Quality management of plugins

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:25 pm

carl_galloway wrote:@hgoor, stop with the personal attacks!! mgroeninger has contributed a lot to this community, probably more than you have.

@vvdheuvel, mgroeninger's background is very relevant if someone chooses to attack his integrity and hgoor's initial query was about the quality of plugin code, not about his specific validation problems.

Hey Carl, chill: I am not out here to offend anyone and it is NOT a personal attack on anyone...

To clarify: as I explained above it's a matter of how you would define "developer".

And I obviously have a different view on that given my over 11 years of - relevant - experience in the Internet business.

Also, I think I just explained enough that I am willing to pitch in what little I can do...

EDIT: and on a side note: there would be no community at all without USERS of the software, so I also disagree with you on the "contribution" part...

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:26 pm

If the answer then would be: learn to be a mechanic yourself I think that would not be constructive

You are correct, that would not be constructive at all...

Unfortunately, I don't believe I have the skill or the time to help out with this. But I do want to know what the process will be, because I would love to see the plugins my name is attached to be certified. And I would very much like to know what I need to do to continue to get my plugins re-certified as I make changes.

And (as a side note), if you see any problems in any plugin with my name attached, please let me know... I believe I have always been responsive to any issue with my plugins.

I am also able to make changes to plugins without my name attached, but I would want to know specifically what changes are needed and why (so that I don't get in too much trouble when I break something).

BTW, Garvin has commited a patch for the shoutcast plugin.
http://php-blog.cvs.sourceforge.net/*ch ... vision=1.4

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:31 pm

mgroeninger wrote:
If the answer then would be: learn to be a mechanic yourself I think that would not be constructive
You are correct, that would not be constructive at all...

Unfortunately, I don't believe I have the skill or the time to help out with this. But I do want to know what the process will be, because I would love to see the plugins my name is attached to be certified. And I would very much like to know what I need to do to continue to get my plugins re-certified as I make changes.

And (as a side note), if you see any problems in any plugin with my name attached, please let me know... I believe I have always been responsive to any issue with my plugins.

I am also able to make changes to plugins without my name attached, but I would want to know specifically what changes are needed and why (so that I don't get in too much trouble when I break something).

BTW, Garvin has commited a patch for the shoutcast plugin.
http://php-blog.cvs.sourceforge.net/*ch ... vision=1.4

Thanks matt, once again: no personal flames or anything intended...

Just trying if we can set something up (community guys!) were we all can have some constructive thing going on.

As I said many times in my posts: one of the BEST things about S9y is the direct contact with all the developers.

Can't give you all enough Kudos for that.

But things can always be better and like I said: I am willing to pitch in what I can do because I like S9y.

So: if anyone has any ideas how to tackle the testing & feedback thing?

I see a lot of Open Source projects that have someone that is in charge of Quality Testing...

Maybe some thoughts there?

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:45 pm

Oh, and how about that idea to provide a direct link to documentation from within the SPARTACUS description?

That way users can enlighten themselves on all aspects of the plugin before they press the install button?

Yes I know: I could go look for it myself, but hey: Internet is also about being lazy and just being able to click a link

Post by **garvinhicking** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:50 pm

Hi hgoor!

A general test server would be nice; you could give anyone who's willing to help an account. Then just install and try out plugins. You already have your own wiki, so you could setup a page where you gather all bugs?

Then you publish that page here, and all developers who have time can fix the outstanding bugs and communicat in your wiki.

I would also be offering to setup a s9y wiki page for that, but there it would not be world-writable because I could not moderate it.

And I already offered, I will personally fix every XHTML bug in any plugin.

Is that something you all might be interested in? (Quoting 'Entourage'

)

Best regards,
Garvin

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:01 pm

garvinhicking wrote:A general test server would be nice; you could give anyone who's willing to help an account. Then just install and try out plugins. You already have your own wiki, so you could setup a page where you gather all bugs?

Then you publish that page here, and all developers who have time can fix the outstanding bugs and communicat in your wiki.

I would also be offering to setup a s9y wiki page for that, but there it would not be world-writable because I could not moderate it.

And I already offered, I will personally fix every XHTML bug in any plugin.

Is that something you all might be interested in?

Sounds like a plan! I am game and will spend some time on it this weekend.

I will try to think up a way of controlling access etc...

Obviously people would need FTP access to upload new plugins before they can be submitted to SPARTACUS.

Instead of a Wiki maybe some bug reporting software would be in order? that way developers would get automatic e-mails and such?

The Wiki could become maybe a developer wiki for various subjects on the plugins themselves?

Hmmm...

Food for thought. It will be costing some time to set it all up, but I think it will be worth is.

Also (and once again: this is not a personal attack) I think the fact that mgroeninger admits that he has less experience with the front-end side (i.e. the HTML/XHTML output) actually proves my point that there should be some kind of check/approvement for plugins

I think I would like to have my S9y test server behind a user-name password (after that full access)...

I will certainly require some help with setting that up, but am willing to spend time on that....

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:17 pm

mgroeninger wrote: BTW, Garvin has commited a patch for the shoutcast plugin.
http://php-blog.cvs.sourceforge.net/*ch ... vision=1.4

In all commotion, I missed this completely

"All hail to the King"

One last thing about it: does it support UTF8 ? I sometime see it displaying weird characters when displaying the ID3 tags of some songs...

For instance:

Meu Amor (Caf�)

Post by **garvinhicking** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:31 pm

Hi!

About shoutcast and UTF-8: I sadly can't tell; I believe it just outputs the content from the shoutcast server; I don'T know if they serve ISO or UTF...

Obviously people would need FTP access to upload new plugins before they can be submitted to SPARTACUS.

Why do they need that? Spartacus plugins are committed to CVS; people I know are 'worthy' get CVS access, all other plugins are first shown to me and then I commit those. Spartacus plugin can only be maintained via CVS, not via FTP.

Instead of a Wiki maybe some bug reporting software would be in order? that way developers would get automatic e-mails and such?

Sure, you could also use the http://www.sf.net/projects/php-blog bug tracker.

Thanks a lot for offering your help! The project can definitely need that help!

Also (and once again: this is not a personal attack) I think the fact that mgroeninger admits that he has less experience with the front-end side (i.e. the HTML/XHTML output) actually proves my point that there should be some kind of check/approvement for plugins

If we have people that volunteer to check it, I am sure no developer would refuse it. Even I am making bugs and troubles. Having other people check it is always a plus.

But we can only establish such an "approvement" mechanism, if people can constantly dedicate their time to this.

I think I would like to have my S9y test server behind a user-name password (after that full access)...

I must admit I don'T really see the need for a test server? Every person that would like to check plugins could also try them on his own blog? If you give write privilege to a central test installation, you would have to moderate it, and reset it from time to time. Also people would need admin privileges and thus could intrude your server.

Developers need to have their own blog for developing a plugin, so for those people it would also not be really needed?

On the other hand, having a test-server would not hurt either.

Best regards,
Garvin

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:48 pm

garvinhicking wrote: About shoutcast and UTF-8: I sadly can't tell; I believe it just outputs the content from the shoutcast server; I don'T know if they serve ISO or UTF...

Sorry that's true: I assumed the plugin would do this but it just shows the output of SHOUTCAST. However, you can access the direct SHOUTCAST output here: http://zion.demon.nl:8000/ Note: Opera will open this as a stream, so use Firefox or IE.

There it always shows up the right way: I presume it is UTF-8 then and the plugin doesn't ??? (maybe I'm wrong).

Edit: Right now the plugin shows:
Current Song: R�yksopp - Eple (Fatboy Slim Remix)
But the direct output of shoutcast (see url above ) shows the right output:

Current Song: Röyksopp - Eple (Fatboy Slim Remix)

So something must be wrong in the plugin?

Speaking of UTF-8: Spartacus seems not to apply this cause I see in my back-end:

Serendipity Authors
Author: Falk D�ring; version: 1.0

And also:

Letzte Google suche
Zeigt den Inhalt der letzten Google Suche(n), die zu diesem Blog gef�hrt hat/haben, an
version: 1.02

Post by **garvinhicking** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:37 am

Hi!

I committed version 1.03 of the plugin to CVS, which should fix the missing UTF-8 encoding. Can you download it from CVS to see if that fixes your problem?

Speaking of UTF-8: Spartacus seems not to apply this cause I see in my back-end:

Author names within the plugin are encoded in ISO-8859-1, that's right. Basically they would not be allowed in author names, I'll need to ask Falk to rename his name.

Letzte Google suche
Zeigt den Inhalt der letzten Google Suche(n), die zu diesem Blog gef�hrt hat/haben, an
version: 1.02

Which language are you using for your blog? I think it might be because that plugin is not translated?

Regards,
Garvin

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:58 pm

garvinhicking wrote:I committed version 1.03 of the plugin to CVS, which should fix the missing UTF-8 encoding. Can you download it from CVS to see if that fixes your problem?

Yes! BRILLIANT! Great. Yet another 7 errors down the drain (the <br /> and the song output is fixed as well!

garvinhicking wrote: Author names within the plugin are encoded in ISO-8859-1, that's right. Basically they would not be allowed in author names, I'll need to ask Falk to rename his name.

Aha....

garvinhicking wrote:Which language are you using for your blog? I think it might be because that plugin is not translated?

I use English.

But here is something funny: look at your Spartacus.s9y.org page

Letzte Google Suche
serendipity_plugin_google_last_query
version 1.03 (GPL, Last Updated 2006-08-16)
Serendipity Team
Serendipity >= 0.7
Zeigt den Inhalt der letzten Google Suche(n), die zu diesem Blog gefÃ¼hrt hat/haben, an

The Serendipity Authors shows his name the right way

Once again: thanks for fixing the plugin.

Last question: how long does it usually take for a plugin to show up in SPARTACUS after you submit it?

Maybe an option to have an experimental branch? For testing?

That way I could set up a testserver with experimental plugins?

(maybe a bad idea, just pitching a brainwave here)...

judebert · Post by **judebert** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:57 pm

Usually it takes 24 hours or so; it's a nightly build.

Unfortunately, Garvin's the one who does the work (as usual), and his development machine just released the magic blue smoke. We won't get any SPARTACUS updates until it's replaced, which is in progress.

I beg for money on my site all the time, but Garvin deserves it more than me. And a donation to his PayPal account now would help the whole S9Y community by defraying his cost on a development box.

Everybody: if you're reading this, why not help us out? Even a buck is useful.

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:12 pm

judebert wrote:Usually it takes 24 hours or so; it's a nightly build.

Unfortunately, Garvin's the one who does the work (as usual), and his development machine just released the magic blue smoke. We won't get any SPARTACUS updates until it's replaced, which is in progress.

I beg for money on my site all the time, but Garvin deserves it more than me. And a donation to his PayPal account now would help the whole S9Y community by defraying his cost on a development box.

Everybody: if you're reading this, why not help us out? Even a buck is useful.

Ouch! That's bad!

Didn't know about that (just read his blog-entry!)....

I have a mini-pc here myself: its a HP EPC-40.

1GHz Celeron with 128Kb of on-die Level 2 cache, 256Mb of PC133 SDRAM, Intel 815 motherboard chipset, 20Gb Maxtor 4K020H1 hard disk, 24x TEAC CD-ROM, 4Mb shared AGP 4x Intel 815 graphics, SoundMAX integrated audio, Intel Pro/100 VE 10/100BaseTX Ethernet adaptor

It is really quiet since it only has a fan for the cpu (the power comes from an external connector)...

You can buy these a lot online for good prices....

hgoor · Post by **hgoor** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 11:24 pm

I Found another plugin with 2 minor errors:

serendipity_event_backup.php

Since it didn't know at first it was plugin related, I posted a new messsage about it, but it would have been a good one for this thread too

See: http://www.s9y.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6722

I also found what part of the code is wrong, but need some help in adjusting the code....