Projects section on ez.no

Tuesday 07 November 2006 12:10:22 am

Dear community members

The projects section which has been announced earlier on the forum (<i>http://ez.no/community/forum/general/new_project_section_on_ez_no</i>) is on it's way!

eZ systems and I agreed that I will take care of a first release, which is planned before the end of the year. The first release will replace the current contributions section on ez.no and the community repository on pubsvn.

The included features are:

General framework for creating projects, including:
- contributor information
- contact form (~ contact form for article authors, already implemented on ez.no)
- access control, based on roles inside a project: leader / member / customer

Project tools:
- news
- changelog ~
- galleries
- subversion repository
- forums
- files

(~ similar to current feature in the contributions section, will be improved later)

A command line script will migrate the old contributions to the projects section. The contributors who are using the subversion community repository on pubsvn (< 20) will move their source code to their project's repository. The community repository will remain readable, but write access will be denied.

The projects section will be an important step for the community. A document with some technical implementation details is available at http://pubsvn.ez.no/projects/plain_site_user/ezprojects/files/implementation_details . Some code is already available at http://pubsvn.ez.no/projects/plain_site_user/ezprojects/subversion . You will find a brief installation guide at http://pubsvn.ez.no/projects/plain_site_user/ezprojects/wiki/installation. Please take some time to review the implementation details and the code. You can give feedback in this forum topic.

Think critical, don't spare me :-) If something can be done in a better way then tell me. It's the community's project tool !

Cheers

Kristof

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Tuesday 07 November 2006 11:06:39 am

Hi Xavier

Thanks for your input.

What about bugs ?

When the bugs where managed into ez publish, they created a contrib category. Unfortunately, the bugs reported them never found their way to the real devs of the contribs.

Can you clarify this? I'm not sure I understood you correctly.

Don't know about the new bug system, but it'd be great if it'd be used for the projects as well.

We should ask the opinion of eZ systems about this. I haven't seen anything in wIT that can't be done with eZ publish and some additional PHP libraries. In any case, a project bug system (or more general: a tracking system) will not be included in the first release due to time constraints.

Moreover, as the number of contrib grows, it's really difficult for a new commer to know what extensions are really used or just there as exemples or to solve a very specific point.

It'd be nice to be able to qualify them better. Some extensions are so usefull they should be "core" flaged. Don't know if this is some kind of tag system that users can update, or if we need a few moderators/editors on this section or a mix of that.

I agree there need to be better ways to qualify the projects. Maybe we can make a hierarchical categorization of extensions, the project owner can choose more than one category his extension belongs too. For example you will have categories for the intended end users:

* portal user (...)

* administrator (ezjaxx, Search form in admin content/browse.tpl, http://ez.no/community/contribs/hacks/update_class_from_command_line, ...)

* template writer ( http://ez.no/community/contribs/hacks/dynamic_debug, http://ez.no/community/contribs/hacks/attribute_show_identing_and_colors )

* extension developer (http://ez.no/community/contribs/applications/extension_manager)

You could also have categories with different eZ publish plugable types, this would be great to search for example code:

* workflow event type
* datatype
* module
* view
* operation
* fetch function
* module policies
* search plugin
* file upload handler
* extended attribute filter
* notification event type
* notification event handler
* content action handler
* content edit handler
* template operator
* template function

I can go on summing up categories for a while :-)

Another thing that'd be great is to ease the update/installation process.

It would be brilliant if I could automatically see the list of contribs and download a contrib into my extension area from my back-office.

Moreover, it'd great to see if there has been an update on the extensions I have installed.

I completely agree, installing and updating extensions should be more Mozilla-like. But this requires some serious improvements to the package manager. I don't know (yet) if eZ has any plans for this.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Wednesday 08 November 2006 8:26:55 am

Can you clarify this? I'm not sure I understood you correctly.

My point is that each project needs a bug tracking kind of system. So far, that's been a mix between comments on the contrib page and forums thread that we could find if we were lucky enough.

The bug section (the ez publish version) then added a category "contrib" (or something like that), but Lenara didn't forward the bug reports to the owner of the contrib (at least for my projects, for instance the eor related bugs you felt and that we discussed privately).

My open question is how to deal with this bug tracker need ? Are we going to create something specific based on ez publish or do as ez systems and consider that ezpublish isn't a proper framework to deal with that and try to use their external tool ?

If we want to use wit as ez, then we can see with them if that's ok for them to create the accounts, categories and bla bla bla, but we have to make that choice first.

X+

http://www.sydesy.com

Wednesday 08 November 2006 9:17:10 am

Hi Paul,

Strong statement. Does it mean that in your mind ez shouldn't be used for things much away than content web sites ?

X+

http://www.sydesy.com

Wednesday 08 November 2006 9:28:33 am

No, that was not the intent of my comment :)

We simply need a good bug tracking system sooner rather than later and wIT is available.

I've reviewed lots of bug systems in my time and i believe i've got a good grasp of the work involved in building one from scratch. But thats my opinion only of course.

One way to accelerate an eZ solution is for eZ systems to contribute their previous bug system as a project :)

Paul

Thursday 07 December 2006 2:51:34 pm

Hi Kristof,

How is things going with the projects section?

I think it would be better to include a free bug tracker. I use ez publish because its open source and free. If the projects section was to use wits bug tracker I could not afford to install the project section on my site. And that would be a shame, at least for me ;-)

Sunday 10 December 2006 2:18:37 am

Hi Niklas

I'll continue working on the projects section next week.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Monday 11 December 2006 6:40:49 am

@Kristof

Thats nice to hear and sorry if my question sounded rude.

You are doing a great work and I would like to say thanks for all your hard work with helping people and making contribution to the community.

About the project section

Did Paul Forsyth talk with vwt about design for the project section? or is it still open?

@kracker

I was thinking in the same direction. If ez is helping kristof with the project section maybe they can contribut there old bug tracker code. It may not been as advanced as wits bug tracker but it shure would work great for most users need. I have asked them before but at that time they was not intrested to share the code. Maybe the have change there mind when the old bug system not in use anymore. One can always hope :-)

I had a strange fealing that the ez people already was reading my posts ;-) Hopefuly the do and get my view on including a free bug tracker :-)

Best regards

Wednesday 03 January 2007 9:41:44 am

I have some delay with my work related to the projects section because I have been ill during the Christmas vacation. Stay tuned!

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Wednesday 21 February 2007 4:14:51 am

There's a test install now on http://projects.ez.no

Please read http://projects.ez.no/ez_projects/news/the_ez_projects_test_site_has_been_launched first.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org