Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 21:53:13 +0200 (EET)
From: Henri Bergius <Henri.Bergius@iki.fi>
Subject: MWS for 8th of March, 2000 (#32)
To: midgard@greywolves.org, lwn@lwn.net, marty@linuxtoday.com,

Greetings!

I'm sorry for not writing summaries
for last two weeks. I've simply been
too busy with work stuff to do so. 
There would've been many things to
announce, and I'll now try to
summarize the important ones here
briefly.

My schedule should be clearing up
somewhat, though, so expect these
to come out more regularly again
in near future. But now to the news.

============================
----------------------------

Current versions:
	Stable: 1.2.5 (Mad King)
	Devel.: 1.2.6-beta2

----------------------------
============================

New request tracking system

Our project has now started using Stonekeep 
Consulting's KeyStone software for keeping
track of wishlist items and bug reports.

The system is Web-based and is hosted on
Midgard developer Carilda Thomas' server.

Requests can be browsed and issued 
anonymously. User accounts for Midgard 
developers are available by  request from 
Emile Heyns.

You can find some guidelines on using
KeyStone from the Midgard Web site:

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/article/1571.html

----------------------------

Request for coders

The new system for handling wishlist items
easily has the potential to bring up many
interesting new possibilities for Midgard
development. This will also bring 
opportunities for programmers interested
for participating in Midgard development
to start so with interesting subprojects.

Possible areas to work on range from better
administration interfaces to PIM systems
and installation utilities, so there are
lots of approaches to choose from for
coders and documentation writers alike.

Emile's original email can be found from
the mailing list archives. If you're 
interested, don't hesitate to contact the
Midgard developer team.

 -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=midgard&m=95149597622773&w=2

----------------------------

Mail problems solved

We finally got the mail problems haunting
us solved about a week ago. The original
problem was about our hosting provider
suddenly starting to block all SMTP traffic
to our primary server.

Now, thanks to the help of many members
of the Midgard user community, we have our
mailing lists back online and things working
as usual.

We also have many of our critical services
mirrored to systems hosted in other parts
of the world that can be taken into use
quite swiftly if needed, so the results of
the email blackout were not completely 
negative. Currently the focus has been on
mirroring mostly our email and DNS systems,
but CVS and Web site mirrors will probably
follow quite shortly.

Thanks to everybody who helped us in this!

----------------------------

Version number for Midgard 1.2.6 changed

We have now decided to change the version
number of Midgard 1.2.6 to 1.4. This is
because it contains too much features and
newly-written code to justify it being
listed as a mere patch to the 1.2 source
tree.

The 1.2.6-beta2 release has mostly been
accepted as a successful one (although
it still won't run on Mac OS X Server),
and we're now working on the third beta
release. The third beta should be ready
in the next couple of weeks, with the
final 1.4 release hopefully following
quickly afterwards.

The beta 3 will finally contain the
Repligard site replication and packaging
utility, and numerous other improvements.

If you're interested in the discussion
about the version number change, it can
be found from the developer mailing
list archives.

  -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=95228274100001&w=2&r=1

----------------------------

Site groups

So far Midgard's user permission system has
been mostly designed for running a separate
Midgard server for each organization using
the server, and so hasn't really had a good
way for allowing limited administrator-level
rights for several different groups on a
single server.

To solve this, Emile has announced a new
system for handling the Midgard access
control data in the 1.2 architecture. This
system involves marking a 'sitegroup'
information to each toplevel entry in
a Midgard database, and then allowing 
creation of administrator accounts that have
administrative rights only for records that
are in their site group.

The sitegroup system is now available
as a patch to Midgard 1.2.6-beta2, but
will probably find its way into the main
code tree soon. At the moment it is still
experimental code, so it is probably a
good idea to test it thoroughly before
using it on a production server.

  -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=midgard-dev&m=95237422904457&w=2

============================ 
============================

About Midgard

Midgard is a freely-available Web application 
development and publishing platform based on 
the popular PHP scripting language. It is an 
Open Source development project, giving you the 
freedom to create your solutions in an open 
environment. Midgard is the tool for creating, 
modifying and maintaining dynamic 
database-enabled web services.

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org

----------------------------

About MWS

The Midgard Weekly Summary is a newsletter 
for the Midgard user and developer community.

The MWS is currently being distributed in
following mediums:

 -The Midgard Project's Web site
   -> http://www.midgard-project.org

 -Linux Weekly News
   -> http://www.lwn.net

 -Linux Today
   -> http://www.linuxtoday.com

 -Linux Developer's Network
   -> http://linuxdev.net

 -Midgard mailing list

If you would like to release it elsewhere,
please contact Henri Bergius 
(Henri.Bergius@iki.fi).

Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can 
be found archived at the Midgard web site.
  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html

============================

/Bergie

-- 
-- Henri Bergius -- +358 40 525 1334 -- Henri.Bergius@iki.fi --
               http://www.iki.fi/Henri.Bergius