The future of FluxBB

Xzorg6 · 2008-12-27 11:00:12

Jarkko wrote:

I don't think you've been reading carefully what I've said. The way I see it now, there are at least three ideas about this floating around:
Have separate devs for the 1.2 (1.4) branch (as suggested at least by Smartys, Elbekko, me…)
Develop both branches with the same developers (yann, …?)
Stop developing 1.2 (only maintaining security fixes) and focus all efforts on the 1.3 (2.0) branch instead (Rich, ridgerunner)
You seem to be under the impression that I support C, and still want to use 1.2.

I vote for C.

SuperMAG · 2008-12-27 11:04:27

Jarkko wrote:

SuperMAG wrote:
if 1.2 was released as 1.4 with only uf8 support, too many people will get confused.
UTF-8 support would be (in my opinion) a feature big enough to justify the version bump.
[…] i mean almost every thing is done.
No.

alright did u actually readed the list. only css stuff remaining, the migration tools, stats, blablabla are stuff not releated to the core.

Franz · 2008-12-27 13:36:41

Who of you really believes that the development of 2.0 (with templating etc.) would only take a year? Come on, guys. Be realistic. Look at how much time was needed for 1.3!!! And that is the point: We have never been so close to a 1.3 release. 2.0 would need a new markup, too - why should it be any faster? The frustration would grow and so on...
Finish it now!

Strofanto wrote:

Meow wrote:
People just need to spend much time on upgrading their forum once, not twice.
Upgrading the forum takes an FTP transfer, a php script run, a few options to change in the admin panel. Can't take more than a hour.

Not quite. Most people run heavily modified forums, so that would take a long time, especially considering that there are not that many extensions out there.

elbekko · 2008-12-27 13:39:39

Why would 2.0 need a new markup?

Stop pulling things out of your arse please

Franz · 2008-12-27 13:42:50

Well, even if not: This one would still need to be finished.

MattF · 2008-12-27 13:49:55

Crikey. Some of you lot do have an inate option for not actually noting what is written.

1.2* - No-one is suggesting that the current devs carry on with anything other than security fixes. If you note, I myself, as well as others, have mentioned that their efforts would be best concentrated on the latest release. There are other people on here willing to take on the burden of further developing the 1.2* branch.

vnpenguin · 2008-12-27 14:02:06

MattF wrote:

1.2* - No-one is suggesting that the current devs carry on with anything other than security fixes. If you note, I myself, as well as others, have mentioned that their efforts would be best concentrated on the latest release. There are other people on here willing to take on the burden of further developing the 1.2* branch.

Yep, a smart devel team will do exactly what you said

MattF · 2008-12-27 14:03:47

It's be hoped so. Swapping between branches frequently would be confusing for even the most adept coder. Far better to concentrate on the primary release.

Last edited by MattF (2008-12-27 14:04:20)

elbekko · 2008-12-27 14:16:21

I think some of you might need to learn to read. I explicitly stated the likeliness of a (largely) separate development team for the 1.x branch.

Also, I have no idea where you people are getting your figures from. The only thing that takes long right now is the markup, and that's an unforeseen circumstance. Implementing things like UTF-8 into 1.2 would be done fairly quickly, especially since we already have the code in 1.3 to base it on.

MattF · 2008-12-27 14:28:02

elbekko wrote:

I think some of you might need to learn to read. I explicitly stated the likeliness of a (largely) separate development team for the 1.x branch.

My apologies if I obfuscated the discussion slightly.

jmp · 2008-12-27 14:30:11

elbekko wrote:

Also, I have no idea where you people are getting your figures from.

If you're talking about this:

Who of you really believes that the development of 2.0 (with templating etc.) would only take a year?

Then I suppose from this post.

elbekko · 2008-12-27 14:31:44

And I already said it's much more likely that it's less.

Gotipe · 2008-12-27 16:39:32

Man, I failed to notice this thread totally. Well, I do not find it a bad turn of a new course. I look forward to the 1.4 as I'm a fan of the good ol' 1.2.x.
Ofc you should have all the time you need to make the final 2.0 (?) as good as possible. ^^

Connor · 2008-12-27 16:49:57

Firstly, thanks everyone for the majority of posts here being useful and on topic

I'm going to try to cover the major issues/questions people have here

Why not go back to beta 2/r718 and release that as version 1.3

Well, beta 2 is a long way behind, the the problem with r718 is not only does it not have the final markup and many markup issues currently. It seems ridiculous to delay all this time then release a poor product (and I'm not talking about perfection here, just that it should be of reasonable quality)

Why not release 1.3 ASAP then add a template system etc to 2.0

The problem with this is, although the extension system means upgrading from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2 would be easy, upgrading from 1.3 to 2.0 will not be as simple. With a template system, all the extensions for 1.3 will need rewritten, and the markup will probably be different enough to break many styles. We want the next major release to be complete enough to have a number of years of life before it needs replacing otherwise we're effectively destroying all the work done by the community for 1.3

Won't developing 2 branches (1.2 and 2.0) slow them both down

This is less of a problem than you might think, the development we are proposing for 1.2 is simply backporting features from 1.3 to 1.2, the bulk of the work is already done, and crucially, we're not looking to redo the markup. We currently have 3 php devs and 1 markup dev, so obviously we can get the coding done faster. Also as elbekko said, we could have 2 separate teams, and new php devs are reasonably easy to find.

Why bother with the 1.2 branch when the 1.3 branch replaces it

I am not sure this is true, I imagine many people will continue to use 1.2 for a long time, and there may also be people who still want a simple forum with code they can easily hack, rather than an extendible templated forum that makes for good extension and style writing, but is harder to understand the code.

I thought the only reason 1.3 wasn't out was because of the markup/Why do you keep adding features to 1.3 and not just release it

It is true we have been waiting for the markup, however the problem is the extension system in 1.3 has grown much bigger than it was intended. It was originally planned to allow a few features such as private messaging and polls to be added, and not for every possible extension to be coded with. This has led to a rather messy situation with the markup and hooks, and will mean extensions have to be written in a less clean way to do what they want, which will lead to issues with conflicting extensions etc. We have already gone part of the way to a template system by storing information in arrays then having a hook before it is output, but this isn't completely useful.
It is not that we suddenly want to add these features, we have been not adding them in order to reduce the delay before releasing 1.3, however I don't think this is the best strategy in the long run.

I hope that clarifies some things, and also, please don't bother with "I vote for X" posts, this isn't a vote, its a discussion, we don't want your opinion as much as your thoughts on the matter.

Dave · 2008-12-27 17:17:11

Connor wrote:

and new php devs are reasonably easy to find.

But developers that understand FluxBB AND know how to write robust and secure code are NOT reasonably easy to find.

Smartys · 2008-12-27 17:19:32

Dave wrote:

Connor wrote:
and new php devs are reasonably easy to find.
But developers that understand FluxBB AND know how to write robust and secure code are NOT reasonably easy to find.

Amen (especially the latter)

elbekko · 2008-12-27 17:27:44

That is true, although I'm sure there are a few.

MattF · 2008-12-27 18:30:14

elbekko wrote:

That is true, although I'm sure there are a few.

Hopefully.

Dave · 2008-12-27 18:39:32

Connor wrote:

Why not release 1.3 ASAP then add a template system etc to 2.0
The problem with this is, although the extension system means upgrading from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2 would be easy, upgrading from 1.3 to 2.0 will not be as simple. With a template system, all the extensions for 1.3 will need rewritten, and the markup will probably be different enough to break many styles. We want the next major release to be complete enough to have a number of years of life before it needs replacing otherwise we're effectively destroying all the work done by the community for 1.3

I'm probably in the minority on this one but IMO a template system over complicates things and forces one to learn yet another "language" of some sort. I've yet to see/use a so called template solution that actually makes things easier for people. I understand what the goal of a template system is but it is much easier to talk about than it is to actually implement in a way that is helpful and easy to use. Given the goal of simplicity and speed that FluxBB has, developing a template system for it seems contradictory to the overall goal.

Rich Pedley · 2008-12-27 19:01:47

I'd tend to agree with Dave here, albeit from perhaps a slightly different angle.

I currently can't see the benefits that a templating system will bring. In fact the only templating system I can remember trying to hack my way through was for phpBB if my memory serves. An absolute nightmare.

With good markup and CSS (ok plus a few extensions) the current forum can be made to look very different as it is - so why add in the extra complexity?

On the other hand - if implemented well there is a small possibility it could improve a few things. I do see that if you want this in - then the release has to wait. I can also think of a few methods that I would like to see utilised.

Personally though I see it as the same thing I suffer from on occasion - feature creep - never ever getting to a finished state as there is always one little extra to add in...

elbekko · 2008-12-27 19:19:20

We don't plan on having the kind of templating system that, say, phpBB uses. It'd be very basic, although Connor is the one that has been thinking it out, I can't remember much about it
But it certainly wouldn't be another language to learn or anything, just more separation of markup and code, and making it easy for extensions to change the markup (because, face it, sometimes an extension just needs to add something somewhere).

Rich Pedley · 2008-12-27 20:04:22

adding something somewhere by an extension is already possible though...

hcgtv · 2008-12-27 20:10:09

Rich Pedley wrote:

I currently can't see the benefits that a templating system will bring.

I see a few benefits:

a) Styles easily move with you as the core gets updated.
b) Web developers can get away from boxy Oxygen, without having to hack core files.
c) Less reliance on the markup guru, just ship a plain jane style.

Rich Pedley wrote:

In fact the only templating system I can remember trying to hack my way through was for phpBB if my memory serves. An absolute nightmare.

There are templating systems that are rather nice, Textpattern's tag system is my favorite. Even the way Wordpress does it, with PHP tags mixed in with HTML, not my favorite, would be better than what exists now.

Dave · 2008-12-27 20:29:57

elbekko wrote:

But it certainly wouldn't be another language to learn or anything, just more separation of markup and code, and making it easy for extensions to change the markup (because, face it, sometimes an extension just needs to add something somewhere).

But doing that really does require something to allow the separation to take place. This really is a case of you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Dave · 2008-12-27 20:32:41

hcgtv wrote:

There are templating systems that are rather nice, Textpattern's tag system is my favorite. Even the way Wordpress does it, with PHP tags mixed in with HTML, not my favorite, would be better than what exists now.

Both of your examples are perfect examples of having to learn "yet another language" and why it can cause more confusion than it's worth. In the reference you linked to there are 139 tags and using it would be anything but simple. You'd be better off learning some XHTML and styling which are both skills that may be used for other things.

Forums

#51 2008-12-27 11:00:12

Re: The future of FluxBB

#52 2008-12-27 11:04:27

Re: The future of FluxBB

#53 2008-12-27 13:36:41

Re: The future of FluxBB

#54 2008-12-27 13:39:39

Re: The future of FluxBB

#55 2008-12-27 13:42:50

Re: The future of FluxBB

#56 2008-12-27 13:49:55

Re: The future of FluxBB

#57 2008-12-27 14:02:06

Re: The future of FluxBB

#58 2008-12-27 14:03:47

Re: The future of FluxBB

#59 2008-12-27 14:16:21

Re: The future of FluxBB

#60 2008-12-27 14:28:02

Re: The future of FluxBB

#61 2008-12-27 14:30:11

Re: The future of FluxBB

#62 2008-12-27 14:31:44

Re: The future of FluxBB

#63 2008-12-27 16:39:32

Re: The future of FluxBB

#64 2008-12-27 16:49:57

Re: The future of FluxBB

Why not go back to beta 2/r718 and release that as version 1.3

Why not release 1.3 ASAP then add a template system etc to 2.0

Won't developing 2 branches (1.2 and 2.0) slow them both down

Why bother with the 1.2 branch when the 1.3 branch replaces it

I thought the only reason 1.3 wasn't out was because of the markup/Why do you keep adding features to 1.3 and not just release it

#65 2008-12-27 17:17:11

Re: The future of FluxBB

#66 2008-12-27 17:19:32

Re: The future of FluxBB

#67 2008-12-27 17:27:44

Re: The future of FluxBB

#68 2008-12-27 18:30:14

Re: The future of FluxBB

#69 2008-12-27 18:39:32

Re: The future of FluxBB

Why not release 1.3 ASAP then add a template system etc to 2.0

#70 2008-12-27 19:01:47

Re: The future of FluxBB

#71 2008-12-27 19:19:20

Re: The future of FluxBB

#72 2008-12-27 20:04:22

Re: The future of FluxBB

#73 2008-12-27 20:10:09

Re: The future of FluxBB

#74 2008-12-27 20:29:57

Re: The future of FluxBB

#75 2008-12-27 20:32:41

Re: The future of FluxBB

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