Interchange News
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IRC Meeting Report
Posted on April 14, 2011 by Jon Jensen
Today we had a scheduled developer meeting on IRC, to focus on the future of Interchange. Even before the meeting time arrived, there was good discussion about what the next phase for Interchange will mean. Beforehand, Interchange’s team captain, Stefan Hornburg, posted a proposed roadmap which people have discussed.
Interchange has always been at heart about ecommerce for Perl. That’s still an important niche for it to fill, and one close to the hearts of all the current Interchange developer. While Interchange has sometimes been used as a generic application server, there is other software in the Perl world that’s better suited for that role these days.
One major problem that we would like to solve is that Interchange is little-known in the Perl world at large, and that isn’t because it’s too new or obscure, but because it’s not on CPAN, is a monolithic all-or-nothing system, and doesn’t interact well with other Perl web software. We want to make Interchange a good choice for Perl developers doing ecommerce, and make it easier for competent Perl programmers to get results with it quickly.
The new Interchange roadmap and IRC discussions define the new Interchange “Bongo” branch’s components in rough outline:
- No backward compatibility with Interchange 5, though eventually migration helps may be developed
- Plack/PSGI
- Dancer and plugins, to cover dispatching, sessions, authentication, etc.
- Newer Perl versions (5.10.1 or newer)
- Good unit test coverage, and cpantesters.org testing
- UTF-8 everywhere
- Shopping cart, products likely part of core — it sounds like people want to be database agnostic to allow various SQL, NoSQL, etc., but implementation details here will of course be paramount
- CPAN modules used wherever possible:
- templating: Template::Flute, Template Toolkit, Text::ScriptTemplate, Text::Template, etc.
- payments: Business::OnlinePayment modules
- database access: Dancer::Plugin::Database, Rose::DB, DBIx::Class, etc.
- shipping calculation: Business::Shipping::*
- Plug-in architecture for features not always used, such as discounts, coupons, inventory handling, affiliates, reviews, paging (more-list), fragment caching (timed-build)
- Demo store
- Same license as Perl: dual GPL + Artistic, as opposed to GPL only for Interchange 5
- Documentation in POD plus a wiki
Developers who plan to devote time to this include Stefan, me (Jon Jensen), David Christensen, PJ, Marty, Nick Cook, and Justin La Sotten. Jure will help with design and CSS. Testers will include rsdvd, Mat Jones, Gert van der Spoel. And others expect to be able to join in once things get going.
We agreed to remove Interchange 5.10, a proposed transitional release, from the roadmap, as many developers didn’t see that a transitional release would get used much and would distract from Interchange 6 work. Interchange 5.8 is the next stable release expected in the next few months, and if there’s ever a need for a version 5.10 that can be done then.
There will be a new Interchange 5.7.7 development release coming very soon.
Clearly there’s a lot of work to be done, but we haven’t seen so many people involved in a developer meeting for a long time, so there’s reason to be hopeful.
News archive
- 2023-03-21: Interchange 3rd-party tax support for TaxJar & Avalara
- 2023-03-06: Alternate CGI link connector in Rust now available
- 2021-05-20: IRC chat channel #interchange moves to Libera Chat
- 2020-08-26: Marco Pessotto joins Interchange core developer team
- 2020-05-14: Admin XSS security vulnerabilities fixed (CVE-2020-12685)
- 2020-04-25: Project website refresh
- 2020-03-01: Interchange 5.12.0 release candidate 1
- 2018-11-22: Domain and server move
- 2016-01-06: Interchange 5.10.0 Released!
- 2015-12-30: 2015 Perl Dancer Conference reports
- 2015-08-20: New template for Interchange
- 2015-08-18: 2015 Perl Dancer Conference
- 2014-10-13: Core team changes
- 2014-08-22: Perl::Dancer Conference 2014
- 2014-07-07: Interchange 5.8.2 stable release
- 2014-07-02: Interchange6::Cart Hackathon on 14 July 2014
- 2014-06-25: Perusion developers release two new Bootstrap based templates for use with Interchange
- 2014-03-13: Interchange 5.8.1 stable release
- 2014-02-26: Interchange 6 Hackathon
- 2013-10-30: Ecommerce Innovation conference report
- 2013-07-19: Interchange 5.8.0 stable release
- 2013-03-18: eCommerce Innovations 2013 Conference
- 2013-02-13: Extensive Hall of Fame updates
- 2012-12-28: Josh Lavin joins Interchange core team
- 2011-06-12: Interchange 5.7.7 development release
- 2011-04-14: IRC Meeting Report
- 2011-03-28: Interchange IRC Meeting: April 14, 2011
- 2010-03-24: Interchange security releases: 5.7.6, 5.6.3, 5.4.5
- 2010-02-23: Interchange 5.7.5 development release
- 2009-12-09: Interchange 5.7.4 development release
- 2009-11-05: Interchange 5.7.3 development release
- 2009-09-17: Interchange security releases: 5.7.2, 5.6.2, 5.4.4
- 2009-08-23: Next Interchange community meeting
- 2009-08-13: David Christensen joins core team
- 2009-08-12: Payflow Pro legacy API retirement on September 1
- 2009-05-25: Interchange source code migrated to Git
- 2009-05-19: LinuxTag 2009
- 2009-05-13: Experimental UTF-8 branch
- 2008-12-05: JT Justman joins the Interchange core team
- 2008-11-13: Interchange 5.4.3, 5.6.1, 5.7.1 released
- 2008-06-01: Back from LinuxTag
- 2008-05-21: Interchange 5.6.0 released
- 2008-05-17: Interchange 5.5.3 development released
- 2008-05-08: Interchange at LinuxTag 2008!
- 2008-04-29: Interchange 5.5.2 development release available
- 2007-08-21: Interchange 5.5.1 development release available
- 2007-08-08: Bug Squashing Party
- 2007-06-18: New Debian Packages (5.4.2-3)
- 2007-06-13: Debian Packages for Etch
- 2007-04-05: Interchange goes to LinuxTag!
- 2007-02-27: Ron Phipps joins the Interchange core team
- 2007-02-07: Interchange 5.4.2 released
- 2006-08-28: New Developers pajamian and thunder
- 2006-05-26: Interchange 5.4.1 released
- 2006-03-28: Improved search system on www.icdevgroup.org
- 2006-03-27: [/page] and [/order] macros
- 2006-03-25: XMLDOCS documentation
- 2006-01-31: Development tree notice
- 2005-12-31: Interchange 5.4 release
- 2005-12-12: Interchange 5.3.3 developer release
- 2005-12-12: New ICDEVGROUP website
- 2005-11-23: Interchange 5.3.2 beta release available
- 2005-11-08: PayPal Pro Payments Module
- 2005-10-18: Interchange 5.4 (stable) release schedule
- 2005-09-23: Security flaw found in Interchange demo
- 2005-06-07: Admin UI Documentation
- 2004-05-05: Interchange 5.2.0 released
- 2004-04-20: Interchange 5.1.1 beta now available
- 2004-04-20: Business::OnlinePayment support for Interchange
- 2004-04-12: Interchange 5.1.0 beta released
- 2004-03-29: Interchange 5.0.1 and 4.8.9 released
- 2003-12-15: Interchange 5.0 released
- 2003-11-12: Interchange User fMRIDC.org in Infoworld Top 100
- 2003-10-31: Interchange 4.9.9 released
- 2003-06-19: Interchange 4.9.8 released
- 2003-01-30: Interchange 4.8.7 released
- 2002-12-19: Interchange Documentation Wiki
- 2002-12-12: interchange.rtfm.info
- 2002-12-12: Interchange 4.9.5 Released
- 2002-12-02: Interchange 4.9.4 released
- 2002-11-14: Order Fulfillment: The E-Commerce Deal Breaker
- 2002-10-28: Interchange on front cover of Linux Magazine
- 2002-10-28: Some docs for Interchange 4.9
- 2002-10-26: Whither Red Hat?
- 2002-10-21: New web site look and feel, new server provider
- 2002-09-25: Interchange 4.9.3 Nightly Build Available
- 2002-08-18: Interchange 4.8.6 released — IMPORTANT upgrade
- 2002-07-22: Interchange 4.9.1 alpha released
- 2002-05-06: Interchange 4.8.5 released
- 2002-05-02: Interchange 4.8.4 patch
- 2002-04-30: Interchange 4.8.4 released
- 2001-12-04: Updates to the Developers Site
- 2001-11-28: Interchange Application Server WebCast
- 2001-11-28: Interchange 4.8.3 released
- 2001-11-19: WebTechniques reviews Red Hat E-Commerce Suite
- 2001-11-08: ZDNet Review of the Red Hat E-Commerce Suite
- 2001-10-16: Linux-Magazin (German) Interchange article
- 2001-09-24: Red Hat E-commerce Suite available for purchase
- 2001-09-20: IDC white paper on Red Hat e-commerce available
- 2001-09-20: Upcoming Webcast on Interchange
- 2001-09-19: Interchange 4.8.2 released
- 2001-08-14: Printed Interchange documentation available
- 2001-08-13: Interchange 4.8.1 released
- 2001-07-26: Interchange 4.7.7 beta released
- 2001-07-18: Interchange 4.7.6 beta released
- 2001-07-03: Development release of Interchange 4.7.5
- 2001-06-16: Development release of Interchange 4.7.4
- 2001-06-12: Development release of Interchange 4.7.3
- 2001-06-12: Interchange Training Classes
- 2001-05-10: Development release of Interchange 4.7.2
- 2001-04-17: Interchange 4.6.5 released
- 2001-04-01: Interchange 4.6.4 released
- 2001-03-28: Development release of Interchange 4.7.1
- 2001-03-19: About Interchange
- 2001-03-01: Interchange Surveys
- 2001-03-01: Interchange Tutorial
- 2001-02-09: Interchange 4.6.3 released
- 2001-02-08: Interchange 4.6.2 released
- 2001-02-06: Red Hat Acquires Akopia and Interchange
- 2001-02-04: #interchange channel on IRC
- 2000-12-03: Interchange 4.6.1 released
- 2000-10-27: Interchange 4.6.0 released
- 2000-10-20: Interchange 4.5.8 beta released
- 2000-10-19: Overhauled documentation available
- 2000-10-06: Interchange 4.5.7 beta released
- 2000-09-26: Interchange 4.5.6 beta released
- 2000-08-10: Akopia Developer Resource site launched