[ic] IRC Meeting Summary and Log

[Stefan Hornburg]

Gert van der Spoel wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: interchange-users-bounces at icdevgroup.org [mailto:interchange-
>> users-bounces at icdevgroup.org] On Behalf Of Peter
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:12 AM
>> To: interchange-users at icdevgroup.org
>> Subject: [ic] IRC Meeting Summary and Log
>>
>> Hi everyone, the meeting on IRC went well.  There is a log of the
>> meeting posted at
>> <http://cloud.github.com/downloads/pajamian/stuff/interchange_meeting.l
>> og>.
>>
>> In attendance were:
>>
>> Mike Heins <mheins>                -- Author and Founder of
>> Interchange.
>> Stefan Hornburg <racke>            -- Interchange team captain.
>> Peter Ajamian <pj>                 -- Interchange Core Developer
>> Marco Mescoli <marco>              -- Interchange Developer
>> Mat Jones <matjones>               -- Interchange Developer
>> Andrew Elwell <Elwell>
>> Marty Tennison <marty_tennison>
>> Brian Miller <brian_endpoint>      -- Interchange Developer
>> Gert van der Spoel <thunder>       -- Interchange Core Developer
>> Greg Hanson <perusiongreg>         -- Interchange Core Developer
>> David Christensen <endpoint_david> -- Interchange Developer
>> Mark Lipscombe <snewpy>            -- Interchange Core Developer
>> Josh Lavin <jlavin>                -- Interchange Developer
>> Paul Jordan <pjordan>              -- Interchange Developer
>> Ron Phipps <ron_phipps>            -- Interchange Core Developer
>> Justin Otten <__justin__afk>       -- Interchange Developer
>> Daniel Browning <daniel_b>         -- interchange Core Developer
>> Phil Smith <rsdvd>
>>
>> The meeting started out with discussion of whether we should attempt a
>> rewrite of the interchange core using a framework such as Catalyst or
>> simply review the codebase and remove bloat and then adding in the new
>> features that are desired.  
> 
> Actually the meeting started with approximately 10 minutes where people had
> the opportunity to introduce themselves. Which gave I think a good overview
> of the people who had joined the meeting and what could be noticed from the
> attendees is that they all have been working with Interchange for 4 years or
> more. I did not see anybody who said 'I did my first site in 2008' .... 
> 
> Maybe not an important tidbit, but I thought it to be interesting
> nonetheless.
> 
>> It was decided that a full rewrite of the
>> Interchange core would be time prohibitive and that there was no one
>> willing to step up to the plate to handle the bulk of coding.  A review
>> of the existing core and removal of bloat was decided upon as the most
>> realistic and best path to take.
>>
>> Plugins were also discussed.  The idea being to allow the importation
>> of
>> features and feature sets as packages that can easily be added or
>> removed by the end user.
>>
>> It was also agreed that we should not be concerned with backwards
>> compatibility, but that such can be achieved as an add-on set of
>> plugins
>> at a later time.
>>
>> Peter proposed the following roadmap:
>> 1.  Unbloat and strip down the codebase
>> 2.  Implement plugin system
>> 3.  Re-implement existing features as plugins
>> 4.  Implement backwards compatibility layer as plugins
>> 5.  New features as plugins.
>>
>> This was generally agreed upon with the possible exception of reversing
>> 4 and 5.
>>
>> Stephan pointed out a link to the Mongoose proposed framework (Mongoose
>> is the working name for the new Interchange core):
>> http://corewiki.icdevgroup.org/moin.cgi/Mongoose#preview
>>
>> Some suggestions were given of sections of code or features that may
>> need attention:
>> * Import routines
>> * The adding of items programmatically to the cart
>> * shipping
>> * globals
>> * options and variants
>> * sales tax
>> * hooks to POS
>> * removal of dbconf and database directives
>> * encoding and locale support
>>
>> At this point we began to work through various bullet points of the
>> above list and the Mongoose proposal (link above).  The following
>> conclusions were reached:
>>
>> dbconf: We should strip out all existing dbconf code and replace with a
>> clean interface to DBI.  IC should not require lots of table
>> definitions.
>>
>> makecat and the config/ directory should be scrapped.  In it's place we
>> will supply an installer plugin that is included with the core (but can
>> be removed) that will allow core configuration, manage core plugins,
>> and
>> manage catalogs from a browser interface.
>>
>> The admin UI will be removed from the core and implemented in
>> individual
>> catalogs.
>>
>> generated files (session. orders, log, tmp, ...) should be placed in a
>> var/ directory under the catalog.
>>
>> Get rid of text file counters (though there is still some issue of
>> whether we should retain the text counter code in the core or move it
>> to
>> a plugin).
>>
>> reduce queries on pages.  There is some disagreement as to whether this
>> should entail a core change to allow for caching of [field] and [data]
>> tag results.
>>
>> the code directory should be changed so that we don't have three
>> subdirectories that all contain tags but we should retain seperate
>> subdirectories for filters, widgets, etc.  It was proposed that we can
>> have a separate directory to hold user created tags, but it should ship
>> empty.
>>
>> There are still several other issues to discuss and so it was generally
>> agreed that we should plan another meeting to continue the discussion.
>>
>> That is all of the important bits that I can think of, if anyone has
>> anything to add, please feel free to do so.
> 
> The one thing that I do see as important is the part of the discussion if
> Interchange is to be seen as:
> 1. application server
> 2. ecommerce site builder
> 
> Or
> 1. ecommerce platform
> 2. nice you can even do other things with it
> 
> I do not think there was an overall agreement on this. The push was mainly
> towards #2, where Interchange is seen more as an ecommerce platform rather
> than an application server. This is a change from how it (I believe) has
> been 'marketed' so far. For example the title of the current site
> 'Interchange web-based application server' and also the overall feeling you
> get from reading the current 'About' page:
> http://www.icdevgroup.org/i/dev/about does not promote it as really an
> 'ecommerce platform'  ... 

We moved over to #2 based on experiences with our Linuxtag booths and
on feedback from Interchange users. 

Application server is really non-descriptive, e-Commerce gives us a good
focus.

The site title should be changed too, yes.

Regards
	Racke


-- 
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Interchange Development Team