ControlPlane 1.2.0 has been released into the wild.  1.2.0 brings a number of improvements and new actions.  New actions include:

• Toggle Remote Login (ssh)
• Toggle FTP and TFTP servers
• Toggle Web Sharing

Other improvements in 1.2.0:

• CoreLocation evidence source will again show the map
• Much friendlier names for rule types and actions
• Updated documentation
• Much much faster Bonjour Evidence Source
• ControlPlane now issues a system notification that the context has changed, useful for developers who want to know about such things

You can download the latest version of ControlPlane by clicking the DOWNLOAD link located above or if you are already using ControlPlane simply pick Check for Updates in ControlPlane’s menu.

I’ve made some potentially controversial changes to how ControlPlane behaves when the display is locked or the screen saver is active and I am looking for feedback.  You can read more about it at the Google Groups list available at https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/controlplane-support/wiTUtOZJNoo

Long overdue, the about page has been updated.  Hopefully it better explains what ControlPlane does.

In case you’re wondering, you can chat with other ControlPlane users and get help at the ControlPlane Google Groups page over at http://groups.google.com/group/controlplane-support or you can submit a bug report at https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane/issues.

I’ve gotten a couple of reports now that ControlPlane isn’t fully working under OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion).  This is to be expect for a couple of reasons.

First, ControlPlane uses some private APIs for some actions.  It is well known that using private APIs is not a recommended thing to do and they can be unstable or simply change without any warning. Using private APIs greatly increases the usefulness of ControlPlane so I will continue to do so where ever necessary but this does mean things can break during OS upgrades

Second, I don’t have access to Mountain Lion at this time.  As a non-paying Apple developer I don’t have access to the developer preview and thus I’m unable to test how ControlPlane will behave on Mountain Lion.

Using ControlPlane on Mountain Lion is, at this time, untested and will remain so until I’m able to get access to Mountain Lion.  You’re free to run ControlPlane on Mountain Lion, but expect bugs to crop up.

ControlPlane 1.1.7 is now available and it’s main focus is dealing with crashes involving the menu bar icon. If you are hiding the menu bar icon there was a higher chance of it causing ControlPlane to crash, I hope that I’ve finally squashed the bug. However, if you still have ControlPlane crashes and you have chosen to hide the icon please get into contact with me so I can continue to diagnose the issue. This release contains some extra logging statements related to the menu bar icon and I’d like to retrieve if possible.

As usual you can get the latest release by clicking on the DOWNLOAD link shown above or by simply picking Check for Updates on the ControlPlane menu.

I’m seeing a definite increase in crashes within ControlPlane related to the menu bar icon. This is an issue that has day one and I can’t track it down. If you are seeing ControlPlane crashes please get me any information you can about your setup. I’m particularly interested in if you are hiding the icon and if not hiding the icon will fix the issue for you. If you have information to share do so at http://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane/issues.

Tedium has been released and you can find it on its own site at http://www.tediumapp.com/. Tedium allows you to configure a number of Time Machine backup destinations and when combined with ControlPlane, switch them automatically. To use ControlPlane with Tedium you will also need to install the latest version of ControlPlane which is as simple is choosing the Check for Updates menu option.

A common feature request for ControlPlane has been changing time machine destinations.  I’ve avoided adding this feature for some time because I felt it was a bit beyond the scope of ControlPlane.  Such a feature would really require its own configuration and could honestly be a stand alone app.

Well today I am pleased to announce that the next version of ControlPlane will finally be able to change Time Machine backup destinations by utilizing a new application called Tedium.  Tedium, a loose play Time Machine Destination Manager, will also be released soon.

Tedium is a stand alone application that works independently of ControlPlane.  As a standalone app you are able to configure multiple Time Machine backup destinations and then either using the Tedium interface itself or AppleScript change destinations at will.  ControlPlane can be used to automate this process.

ControlPlane 1.1.6 and Tedium 1.0 will both be released early next week.

Some of the most common requests I get for ControlPlane involve more elaborate rule and context systems.  Requests for negative or NOT rules and context groups are not going unheard but you can certainly voice your opinion over on Github.  The more feedback I get about how these two key features should work is very important.

These features are currently being looked at for the rewrite of ControlPlane.  Due to the current architecture of ControlPlane these features are difficult to implement without breaking the existing configuration system so it is very unlikely they’ll be seen in the 1.x series of ControlPlane.

An updated version will be released tonight that includes fixes for the Shell Script action and WiFi evidence source.  ControlPlane 1.1.4 introduced a more capable shell script action but broke support for script arguments.  The WiFi evidence source contains a bug causing it to hang on to found access points after WiFi is disabled.  ControlPlane 1.1.5 will fix both of these issues.