't matter.
• Valid fields are as follows. (Extra fields will be ignored.) There are examples in the csv_examples folder.
  • Time log entries
    • Required: date, start, end, phase, comment
    • Optional: name
  • Defect log entries
    • Required: date, type, fix time, comment
    • Optional: name
  • New object entries
    • Required: name, type, estimated lines
    • Optional: comment
    • An "object type" field with a value of "new" is optional but recommended if the file contains both new and reused objects.
  • Reused object entries
    • Required: name, type, estimated base
    • Optional: comment, estimated removed, estimated modified, estimated added
    • An "object type" field with a value of "reused" is optional but recommended if the file contains both new and reused objects.
• Dates must be formatted as m/d/yyyy (no leading zeroes). This is what Google Forms does. If you're using Excel, you'll need to tell it to use "Text" format for date cells, or it will store the data you enter in some other format.
• Times must be formatted as h:mm, in 24-hour time with no leading zero on the hour.

Unicode notes

The code attempts to handle Unicode characters nicely, but it might not be incredibly successful in all cases. For best results, either don't use Unicode characters (including smart/curly quotes), or be sure to save your files in UTF-8 encoding (not Latin 1, Mac OS Roman, or Windows Latin 1). Excel might not save files in UTF-8, so use an intelligent text editor, such as TextWrangler for Mac or Notepad++ for Windows, to change the encoding if the output text file looks strange. You should also replace template/template.html from the PSP++ distribution with the one found here if you want Unicode characters to display correctly in generated HTML reports.