[horde] reagent: the code

[Carlos Pedrinaci]

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 02:23, Mij wrote:
> Il giorno 22/apr/04, alle 11:46, Carlos Pedrinaci ha scritto:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I don't know if you are aware of Thor which aim is to provide a way to
> > organize and manage projects, allowing users to create project plans,
> > add a bug tracking system via Whups etc..
> > The code is currently quite simple, but it is evolving everyday. It is
> > currently under reorganization so as to get a more adaptable
> > architecture (almost done) suitable for everyone.
> > I think you also might be interested in having a look at it's code.
> 
> Please correct me if i'm wrong:
> As far as i understood, thor is though with projects in mind.
> Thor's goal is to help developers to manage the high level development
> of the project they belong to with a set of handy tools on the web.
> 
> Reagent's goal is completely different. It's not meant for developers. 
> It's
> meant for all the rest of the world. With Reagent you can create 
> profiles
> for developers (users, in general) and projects, providing informations
> to the people outside the project itself.

This is something Thor will also tackle. In a certain way Thor will be a
kind of Sourceforge module for Horde with Project Management
capabilities such as Plan, team, resources management..

It bears in mind the user's privileges, thus, it shows just Project
information for external users, shows more information for developers
and allows everything in the case of project administrators (in a
per-project level)

> 
> Reagent wants to improve the sense of belonging to a community.
> So, it won't grow toward tools like thor ones. It will most likely 
> incorporate
> availability of more informations about users and projects, and possibly
> things like users' scores (who's the more active developer, who's the 
> most
> appreciated "project leader" etcetera, something automatic and something
> by voting), pseudo-bulletin boards to gather projects' feedback and 
> things
> like that.
> 
> That's why reagent overlaps a very little bit with turba and a little 
> bit with
> thor, but not enough to permit it to get incorporated into any of them.
> I'd like to improve its integration with them instead. This is already 
> a TODO.
> 
> Please let me know what you think about it.

I do also see the need for some of the things you mention in the case of
Thor. For example a Project leader might require a poll to decide on the
best next feature to add to a certain software. The same way projects
would benefit of forums for development stuff discussions...
But imo all these things should just be "links" to the other pieces of
software available for Horde:
 - For forums Agora
 - For Bug Tracking WHUPS
 - For polls scry
 - For users information Turba
 ....
> 
> 
> > However, if I'm not wrong your code was done for Horde 2. Current head
> > version of Horde (which will be released soon) has a lot of new and
> > wonderful features Thor makes use of.
> 
> i prefer to stay on h2. it's very widely used, and bigger institutions 
> move
> quite slowly to newer versions. I don't believe it would be good to me 
> to
> develop that code on a ALPHA framework.
> When I looked on horde3, I didn't find anything very useful to reagent
> that wasn't available on horde2.
> I will develop on horde2. A "port" for horde3 is possible for the 
> future, of
> course.

Well... I also started Thor on Horde 2 then moved to Horde 3.. now I'm
happy I did that.
It is true that institutions are usually reluctant to updating, that is
why Horde guys do a lot of work to solve compatibilities and migration
problems.
Obviously I can't prevent you from continuing to code based on Horde 2,
but in my opinion this is a mistake. If you go along with Horde, your
code will evolve together with it and your work will remain there. If
you do the work on your side, code will soon be obselete and you will
have a lot of work that is no more usable. 
That would be a real pitty, don't you think so?

> 
> 
> 
> 
> > I know its usually hard to coordinate students and even more difficult
> > to coordinate them with an external Open Source Project, but it would 
> > be
> > a pity to duplicate efforts.
> > I'm looking forward for your opinion.
> 
> I hope i've been able to give the right idea about reagent. If you have
> more questions or objections, please tell. Also, proposals for points of
> integration are welcome.

Same here :)

Carlos