Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 21:48:07 +0200 (EET)
From: Henri Bergius <Henri.Bergius@iki.fi>
Subject: MWS for 15th of March, 2000 (#33)
To: midgard@greywolves.org, lwn@lwn.net, marty@linuxtoday.com,

Greetings!

This week has been a very active one
for Midgard development. A lot of 
interesting ideas have been discussed
on both main and developer mailing
lists, and we also have many promising
new patches in for the upcoming third 
beta of Midgard 1.4.

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

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

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

Repligard plans

Midgard's new replication system Repligard
is being worked on very actively. Jukka 
Zitting has assumed the responsibility for
this module, and is now handling most of the 
development.

We have divided the project into three phases
for easier manageability. The first phase is
for creating one-way (one to many) replication
and tools for working with the Repligard XML
files. This is very possibly the level where
Repligard will be in the final 1.4 release.

The second phase is for collecting experiences
about usability of the one-way replication and
creating a set of replication-friendly coding
standards.

The third phase then is about extending the
one-way replication system into working as a
more general two-way (many to many) replication
and packaging system. The coding standards will
play a very important part here, helping us to
move from the current ID number system that is
tied to an individual database to a new system
of unique IDs (GUIDs).

Our current hopes are to be well into the 
third phase by mid-April, but the schedule 
might change slightly as the work progresses.

At the moment Repligard is already able to 
dump selected parts of a Midgard database 
into XML files and keep the sequence of entries 
there consistent so that these XML dumps can 
be version controlled using CVS. Midgard now 
also includes a new history table that Repligard
can use for determining when different changes 
have actually happened. The history table 
should also help teamwork on Midgard applications 
by incorporating modification comments into the 
system.

There has been quite much discussion on our 
implementation plans for Repligard on the 
midgard-dev mailing list. The threads are 
available from the MARC system.

  -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=midgard-dev&m=95261777011441&w=2

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

Extensible records

There has been discussion about adding
extensible records into Midgard for quite
some time, and this was supposed to be
one of the major new features for Midgard
2.0

As the work on that code tree has been
stopped, the need to develop this addition
to the 1.2.x tree has come up.

There are now two proposals for doing this
available. Emile Heyns has already a patch
for Midgard 1.2.5 that supports this feature,
and Jean-Pierre Arneodo has also posted his
plans about similar features for the Oracle
port of Midgard.

Emile is currently looking for testers who
are running Midgard 1.2.5, so if you are
interested in trying this out, please contact
him. The patch can be found from Emile's Web
site.

  -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=midgard-dev&m=95272119008270&w=2

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

Patch for PHP 3.0.15 available

Version 3.0.15 is the latest release of PHP.
It includes some important security fixes
and also contains many other improvements.

Alexander Bokovoy has made a patch available
for the release enabling it to be used with
Midgard. The patch is done for Midgard 
1.2.6-beta2, but can also be made to work with
Midgard 1.2.5 with some changes.

If you want to use this patch, be sure to read
the thread about it on Midgard's mailing list.

  -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=95297023800001&w=2&r=1

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

OOP support for Midgard records

Jukka Zitting has added a nice new feature
into Midgard, enabling Midgard applications
to be coded in a much cleaner way. Now all 
mgd_get_record functions return methods for
modifying the records without needing to call
the specific modification functions.

This means that developers don't need to use
the hideously long parameter lists when creating
applications that modify the contents of the 
Midgard database some way, but can rather spare
the effort for working on the more productive 
parts of their Midgard applications.

The OOP functions are now available in CVS,
and documentation about them can be read from
Jukka's announcement on the midgard-dev list.
Read the mail and it'll become clear to you 
why this is so big an improvement.

  -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=midgard-dev&m=95295916226779&w=2

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

New CVS commit policy

We now have enough developers working on the
Midgard code that some policies need to be
set down to avoid a general state of chaos
in the repository.

By Emile's proposal, all new feature additions
to Midgard core should now get approved by the 
branch maintainer before they are allowed to
be committed in. Bug fixes and minor improvements
can of course bypass these, as can normal work
on the existing features.

This is not to add needless bureaucracy to
Midgard development work, but rather to ensure
that everybody working on the code knows what
is going on and to keep the tree in a shape where
it can be stabilized when making a release.

The thread about this new policy also includes
some discussion about Midgard release practices
and a listing by Alexander about what additions
have so far been discussed for inclusion into
Midgard 1.4.

  -> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=95279138000001&w=2&r=1

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

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