I guess I've waited long enough now... lost the 2 last days trying to adapt some modules to my need, to no avail. When the module has the correct views, its output is just too messy to be cleaned. When the output is correct enough, there's no way to make a view with the correct data " style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" />

DJ's article module looks promising, but I had no time to make it work with 2.3: even with the PersistableObjectHandler class, there were still problems. So I gave up, thinking it would be better to stop losing time with those details and only have the blog module to start with: I said to Marco I'd give a document to modules devs to describe what not to use in 2.2, and I'm late. Now that the site is on, I can do that.

As I said, 2.3 will contain all features of 2.2.x. However, most of them won't be implemented as they are in 2.2 and this will have consequences for modules developers. Thus here's a list of what you can find in 2.2 along with information telling you if the said feature can be used safely or not.
Continue reading "What devs should use or not use in 2.2"

I promised things about the way XOOPS would be done starting from now on. I meant it. There were some delays, I'm late, but that didn't change my main intentions.

The main point is that I said this project would become a real open-source project. But I think I need to clarify what this means really, because I've read several inexact things about this: open-source is a development methodology favoring quality.

I privately asked several people to join the development project so they could take care of an official modules development effort that would bring standardization in the modules world and help define quality standards in this domain, but I had to do it a little more officially.

This call will also be the occasion to precise a few more things I have in mind about the methodology I'd like to be used, so it's a good point.

I'm publicly opening the new development site, which will become the

one of only source of information about the XOOPS developement from now

on.


It is far from being complete, but I believe this is the way

things should be: give something to everybody even unfinished, then

build progressively.


Continue reading "Development site open to the public"

The 2.3 core folders structure has been modified compared to the 2.0.x

one. While all the 2.0 files were supposed to be copied inside the

webserver document root, 2.3 will start separating the files that have

to be served (modules pages, themes files) from the ones that do not

need to (like classes files or compiled templates). Not only is this a

security measure, it will also become a way to add more features in a

clear way in the future.




Continue reading "Folders structure"

My apologies for this small period of inactivity. Things are going to move forward again in the next days.

The site has been updated and smartsection will be used for documents management, the roadmap for 2.3/2.4 is ready, and 2.3.0 alpha 1 is almost there (well, it's been in the SVN repository for more than 1 week now, but as the roadmap is here it will be time to publish it too).

The technical library section has been prepared too, but is still empty right now. However I'm planning to start publishing articles in it soon (after alpha 1 has been released).

The roadmap for the next releases (2.3/2.4) has been published in the documents section, and will be added to the main nav right after this post.

Please note that the part describing 2.4 will be updated later on, as this release is expected to be bigger than what is actually written (but how much has yet to be defined, and will depend on the success 2.3 gets from other developers).

An important note too, before people start asking: 2.2 will not be discontinued until we are able to give something better to every 2.2 user. Some maintenance releases will continue to be published until 2.4.0 is ready (2.2.4 is almost ready and will be published in the forthcoming days).

XOOPS 2.3.0 alpha 1 has been made available, and can be downloaded using the provided link in the main nav.

I wasn't really sure about how to announce this (as it is an alpha and thus is not intended to be used by everybody), so nothing has been sent on the announcements ML. Please give your feedback about this decision in the comments, I may change this next time.

Also, 2.2.4 is ready thanks to the dedication of phppp, so I'll package it very soon (here an anouncement should be made tonight for the release to be made tomorrow).

PS: Anyway, this should not be published as the main news on xoops.org. IF you want to talk about this in the forums there's no problem, but alphas should not be announced there as any RC or final release. Thx.

... but it's not fun nevertheless " style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" />


Well, sorry for this public inactivity you've seen during the latest weeks. My connection quality became quite irregular a bit less than one month ago, making me commit quite irregularly. Then, while I was still blaming my ISP, it finally came to an end 10 days ago when my modem entirely burnt (ok... for once it wasn't them).

That's in front of cases like this you start thinking that living in the countryside doesn't only have advantages... anyway the problem will be fixed soon. I had to move to Paris for the week after this week-end meeting with some french community members and should be able to send a few posts here until I come back home at the end of the week, with a shiny new modem, and lots of things to send to the SVN, to ensure a 2nd alpha can be released not long after (less than a week).

So there will be more news soon... before I can go back to coding, I'll post a few technical entries here during the week as much as I can: for those of you who had been worried about this point, this 2nd alpha will be the last release mainly written by your servant. Phppp and I will start working on the new i18n layer together as soon as alpha2 is here (as it will be based on his great xlanguage module), pemen who I met this week-end will have everything he needs to re-implement his LDAP/directories authentication classes, and if the oracles are with us Herve will work on implementing his dynamic metas generator as a theme plug-in... So my posts will be primarily for them, to provide them with something a bit more explanatory than the technical/API reference (1st version to be released with alpha 2 " style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" />) to speed up their learning of the new functionalities.