Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 10:10:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: parker@momma.mi-recordz.com
To: marty@linuxtoday.com
Subject: MWSvol42
Greetings!
MWS for 28 of June, 2000 (#42)
Current versions:
Stable: 1.2.5 'Mad King'
Devel.: 1.4beta.4
Oracle: 1.2.5 Oracle 8i
Readers,
It is likely that the Midgard Weekly Summary will become a
biweekly publication. I suppose this means the name should be
changed to Midgard Summary. The change is due to time restraints.
I’ll be focusing energy on Midgard documentation.
Thank you
Ron Parker parker@mi-recordz.com
Midgard Weekly Summary volume 42
The Paris, France meetings focused on code development, the
yearly MPRy board meeting and an introduction of Aurora, an open
source software development firm from Paris, France, to the Midgard
team. The code development goals included ascertaining the status
of Midgard 1.4, identifying a development path for 2.0 and setting
deadlines for the completion of projects. The objectives for 1.4
include support for PHP4, completion of Repligard, a new
administration site, populating the function reference with
examples, writing a new installation guide, upgrading VMUC to
VMUCv1.4 and producing a tutorial that demonstrates the building of
VMUCv1.4.
Integration of Midgard Syntaxes Into PHP4
Alexander Bokovoy, maintainer of the 1.4 branch, explained that
Midgard can provide PHP users with a sophisticated styling system.
The styling system would be a valuable addition for standard PHP,
which of course doesn’t have a native styling system although many
solutions exist on the application level. While there is no
official word from the PHP4 team, the Midgard developers have
identified benefits for both camps and defined a goal for
integrating Midgard’s functions into PHP4. According to the Midgard
developers, it’s a solution for both teams because Midgard will not
have to distribute a modified PHP while the PHP team can give there
customers an effective styling system.
The first phase of integration will determine what needs to be
changed in the Midgard styling system and language scanner.
Emiliano Heyns will examine the styling system while David Guerizec
studies the language scanner. This investigation will begin July, 1
and conclude by July, 17.
Implementation for these changes are scheduled to begin July, 17
and conclude around August 1. The final result will be a modified,
but fully compatible version of PHP4, regardless of the decision of
the PHP4 developers to allow integration in the mainstream PHP4
distribution.
Repligard, CodeSnippets
Repligard is a Midgard utility that can pull data from one
database and push it to another. It has been decided that there
will be a working version of Repligard for 1.4. CodeSnippets,
available in the 1.4beta3, provides a comprehensive mechanism for
storing reusable code. An application level developer’s style guide
will demonstrate how to write CodeSnippets.
The combination of Repligard and CodeSnipptes will solve the
challange of sharing applications amongst Midgard developers. Many
developers have written useful applications but haven’t had a
convienent way for sharing their work with others. Repligard
provides the transport for reusable CodeSnippets. When combined,
these features open up the development of applications on top of
Midgard by providing it with a C-like shared library system.
Administration Site
Alexander Bokovoy has completed the design phase of a new
administration site. Two objectives are to add all available
features and allow reusable parts within the administration site.
The new administration interfaces include; content, structure,
style, events, user management, CodeSnippets, SiteGroup and
RepliGard. The functions related to these tools will include; add,
rename, delete, copy/move, display, copy empty. All interfaces will
include functions for blobs, tree management and extended
records.
Bokovoy has completed the design phase of the site. David
Guerizec and Bokovoy will implement CodeSnippets and a style guide
between July 10 and July 17th. Bokovoy, Guerizec and Patrick
Duplouy, Aurora senior developer, will implement the new the site
between July 17 and August 1.
Midgard 1.4 Maunal
Documentation for Midgard 1.4 will include a complete
installation guide, a site building tutorial and a complete
function reference. The function reference is being written by
Armand Verstappen, Midgard 1.4 documentation maintainer. The
function reference is scheduled to be complete by the end of July.
The installation guide will be written by Ron Parker with the help
of Emiliano Heyns and Alexander Bokovoy. It is scheduled for
completion by July 17. The Building a Site tutorial will be written
by Ron Parker and is scheduled for completion by August 14.
A set of writer’s pages will be added to the new
midgard-project.org site. The pages will include the Midgard manual
style guide, active and inactive projects, a list of writers with
contact information and the projects which they’re working on.
While previous releases of the documentation have been available
from the midgard-project site only, it was decided that 1.4
application will ship with a documentation package.
Midgard 2.0
Emilano Heyns, maintainer of Midgard 2.0, has presented an
entire rewrite of Midgard for the 2.0 strategy. The most important
aspect of 2.0 will be the storage backend. A solution for the
backend has not been determined; however, there will be a move away
from a direct SQL mapping. This will allow any type of backend
storage solution to be incorporated by the user and preserve
current implimentations of Oracle and MySQL.
Heyns design for 2.0 will be a modular aproach that is similar
to the Apache Dynamically Shared Object (DSO) model. This creates a
2.0 kernel that independent third party developers can program
modules for. Development of modules will not require approval or
input from the Midgard team.
Heyns has proposed code writing style guide for 2.0. The process
of feature writing for 2.0 is; proposal of feature, acceptance by
branch manager, design document sent to the midgard-dev mailing
list, implementation, api-doc written by the programmer and finally
user level documentation written by documentation team and the
programmer.
Midgard Publishing Ry Membership
The Paris, France meetings were sponsored by Aurora which is an
Open Source web development company that was formed in May 1999.
They currently employ 25 people and focus there efforts on website
and web application development. Aurora has decided to make
monetary investments in the development of Midgard. They hope the
Midgard developers will produce an application server that they can
develop modules and services like support for. They’re also
offering a new server and bandwidth.
Aurora has employed four of the Midgard volunteer developers on
a full-time basis. This has effectively relieved these people of
their former employment concerns and allows them to focus their
full-time efforts on the development of Midgard which should
accelerate the development of the 1.4, 2.0 branches and the
documentation.
About Midgard
Midgard is a freely-available Web application development and
publishing platform based on the popular PHP scripting language. It
is an Open Source development project, giving you the freedom to
create your own solutions in an open environment. Midgard is the
tool for creating, modifying and maintaining dynamic
database-enabled web services.
-> http://www.midgard-project.org
About MWS
The Midgard Weekly Summary is a newsletter for the Midgard user
and developer community.
The MWS is currently being distributed in following mediums:
-The Midgard Project’s Web site
-> http://www.midgard-project.org
-Linux Weekly News
-> http://www.lwn.net
-Linux Today
-> https://www.linuxtoday.com
-Linux Developer’s Network
-> http://linuxdev.net
-LinuxProgramming
-> http://www.linuxprogramming.com
-Midgard mailing list
If you would like to release it elsewhere, please contact Henri
Bergius
(Henri.Bergius@iki.fi) or
Ron Parker (parker@mi-recordz.com).
Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can be found archived
at the Midgard web site.
-> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html