41
culex
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/23 20:22

  • culex

  • Module Developer

  • Posts: 711

  • Since: 2004/9/23


Just having read through this long thread, I'm thinking maybe I am missing the point somewhere.

I understod the status / rank was changed and now is changed back ?

Same time I see a great discussion on method, development organisation and the spread of different versions, but I fail to see where this is going in a constructive way.

I must admit I have always had a little problem seeing the logic in having 3 versions 2.45, 2.50 and version 3 at the same time. But seeing I am not developing core directly I was assuming there was an idea behind this.

I understand we're all different people with different temperments and sometimes something is written that is misunderstod or comes out wrong in the other end, but I equally understand that it's nessesary to give air to your opinions as Critique is as important as praise.

So what excactely is missing for this to be running more smoothly ?
Programming is like sex:
One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.

42
Mamba
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/23 21:18

  • Mamba

  • Moderator

  • Posts: 11366

  • Since: 2004/4/23


Quote:
I must admit I have always had a little problem seeing the logic in having 3 versions 2.45, 2.50 and version 3 at the same time. But seeing I am not developing core directly I was assuming there was an idea behind this.

The idea is very simple - it's Parallel Development.

2.4.4 was going to be the last version of XOOPS on PHP4.

2.5.0 was going to be the first version of XOOPS strictly on PHP5

We were planning to finalize 2.4.4 and then move to 2.5.0. But there were still couple of bugs, so Trabis kept going with 2.4.5 as a "maintenance" release, while the French team worked on the new 2.5.0.

We just didn't want to leave people who are still on PHP4 with a version that had bugs, so we had 2.4.5 as a "maintenance" release. Of course, all the changes in 2.4.5 would be merged into 2.5.0.

So this is the explanation why we had 2.4.5 and 2.5.0 at the same time. A simple time overlap, while trying to be "customer driven" and taking care of our users on PHP4.

Regarding 3.0 is a different story. This will be a different architecture, while keeping compatibility as much as possible with current XOOPS modules. Since it is a major task, and kind of experimental design, DJ was working separately on this to create a proof of concept.

To make it easier to understand, think about it as in car design/production.

You have now in production the 2010 model (XOOPS 2.4.x).

At the same time, you're working on the 2011 model (XOOPS 2.5.0), which will be an improved version of the 2010 model.

While you work on 2011 model, of course, you don't stop production of 2010 model. You introduce small improvements to it, if needed, and keep delivering it to your customers.

And then you have the 2012 model (XOOPS 3.0), which will be a hybrid car, a totally different architecture. It's an experimental car, where things can change very rapidly, new things will be tried and thrown away, if they don't work. Again, you don't stop production of 2010 model, and you don't stop the design of 2011 model.

This approach is also based on our experience with Skalpa and his new version of XOOPS. For those of you who aren't here long enough, Skalpa, who was the lead developer in 2005, proposed a new XOOPS version called XoopSphere. A great concept, but while he was working on it, everything else stopped, and everybody waited for this new version. After a year of waiting, Skalpa was not able to finish it due to health issues. So we've ended up without the new version, and with wasted one year because we didn't work on the standard XOOPS version.

I trust DJ that he'll deliver the new version, but we couldn't take again such a risk as with Skalpa (in case DJ get sick, or get hit by a bus, etc.). So in order to avoid this kind of risk, we've continued with 2.4.x and started work on 2.5.0.

The thought process was that if DJ gets delayed, we still have good 2.4.5 version, and then a great 2.5.0 version, which will keep our users happy for a long time.

Our goal is to finalize 2.4.5 ASAP, and move on with 2.5.0.

I hope, this explains a little bit our thought process.
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43
kris_fr
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/23 21:53

  • kris_fr

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 1009

  • Since: 2005/12/31


Mamba thank you for that explanation.

Then, on the ranks: we participate in the project for a label? No! for a project! unless a child.
I just give up 14,000 posts on a support site, and I always sleep as well

44
Mamba
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/23 21:55

  • Mamba

  • Moderator

  • Posts: 11366

  • Since: 2004/4/23


Quote:
I understand we're all different people with different temperments and sometimes something is written that is misunderstod or comes out wrong in the other end, but I equally understand that it's nessesary to give air to your opinions as Critique is as important as praise.

Absolutely! Constructive criticism and improvement suggestions are always welcome. But it has to happen in a respectful way, without profanity, personal attacks and flaming.

We love to see great ideas and creativity for XOOPS! That's why we have the "XOOPS Innovator Awards" and the "Innovator of the year" Award.

And we love people going the extra mile for XOOPS and making a difference in the community! And the community at large has the right idea who makes the most contributions to XOOPS, if you look at the top 3 places in each category.

And if people come with the right ideas, they have a freedom to make it happen.

Just to give you few examples:

1) Trabis got engaged in 2.4.x development, and he did such a good job with it that we've asked him to lead the development there.

2) The French team came with the idea to rewrite System module with jQuery, and we loved the idea, and asked them to lead the 2.5.0 development.

3) Eduardo (BitC3R0) took a different route - he is developing this great module framework on top of XOOPS, and builds his modules using it. We love it and support it.

4) Kris built his Morphogenesis Theme architecture (based on his and some other people's work), and we're using the Zetagenesis theme in the Core. Other people like Algalochkin are also creating new architectures for their themes.

5) Voltan developed the Oxygen Admin theme - we loved it and now it is our "default" Admin GUI in 2.5.0

6) Alfred did some great work with Simple-XOOPS, and now jumped in to help on CBB 4.0. Hopefully we'll be using some of his stuff in future XOOPS releases.

So there are tons of opportunities to be creative with XOOPS, write modules, themes, Admin GUI, etc.

And provide us with feedback what can be done better. And show us how it could be done.

All of the above examples are of people who deliver their stuff, who are good team players, who care about XOOPS, and who are willing to help others. And personally I am always so happy when I see a new contributor who is jumping in and joins or rejoins the team, like recently Kaotik.

But we need to be nice to each other when we provide feedback and suggest improvements. There is nothing worse for a project when members start put each other down, call names, flame, and start fights.

Let's be professional, courteous, and kind. This will get us a long way...
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45
wishcraft
Re: What a ranker!

Well seeming you are so sick you think a view of mentally ill code an insult or attack I think it time you took yourself and your Xoopie Tunnel vision mamba to hospital or ... I think from what I have seen any view like your unheathy but write great code a compliment.

I have edit this paragraph to reflect the same message.

Quote:
Well I did do a roadmap and plan for 2.6 -- But I am tired of a mentally ill view that thinks for example in profile module and array could be stored in a varchar(255) -- who never present clean code, who changes are so childlike they make no sense and never offer any form of documentation or direction and just want to respond in really sickly unheathy dribble.


If you read the document for 2.6 I wrote for example a massive security patch, for example currently if someone is using a proxy with xoops and don't sign out just leave the session to another page, the host can ride the session and log in and continue using the. Most CMS have this problem.

This is one of the many example of minor errors in not fixing this error of not having a String space size (65535 bytes) for an IPv6 IP and handling of them correctly.

What about X-Movie 3, mamba if your so nice why has the guy installed 4 virus and php trigger code in it, that i had to remove.. IF you saw your twitter I saw no notice given to your clients.

Yeah kris_fr - I sleep regularily as well.. Every nite or too
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46
culex
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/24 6:15

  • culex

  • Module Developer

  • Posts: 711

  • Since: 2004/9/23


Quote:
Mamba thank you for that explanation.


I agree. It's nice to get sketched out

Quote:
Let's be professional, courteous, and kind. This will get us a long way...


Totally agree. It's as I see it the only way to do it.

Have a nice day and as Trabis would say it

Viva Xoops
Programming is like sex:
One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.

47
nmshah
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/24 6:44

  • nmshah

  • Just can't stay away

  • Posts: 556

  • Since: 2007/7/2 8


Mamba Said:
Quote:
We just didn't want to leave people who are still on PHP4 with a version that had bugs, so we had 2.4.5 as a "maintenance" release. Of course, all the changes in 2.4.5 would be merged into 2.5.0.

So this is the explanation why we had 2.4.5 and 2.5.0 at the same time. A simple time overlap, while trying to be "customer driven" and taking care of our users on PHP4.

Regarding 3.0 is a different story. This will be a different architecture, while keeping compatibility as much as possible with current XOOPS modules. Since it is a major task, and kind of experimental design, DJ was working separately on this to create a proof of concept.


Quote:
The idea is very simple - it's Parallel Development.


Parallel Development works brilliant for products like cars which are changed when a new model is required. After you have started using a car you do not upgrade it to a new model. Either you continue to use the old or buy the new one. Hence the old and the new can be completely different and not-compatible with each other.

For products like CMS which needs to maintain compatibility with atleast one previous version as ppl upgrade the system (eg- from 2.0.18 to 2.3 to 2.4 and so on...) and not replace it (As in case of Cars), the developers need to work together and not independently. If they work together maintaining compatibility is easier.

In the current senerio no one is aware what will be included in xoops 3.0. So where is the motivation to work for version 2.5. Hence Kraven in his previous post rightly pointed out

Quote:
Quote:
and what about the 2.5 ajax develop by xoops france team...what is xoops next plan?...
if xoops 3.0 comes out...how it will be merge with 2.5 ajax ?

We don't develop xoops 2.5 because we do not know if our work will be included or not in xoops 3.0. We do not want to work for nothing.


And now what happens to all the beautiful things we saw in xoops 2.5. Will it be developed now?
To be true its more disappointing rather then motivating.

Quote:
This approach is also based on our experience with Skalpa and his new version of XOOPS. For those of you who aren't here long enough, Skalpa, who was the lead developer in 2005, proposed a new XOOPS version called XoopSphere. A great concept, but while he was working on it, everything else stopped, and everybody waited for this new version. After a year of waiting, Skalpa was not able to finish it due to health issues. So we've ended up without the new version, and with wasted one year because we didn't work on the standard XOOPS version.

I trust DJ that he'll deliver the new version, but we couldn't take again such a risk as with Skalpa (in case DJ get sick, or get hit by a bus, etc.). So in order to avoid this kind of risk, we've continued with 2.4.x and started work on 2.5.0.


I think from Skalpa case we have learnt but the wrong or incomplete lesson.
The mistake was not only that xoops stopped developing the existing system while waiting for the XoopSphere, the real problem was that Skalpa was the only one working on it. With Xoops 3.0, We have continued making the same mistake as it is only DJ who is working on it.

So the question remains, Why is DJ the only one working on Xoops 3.0?

Again this is not to say that one person is wrong and other is right, everyone has there own opinions and I am sure we all are looking at finding the best way forward for xoops.

48
Mamba
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/24 11:50

  • Mamba

  • Moderator

  • Posts: 11366

  • Since: 2004/4/23


Quote:
Parallel Development works brilliant for products like cars which are changed when a new model is required. After you have started using a car you do not upgrade it to a new model. Either you continue to use the old or buy the new one. Hence the old and the new can be completely different and not-compatible with each other.

For products like CMS which needs to maintain compatibility with atleast one previous version as ppl upgrade the system (eg- from 2.0.18 to 2.3 to 2.4 and so on...) and not replace it (As in case of Cars), the developers need to work together and not independently. If they work together maintaining compatibility is easier.

It works similar way in software development too
The teams don't have to work together, as long as they have a common definition of "compatibility", and in our case it's the modules. As long as the modules are working on a new XOOPS version, we're all good.

Look at 2.4.5 and 2.5.0 - they worked separately, and if you've tried 2.5.0, it's a great work, and it's compatible to 2.4.x, and to older version of XOOPS.

XOOPS Developers took always compatibility very seriously, and we have a lot of old modules that work just fine on 2.5.0 as they work for 2.0.18, which speaks volumes about the development team.

Quote:
In the current senerio no one is aware what will be included in xoops 3.0. So where is the motivation to work for version 2.5. Hence Kraven in his previous post rightly pointed out

The key for us is compatibility. As long as the modules are working on the new release, it is less important how the internals will work. From the development perspective, we need to have a clear and well documented API, so module developers can program to that API, without worrying about how the internals work.

We really spend too much time talking about 3.0 - what it is and what it contains, while we should be working all together on releasing 2.4.5 and 2.5.0. There is so much to do here TODAY, which would help us to make XOOPS so much better, but we spend all the time on something that is still in experimental phase.

To be honest, I don't know if 3.0 will be the answer to all our prayers, but we cannot stop everything and wait for it. We've seen 2.5.0 with all its wonderful new features, so let's focus on testing and improvements, so we can release it soon.

Quote:
I think from Skalpa case we have learnt but the wrong or incomplete lesson.
The mistake was not only that xoops stopped developing the existing system while waiting for the XoopSphere, the real problem was that Skalpa was the only one working on it. With Xoops 3.0, We have continued making the same mistake as it is only DJ who is working on it.

OK, let's do a quick reality check here!

When Trabis started to work on 2.4.x how many people jumped in and actually got involved in development?

When 2.5.0 Alpha was released, how many people joined the French Team and actually contributed code to it? How many patches have been released? How much code has been contributed by other developers?

How much of your request is a simple "curiosity", and how much is a real desire to jump in and help? And how did the help look like in the past? How many people got involved?

I believe, this is the code of the XoopsSphere version done by Skalpa. How many people did anything with it?

Again, DJ's 3.0 is an experimental development, and I really don't understand why we spend so much time on it, instead focusing on stuff that we can impact and where we can make a true difference TODAY?

Please don't get me wrong - I hope that DJ will provide us soon with more details about 3.0, but let's all focus on important tasks at hand:

- finishing 2.4.5
- finishing 2.5.0
- updating modules to "Blue Move"
- writing documentation
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49
bjuti
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/24 12:59

  • bjuti

  • Just can't stay away

  • Posts: 871

  • Since: 2009/1/7 2


Quote:
We really spend too much time talking about 3.0 - what it is and what it contains, while we should be working all together on releasing 2.4.5 and 2.5.0. There is so much to do here TODAY, which would help us to make XOOPS so much better, but we spend all the time on something that is still in experimental phase.

To be honest, I don't know if 3.0 will be the answer to all our prayers, but we cannot stop everything and wait for it. We've seen 2.5.0 with all its wonderful new features, so let's focus on testing and improvements, so we can release it soon.


AFAIK the guys dont wanna develop things is vain. They want to know does it will be compatibile with 3.0 branch.

Also we all want to know about roadmap and new features soon, and then to decide does Xoops have the bright future or just 0.5 version to version steady life. :)

Long live Xoops.

50
trabis
Re: What a ranker!
  • 2010/5/24 13:13

  • trabis

  • Core Developer

  • Posts: 2269

  • Since: 2006/9/1 1


I don't think anyone is motivated for moving modules to blue when we are told that xoops 3.0 is comming soon with new API.
Why have the trouble if we will have to rewrite them for SEO support or for multi instance or or or...
We need to know, at least, the API we can expect, even if we do not have the actual code to play with. We also need to know when. If you(Mamba or DJ) tell me that it will take on more year, then fine, we'll move to blue. If you tell me that it will be next month then again, why bother?

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