I am new to all of this, being in the middle of setting up my very first full-blown XOOPS site, a community portal, for a client. (When things are more stable I'll share it.)
The hint that I'd gotten over the past few weeks that there was trouble in Xoops-land disturbed me, but I decided that I would "keep my head down," plug away, and form an opinion after having some more XOOPS experience of my own.
Since I need to develop some of the functionality for this site, the issue of which platform to use is especially relevant, but at this point I'm somewhat locked into XOOPS 2.0.1.17, and I'll just use that for now. As a (potential) module developer, though, I can think of one thing above all else that could help "bring back" the diverging product forks:
*
Clear directions on what are the platform differences from a developer's perspective
If I code for Xoops, but want to make my module available for
XOOPS Cube et al., what would I have to do?
First step is to
explain the differences, so a developer (like me) can be aware of them, and plan the design accordingly.
Second step is to
detail the differences, so that a developer can (relatively) easily write platform-independent code that will work on all of the different forks.
Third step is to
converge the differences at the level of a theme or a template or a module, so that a single set of switches, or a single extra file, or whatever, can be used to customize for each target platform.
If someone could start this effort, for example by just making a list of the differences between XOOPS and
XOOPS Cube for a developer to be aware of, that would be a good start in the right direction, IMHO.
-- Eliyahu
