Forum OpenACS Development: OpenACS 5.0 package purge

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1: OpenACS 5.0 package purge
Posted by Joel Aufrecht on 08/29/03 02:00 PM
The following packages are due to be moved to /contrib/obsolete-packages
  • acs-content
  • acs-util
  • bboard
  • mp3-jukebox
  • postcard
  • ticket-tracker
  • ticket-tracker-lite
  • acs-workflow
  • wap
  • wf-ticket-tracker

We have other candidates for change. We have three photo albums; which one should we consolidate around? (see this thread - I think the answer is that we cut photo-album-lite and replace the current /packages/photo-album with the contrib version.)

  • /contrib/packages/photo-album
  • /packages/photo-album
  • /packages/photo-album-lite

We also have several email services, but I think different packages use different services, so there's no immediate fix. The medium-term fix could be to move the -lite functions into acs-mail. We would then refactor the result so that there's only one function that directly calles ns_sendmail. Then we have to go find ns_sendmail in the packages and cull it.

  • /packages/acs-mail
  • /packages/acs-mail-lite

And we have:

  • mp3jukebox
  • mp3-jukebox

When we have agreement, I'll post a TIP.

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2: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 08/29/03 07:54 PM
Is ticket-tracker-lite going to be obsoleted? Why?
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3: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 08/30/03 03:46 AM
Because we'll be supporting bug tracker.

Why, are you using ticket-tracker-lite?  Can you tell us why it fits your particular need, then, better than bug tracker?

It would be best to just support one such package but of course if there are good reasons to support "-lite" we'll do so.

Joel - yes, we should use the contrib photo-album package

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4: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Jun Yamog on 08/31/03 04:57 PM
Hi,

I think ttlite can move out.  I don't have time to maintain it and so is Vinod.  The last stuff I put into a patch was pagination.  I don't have CVS access to it, so its just a patch file on the bug tracker.

Having used both packages for almost the same need.  I can say only 2 things that I miss on ticket tracker lite while using bug tracker.

- Preferences are stored: filter, sorting, etc.  are stored in db.  That means next time you go back to it.  Its in the setting you left it.  Which I think is a bit useful.

- More than one person can be assigned on a ticket.

Having no time to maintain ttlite, and honestly little interest.  Aside from supporting legacy data.  Unless someone or Vinod will take on ttlite.  I guess it should be ok to move it to contrib.

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5: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 4)
Posted by Lars Pind on 09/01/03 10:15 AM
Jun,

These are features we'd love to see in bug-tracker, so I (like you, I'm sure) would prefer to see the effort gone into adding those to bug-tracker instead of maintaining two pacakges.

1) Storing prefs: the idea was to put this functionality into the list builder, so you can offer this option for any listing or table where this makes sense.

2) More than one user: We deliberately left this out, because there was a sentiment that there should always be just a single point of responsibility. You can still 'watch' a bug without being assigned (although you cannot grant a watch to someone else, which might be useful). Besides, we couldn't think of a nice way to implement the UI with form builder. (Now that I think about it, I think we forgot to look at ticket-tracker-lite.)

Anyway, this was just to encourage contributions in these areas.

/Lars

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6: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 5)
Posted by Tilmann Singer on 09/01/03 02:16 PM
What about the spam package? AFAIK there was agreement to move it out of the distribution as soon as bulk-mail can replace it. Anyone qualified to judge wether bulk-mail is up to it already?
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7: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Jun Yamog on 09/01/03 04:15 PM
Hi Lars,

Ok I will look into item 1.  When I get back to OACS stuff, I still haven't done the stuff that you told me a week ago. :)

Lets just see, if not maybe someone can make item 1.

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8: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 09/03/03 06:56 PM
I guess obsoleting ticket-tracker-lite is fine. I'll just port the data to something else. Probably project-manager, once it comes out :)
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9: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Jarkko Laine on 09/04/03 03:55 PM
I'd vote for moving Jeff's version of photo-album from contrib to packages, too. I just have to warn that I committed the random photo widget there, and it works only with pg at the moment. If someone has the time and courage to port it (it's very simple), he'd be my hero. Otherwise I'll try to do that but it might take a week or so.
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10: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 9)
Posted by Joel Aufrecht on 11/14/03 08:47 AM
Bug 1093, "Address book uses places but places was deprecated (and cvs removed) and hence address book is completely borken. Perhaps it should be obsoleted." Any reason not to make address book obsolete in 5.0?
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11: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Dirk Gomez on 11/14/03 10:41 AM
Have you tried address-book? It *never* worked for me.
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21: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 11)
Posted by Andrew Piskorski on 11/16/03 02:13 AM
Dirk, if you mean the old written-by-aD address-book package, I tried it back in early 2001 on ACS 4.2beta, and it was basically junk. A few good UI ideas, but the data model was lousy, even limited testing gave me very mysterious unfixable bugs (either in it or in the underlying Places package, I forget), and it just plain never really worked at all. (I may have some old emails somewhere detailing specific problems, but I doubt anyone cares by this point...)

Given the state address-book was in back then, I doubt anyone ever improved it. Or even used it! There should be old posts around by Jon Griffin and others saying how bad address-book and places were, describing alternatives, etc.

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22: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 21)
Posted by Jeff Davis on 11/16/03 09:26 AM
Address-book should just be cvs removed I think as the places module on which it was built was cvs removed on the 19th of august, 2001 and it has not worked since. I think two years is long enough for it to have been broken in search of someone to fix it.
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12: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Mark Aufflick on 11/14/03 02:15 PM
As per my message https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=143250 CMS requires acs-workflow, so I figure it should be obsoleted too.

There si stuff we want to pull from it, but it will still be in cvs.

It might also get our butts into gear over in the etp camp ;)

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13: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on 11/14/03 07:14 PM
photo-album from contrib is under packages now... We are fixing bugs and adding enhancements, also making it i18n. We are willing at Galileo to keep maintaining it.
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14: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 13)
Posted by Randy O'Meara on 11/14/03 09:32 PM
My vote (if it matters) is to re-evaluate the "incredible shrinking" toolkit. The conservative approach would be to un-obsolete the initial package. If we continue in the same direction, the only safe package is the core, because it doesn't depend on other applications and services.

I think this is a *very* bad trend.

Do you pull the loose thread until the garment no longer exists? Or, do you repair the loose thread and retain the garment? One way you end up with a patchwork, but at least you don't end up standing in public with no clothing.

In cases where someone decides to "obsolete" some toolkit functionality and it's later found that this decision wicks to other pakages, it's time to re-evaluate that initial decision. At the very least, this situation proves that there was inadequate research and discussion that went into the initial decision.

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15: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 11/14/03 10:39 PM
Perhaps we can have a better process for deciding how things are obsoleted, etc.

Debian seems to be a good model in this regard. A person can say they're not going to support something any more, and then it's put on a list of packages that other people can step in and take on.

I do think we shouldn't have an address book in the distribution unless it works, though.

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16: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 11/14/03 11:26 PM
CMS is tricky, there's a bunch of CR API buried in there (wrongly, in the long-term view).  Photobook uses it, for instance.  We need to refactor the good bits out for 5.1 but the issue with acs-workflow being obsoleted and CMS needing it is a problem ...
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17: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 11/14/03 11:29 PM
Wouldn't mp3-jukebox better be placed in contrib?  That's what it was, after all.  Does it not work any more?  It's not been obsoleted in the sense of its functionality being replaced with a newer package ...
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18: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 17)
Posted by Randy O'Meara on 11/15/03 12:05 AM
I'm not certain that the spam package functions. I haven't used it but I do need some type of spam management within subsites so I will be looking at the spam package as a possible candidate.

Anyway, spam requires acs-content (at least the APM says it's dependent). So there may be a problem with acs-content being obsoleted also.

Is there a master dependency diagram somewhere?

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19: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 11/15/03 12:15 AM
No ... but that would be helpful ... isn't there some rule stating that one who speaks up first has volunteered? :) :)
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20: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 19)
Posted by Lars Pind on 11/15/03 12:01 PM
Re a dependency diagram: Graphviz is brilliant for generating these types of diagrams. And you can look at the code in /acs-admin/www/apm/build-repository.tcl for code that scans all packages including contrib/packages and reads there .info files.

/Lars

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23: Re: OpenACS 5.0 package purge (response to 1)
Posted by Randy O'Meara on 11/16/03 06:44 PM
RE dependency diagram:

OK, Don, I volunteered to look into the dependnecies. And I did spend a few hours thinking and looking at Lars' repository builder.

After some consideration, I decided that a graphic representation, while flashy and intuitive, would not be very functional. I would much rather have a textual representation that could be searched with the browser to find all occurrences of a particular package.

Guess what? That dependency document already exists. It's called manifest.xml and it exists as the result of running Lars' repository builder. It's available at:

https://openacs.org/repository/5-0/manifest.xml