Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Re: Contacts package

7: Re: Re: Contacts package (response to 3)

Posted by Michael Steigman on 01/28/06 08:25 PM

This all may be true Malte but other developers cannot just jump in if the software is never stable enough to install cleanly. You need to at least produce a developer release if you expect others to get on board. It's unreleastic to expect someone to download a mess out of CVS that will take days to sort out.

8: Re: Contacts package (response to 7)

Posted by Robert Taylor on 01/28/06 11:16 PM

Just so that you are aware, a few of us are volunteering to begin a regular process of testing packages at least for clean installs and uninstalls.

I imagine as part of the process some discussion and planning will take place on what to do about deprecated packages and so forth.

As of Saturday we have xowiki up and running fairly cleanly (thanks Dave and Gustaf), and after I clean up a bunch of pages I hope to outline some basic procedures for testing.

You are welcome to join in and help us test and setup testing processes and stages if you like - certainly I would like to invinte the whole community to chime in on the issue and see where we go from there.

In conclusion, my point is simply this: some things are starting to move, give us enough time to affect visible change tho.

I will keep everyone appraised of where what and how.

9: Re: Re: Re: Contacts package (response to 7)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 01/29/06 11:06 AM

Michael, fundamental question. Would you prefer us to not work out of openacs.org CVS unless we produce a developer release?

There might be some misunderstanding, but at the current point I do not expect anyone to use contacts out of HEAD or get on board for that matter. Use the version in 5.1, works fine to my knowledge.

Others reported they were able to install the version from HEAD, so I think the statement of "mess" "that will take days to sort out" is just unjustified.

In the future we luckily wont have these problems anymore as only tagged packages will show up in the repository and therefore only users who download packages from CVS will see out code (until we release it). This should prevent this whole discussion from happening in the first place.

10: Re: Re: Contacts package (response to 8)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 01/29/06 11:08 AM

Robert, excellent news. Would you define what "clean installation" requires? Just as an example, if I add the dependency on .LRN for contacts, contacts will install fine, but I assume that is considered cheating 😊.

11: Re: Contacts package (response to 10)

Posted by Robert Taylor on 01/29/06 09:02 PM

Malte, to be honest now that xowiki is starting to rev up (check out the categorized/collapsable view dave setup!), the next issue that needs to be dealt with is the need to define the testing process.

I see the testing process as two separate stages:

1. clean install / uninstall
2. feature testing

However within those two stages there are a lot of variable possibilities, and I think that requires some input from all the devs.

The testing process should be clear and standardized (if possible) so that we aren't basing results on arbitrary criteria.

I haveto first fix some mis categorized documents in the wiki, then I will put up a testing process document where you guys can hopefully come in and streamline the process.

12: Re: Re: Re: Re: Contacts package (response to 9)

Posted by Janine Ohmer on 01/29/06 09:29 PM

FWIW, my personal opinion is that nothing should be committed to CVS unless it works. That doesn't mean it has to be fully tested and ready for release, but I don't think the publicly accessible CVS repository should be used for incremental commits while a package is under development. That's what local CVS repositories are for.

I think that anything that's in the public CVS should install and drop cleanly, and should be in a state where there is a *reason* to make it publicly accessible. Usually that would be to ask others for their opinions on how it is shaping up so far, or to ask for suggestions on how to implement something, or maybe to ask for help with testing.

I just don't see how it benefits the project to have a package under active development, which really isn't useful to anyone, made publicly accessible. Especially since one of the first mistakes all newbies make when they try to check something out of CVS is to forget the branch tag. A newbie who checked out HEAD today would be in for quite a shock!

Just my $0.02...