Re: Future of LedgerSMB: Ideas and RFC

[Chris Bennett <..hidden..>]

I was lightly involved a good while back, but I had to basically close down my business for a while
to care for my handicapped mother.

>From reading this thread, and not having looked at 1.3, it seems that some very particular issues
are desperately needing to be fixed. These issues seem to be fairly unrelated as far as what skills
are needed.

Documentation - both for usage, installation AND especially for existing and desired coding.
Without a clear idea what has been done, what is broken and preferred ways to fix code, it is very
difficult to help.

Installation is too difficult
Since 1.3 is really just a development phase, I think this issue can be put at a lower priority
than documentation, but not too low.

Coding
This is clearly three things (more?).
database itself and triggers, functions, etc
Interface, what works what is ugly, etc
Actual program perl code that works behind the scenes.

Frankly, it seems to me that things are bad enough right now that talk of new features should be
temporarily stopped. What is now here needs to be fixed, code that works improved,
DOCUMENTATION is essential! and finally, fix installation issues.

My coding and database skills have improved some since I last appeared. I have improved my own
database, which previously included local vendor products updated by spiders, vendor information,
customer information, to now have product assemblies. This required me to learn functions and
triggers. I could ahve done this from my apps but that seemed wrong.

Give me a task, I will try to fix or improve problem.

It is okay to keep sourceforge for user base, but not for developers.
Set up a server just for current development code that we can access with simpler tools,
git, cvs, whatever.

We need something like OpenBSD uses.
A stable/release version 1.2
A current version which is for developers only with frequent snapshots when a change is made to
verify that it still works correctly.
A couple of pre-filled databases and test entries to make would make testing very fast and easy,
even if not perfect.

Chris, I think you should stop coding temporarily and do one thing only. Document each module,
subroutine, make sure each database procedure is clear about what is does, wrong or right and
assign smaller tasks to anyone willing to give a go.

I am willing to help.

Chris Bennett
..hidden..