Resigned from PostNuke, with
ProjectX
now. Things look bright again. After all, almost all of the former
PostNuke management and good devs are here. They're fun to be with, too. We're
getting a lot of organizational and backend work done, and development's
continuing at a decent pace. The XML parser is coming along rather well.
Our new servers are up and running. Very well, too, after the initial
teething troubles that you always get. Now we all know that the internet is
green, or maybe grey, and that servers do indeed cease to work when you
accidentally pull the power chord. We have our first scapegoat of the
week.
mrb and I are all set on making some fundamental changes to the way we
handle development. He's written a good RFC on a new process and I'm
redesigning the access control data model we have at the moment to fit that
process better. It does now, of course. It just doesn't do it very well
because I had something different in mind with the first design, so some
enhancements are called for to reduce admin overhead and make the whole
thing a bit more powerful. The new process
addresses some issues common to projects of this size, like how to keep a
stable trunk in the repository, how to have some quality checks within the development
process itself etc. without making it a hassle for the devs. I'm rather
looking forward to the day we can start on it.
Plus, we're evaluating subversion as a CVS replacement. We're both beginning to
like the system; it works on different OSes and has some very good
features for version control that have always been an issue with CVS.
The first checkout is a pain on a large project, but after that it runs
smoothly. I do hope the devs are going to fix the need for occasional db
recoveries with the 1.0 release, because with the current need for manual
maintenance it is not acceptable for us for daily use.
Of course, almost the first thing that happened after the first weekly
tarball of ProjectX was released on dinerminor.com was that some dimwit
started complaining about how it failed to install for him and the lack of
documentation and things like that over at PostNuke. And it says in big letters
right next to the download link "***NOT FOR PRODUCTION and barely for
testing***" and "ONLY INTENDED FOR DEVELOPMENT USE". When a kind soul
pointed this out to him he complained some more. There's just no helping
some people. We'll have a user community to take care of again, eventually, but there is also that very special
kind that I'll be happy never to have to deal with again. Ever.