May 2012 - xwiki-devs@xwiki.org

Re: [xwiki-devs] [GSOC] Welcoming our GSoC students
by Jonathan Solichin 21 May '12

21 May '12

Hello friends, I wanted to revisit this thread from a while back. One of the things we were supposed to do (as GSOC students) was to fix an issue listed on JIRA. Coming from a run-time development background, I was very much struggling with this. I've been trying to get at this but have been for the most part unsuccessful. I finally tried, though as a last resort (which was probably a bad idea and I should have asked sooner instead of continually struggling with it myself with no communication, sorry--definitely learning from this), the IRC. Though @cjd was super helpful, and helping me a lot, I was still unable to build xwiki-platform and xwiki-rendering (though I was able to build xwiki-commons). Since I could not do this, I tried to find a really simple JIRA issue that could hopefully be changed without building. Out of all the available issues, I though this seems to be the best suited [1] since it was mainly just deleting text and adding a class (probably the most relevant as well since my project is mostly front-end) so I did it and sent a pull request. Though as @cjd advised me, even this may have not been the best idea since it is on the front end and would probably need a lot more discussing--since I could have made an error in my deletions. In short, I apologize that I am not able to contribute much more to the JIRA issues, it was definitely a learning experience. I take from this the importance of communication and to not be afraid to ask the community since they are super helpful. I will continue to work with this as I can in the coming weeks. As a side note, my school ends on June 8 and finals season is coming so while I will try my best to not let that get in the way of xwiki, i am afraid at the chance that it will. So I guess, in the spirit of communicating, I thought I would let the community know. I apologize for the inconvenience and my shortcomings and I hope that the community can continue to help me! Best, Jonathan Solichin [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-7678?page=com.xiplink.jira.git.jira-git-…

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[xwiki-devs] Diff module
by Thomas Mortagne 20 May '12

20 May '12

Hi devs, Since there is not official standard for diff/merge API I started to write a simple one. Yo can find it on https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-commons/tree/feature-diff/xwiki-commons-core…. The first use case for it is to provide a diff/merge API for the Extension Manager XAR merging conflict resolution UI. It is mostly inspired from JRCS/java-diff-utils APIs and implemented using java-diff-utils (http://code.google.com/p/java-diff-utils/) for the diff and JDiff (http://www.qarks.com/web/en/products_jdiff.html) for the multiline String merge. Theses are the most active independent libraries I could find so far and it's not really what I would call active library usually... Would be nice to get some comments/suggestions on the API. For the implementation side if you know some good diff/merge tool I would be glad to get some other suggestions. I took a quick look at various EDIs which obviously have this kind of tools but what I could find is not really designed to be used easily outside of the EDI for which they have been designed. Either its very tied to the EDI itself or it's generic enough but trigger a whole bunch of dependencies while we would use like 1% of the total. Here are the various features I'm looking for in an ideal library: * good 3 ways merge ("good" is not a detail, applying a patch on the third version does not always give very good results) * diff/patch API * support of single line in 3 ways merge and diff Thanks, -- Thomas Mortagne

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[xwiki-devs] [VOTE] Improving documentation and automating our Release Notes when doing releases
by Vincent Massol 20 May '12

20 May '12

Hi devs, Sergiu has started a script to fully automate a release (more to come - Sergiu will document what it does soon). The only part not automated are the Release Notes. IMO we can "automate" it by a process which I propose to be: * An issue can only be closed if it's documented on xwiki.org and on the release notes page for the upcoming release. * We collectively enforce this by reopening issues if someone doesn't do the first point, asking him/her to do it This will have some nice effects: * xwiki.org will be more up to date than it is now * it's up to the developer to document what they do (I don't think it's good to push this to someone else) which is good since they have the most knowledge (side note: it doesn't mean we don't need a technical writer to improve on the documentation done by developers but it would be about style and not about content) * the release notes will be ready for the release, as we progress and the burden of writing the release notes will not fall on the shoulders of the Release Manager (there's no reason it should) * the whole release process will almost be a joy to do * with a fully automated release process it means we'll be able to perform a lot more bugfix releases which is good for our users Here's my +1 Thanks -Vincent

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[xwiki-devs] New Component Script Service
by Vincent Massol 19 May '12

19 May '12

FYI, I've added a new Script Service to get access to the CM and to get component instances. See http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotesXWikiEnterpris… I've taken the liberty to deprecate the old Utils.getComponent*() methods. Thanks -Vincent

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[xwiki-devs] Questions concerning the development of XWiki, Round 2
by Martin Schönberger 19 May '12

19 May '12

Hello again! First of all, let me express my thanks to all of you who joined in on this thread (started at http://lists.xwiki.org/pipermail/devs/2012-April/050416.html) to support me in my quest to better understand the way open source development works in XWiki. :) As I've mentioned in my last email, I have some more questions I would like to ask. Last time I focused on general aspects of the process, today's topics revolve around the project's architecture, roles and governance, and knowledge management. So my first question this time concerns the architectural design, and how it has evolved over time. Did the basic structure change / grow significantly since the early days of XWiki? Vincent mentioned the change from a monolithic code to small modules. Were these and other changes made in some major refactorings, or rather through steady refinement? To what degree is it an issue to keep backwards compatibility between releases? Also I am interested more closely how the functions and responsibilities are divided in the team. Caty wrote about 'very clear departments' in her last answer, and the teampage on XWiki.com lists a multitude of different and specific roles. Both of your descriptions of the testing process, however, suggests a less strict separation of tasks. So what role do the roles play? How specialized or cross-functional are the teams and people working therein? Is there a difference between XWiki.org and XWiki SAS? In a related matter, many of the role descriptions of the core developers contain manager and leadership titles. What, in practice, are the main tasks of the people managing the development? Many meritocracies have safety nets, some rules to follow or people to go to when no consensus can be reached on important topics. Did this ever occur in XWiki? What would be done in such a situation? Have either the formal roles or the informal merit people earned in a special field some kind of influence on the weight of their voice in a dispute? And last but not least some questions about the access and distribution of knowledge: XWiki features an extensive written documentation of itself and the process used in its development. What is the role then of additional, personal communication, of the proverbial informal talk at the water cooler? Is the necessary time and ceremony of written documentation always justified by making the knowledge permanently available to everyone, or can you think of exceptions? Again, every answer or comment is greatly appreciated, Martin

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[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Filtering of events fired by hidden documents in the activity stream
by Jean-Vincent Drean 18 May '12

18 May '12

Hi, Following the "hiding technical content" it seems logical to hide events fired by hidden documents in the activity stream. Since the activity stream uses its own store for performance I don't see any other solution than to duplicate the "hidden" information in it. I'd like to commit the following implementation: - no change to the ActivityStream / ActivityEvent APIs - additions of ActivityEventImpl#isHidden() and ActivityEventImpl#setHidden(boolean) - modification of ActivityStreamImpl#addDocumentActivityEvent() so that it sets the event as hidden when it's been fired by a hidden doc - modification of ActivityStreamImpl#searchEvents() so that it tweaks the hibernate query when the user doesn't want hidden docs to be displayed (same principle as in the query manager) - addition of a ase_hidden column in the activity stream DB table This way events can be filtered without any modification to the existing APIs. WDYT ? Note: naming this new property "hidden" and not something like "hiddenpage" allow us to extend the concept in the future. We could put the setHidden / isHidden methods at the API level and any extension would be able to mark an event as hidden. But it's not part of the current proposal. Thanks, JV.

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[xwiki-devs] [Rendering] CTS Day #1
by Vincent Massol 18 May '12

18 May '12

Hi devs, As you may know I've created a Compatibility Test Suite for the Rendering module. The idea is to have a suite of tests executed for all syntaxes. The reason this is important is because we need to tell our users what is the level of support for all the syntaxes we support. And it's only useful if the CTS suite is complete. Now we had some integration tests before, located in xwiki-rendering-integration-tests and the goal is to move these tests in 2 places: * the CTS (in xwiki-rendering-test) * tests specific to a given syntax and not part of the CTS because they're really syntax-specific (for example the current bold3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 for bold tests - bold1, 2 and 8 have been moved to CTS already) I've started doing the work and… it's a lot of work… This is what I have now: http://rendering.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/SyntaxReport I need help and thus I'd like to propose a CTS Day for everyone interested in helping out. I'm proposing Monday the 4th of June (since before that we have the 4.1M2 release and we should have the max time for it). So who can join in for this necessary work? Thanks -Vincent

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[xwiki-devs] To involve another wiki page in one wiki page
by jinlong liu 18 May '12

18 May '12

Hello ,can I involve another wiki page in a wiki page. I mean something like #template("global.vm") ,not a link to another page. Thank you.

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[xwiki-devs] [Release] XWiki Enterprise and XWiki Manager 4.1 Milestone 1 Released
by Caleb James DeLisle 17 May '12

17 May '12

The XWiki development team is proud to announce the release of XWiki Enterprise 4.1 Milestone 1, the first milestone along the 4.1 road map. This release brings new 3D graphs made with pure XWiki syntax, safer Groovy scripting, and better hiding of internal application related documents. As always, it includes plenty of important bug fixes and improvements. See: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotesXWikiEnterprise41M1 for more details. Or grab the fresh downloads at: http://enterprise.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Download Thanks to everyone in the community for making this release great! Caleb

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[xwiki-devs] [GSoc] Advanced Email Integration
by Vincent Massol 16 May '12

16 May '12

Hi everyone/Jerem, I've seen that we've added the following GSOC project: http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/GoogleSummerOfCode/AdvancedEmailIntegra… This looks quite similar to what Jerem is working on. Jerem, maybe you could tell us a bit more about your project and how it's similar/different than this GSOC. Jerem, any timeframe for a first version of your project to be visible? Is this something you're developing for yourself or do you plan to give it to the community or even to the XWiki project? I'd like to clarify this to know how to best organize this project to not duplicate efforts too much and instead to combine synergies. Thanks -Vincent

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