Re: Future of LedgerSMB: Ideas and RFC

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Luke <..hidden..> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 May 2011, Chris Bennett wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> I think I disagree with that, at least somewhat, from two prospectives:
>
So let me suggest a priority list at present:

1)  First, I need to clear all bugs reported by current users of 1.3
in production.  I have allocated time this weekend to work on a lot of
this.

2)  We need good testing, feedback on two things:
   a)  Technical, back-end installation processes (make-based, etc,
maybe a custom make installdb target should be added?)
   b) There are a couple of front-end to set up the database but not
sure how well it works.  Once everyone is happy with the technical
back-end stuff, we need to focus on testing/fine tuning these.

3)  Upgrade scripts

4)  Update User Manual as appropriate

If others want to start on 2-3 while I work on 1, that would of course
be helpful.  #4 may take some time and more familiarity with 1.3 than
the others.

Also, one point about addons in 1.3....

There are certain portions of the old code that I do not believe can
be reasonably and completely fixed using addons.  Those will need to
wait for a future major release.  However a lot of the old code can be
addressed this way, in addons that would not require tremendous
porting to work with future versions.  Each addon can have its own
release cycle, with features added on each new release.  This would
allow, for example, a project accounting addon to be released with new
features against LSMB 1.3, and users of the software could choose
whether or not to install these addons, taking advantage of new
features.

Two good examples of addons already commissioned and available for 1.3
are those for fixed asset tracking and depreciation, and those for
template transactions.

So I don't think we have to have an either/or approach regarding new
features in 1.3 stable.

Best Wishes.
Chris Travers