Forum OpenACS Development: (don't want to pollute this board with) my current status on ACSTcl 4.2B

Hello all:

I am working on an implementation of ACS 4.2 for a non-profit in my area. I have encountered some problems and I posted some of them on the aD bboard. Most remain unanswered. I did get some good info when I dug deeper on the boards and found specific problems relating to what I had encountered. When I asked people "Can you send me the link to ..." I mostly got good responses.

I still currently think that there are not many people implementing this system and it is evident that aD is not interested in this level. So, I have been digging to solve these issues myself and I will create a FAQ about this system, so someone else can get past these problems very easily (and hopefully move on to higher- level issues with the system). I have read some of the voluminous talk about the need for FAQs so I will follow this and post mine when it is useful.

From some people's posts I have gotten the impression, that these are old problems or ones people have worked around. But there are a large number of posts (on the aD board at least) which have no replies at all, so knowledge transfer seems broken (or at least very inefficient).

Against Don's suggestion, I have decided not to make all of this first wave of issues individual problem listings. I thought about grouping them, but they could lead in many directions towards resolution, so for now I will leave the detail out on my own test site, rather than cross-posting them here. In this append, I have added a one-line crux to each report. If we think others can benefit, I can be convinced to be a polluter/dumper.

Finally, I will get the SDM stuff going and make sure than any assigned component owners have the specific details about the level I am running and exact conditions to recreate the error (or fix/workaround I come up with). I do believe that several of these must be fixed to create a usable OACS 4.x Tcl implementation.

Even though this list looks long, and will grow, overall I am encouraged and hopeful about the likelihood of a successful 4.x launch in a few months.

Your thoughts are solicted and greatly appreciated...

Regards..

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(we used to call this the) Hurt Sheet - details are posted here..

  • Spam blows immediately - probably a simple spam_create.sql problem
  • CMS - own login?/own skin? - I wanted to use this app, but it seems non-integrated
  • Group types? - I currently view this as serious, but maybe a simple UI fix will be enough
  • context sporadically used/ "how do I get back?" - this is another serious UI one; maybe (hopefully) only for an administrator
  • PA should check for Imagemagick - simple install issue;presumably trivial to fix
  • news should pre-req GC - simple install issue;presumably trivial to fix
  • grant screen dumps uids into dd-listbox (JG) - JG had this; this must be fixed
  • "which permission are used by/for which applications?" - might be able to fix this with some help screens
  • skin customization - seems to work but poor doc and error- checking (so prone to error)
  • chat dependency - simple install issue;presumably trivial to fix
  • Pretty name collision - this is a major problem; not sure yet whether the fix is easy; again maybe just UI
  • moderated bboard only for initial message?! - maybe a small fix
  • news comments admin - this is a stupid permission issue; maybe a small fix
  • Portlets unpackaged - lack of integration here makes Portal still a custom app (i.e. cannot be delegated to non- programmer!)
  • Portal initial setup/one instance?!? - I am still trying to understand the implications of one portal per subsite; somebody supposedly tested thousands of sub-sites
  • permissions screen dump, only tcl!? - unusable, serious and must be worked around or hidden completely
I did fix the grant screen although I am not done (i.e. it works for what I needed and I left it at that)

I will try to remember to post the diff.