Response inline below...
neweller said the following on 08/02/10 10:22:
"we have frequently found ourselves venting over
the seeming lack of documentati
I totally feel you pain. I have inherited a Mach-II 1.5 ecommerce site
will multiple catalogs and customers all set up as modules with in one
app. That being said my learning curve was very short and had to
immediately start adding new modules.
I encourage to share the knowledge you've gained by looking at other
things like the Dashboard to build your application. We're one of the
few software wikis that allow anonymous editing of the wiki entries.
Some other CFML frameworks don't have a wiki or allow public editing.
Let us know if you need help using the wiki or how to edit. If you are
unsure the technical aspects of something, we'd be happy to help edit
contributions to the wiki before you submit them.
We're glad to help, however Mach-II is a community project in which most
of the development of the framework is *contributed* (as in unpaid) by
developers (such as Team Mach-II or the lengthy list of contributors we
listed in the 1.8 README).
As of 1.8 Simplicity RC2 I wanted to upgrade and take use of the new
features such as HTML Helper to condense the site into one main app
but this has been very frustrating. Basically I have resorted to
reverse engineering the Dashboard 1.1.0 just to see some of these new
features in use.
Again, I encourage you to contribute to the wiki. In a PDF form, the
HTMLHelper documention is over 25 pages long -- which is lengthy for
component that has about 1200 lines of code in it.
I think it's important to realize that open source project can only
fully become sustainably successful is for the community of people that
use it -- to contribute back to the project. There just is no way for a
small, unpaid team of people (myself, Matt, Kurt, Brian, Mike and
Adrian) have all the time to completely do everything required to build
a solid framework and that is a reason why we are trying to build up our
community. We can all help each other and that is one of the shining
points of open source.
Just as a side note it appears 1.8 has been left for dead and all
attention has been moved to 1.9. I think 1.8 is actually gold just not
released? I would like to commit to a version and get to learning of
HTML Helper but should I forget 1.8 and go straight to 1.9?
I would disagree here. The 1.8 RC2 went live on 12/27/2009 -- about six
weeks ago. During that time, we have fixed 15 issues -- mostly edge
case bug. BTW, I was on vacation during this time period, a few
holidays occurred (New Years) and I was traveling for business as well.
As you might know, Mach-II is committed to building as quality as a code
base as we can. So as you can see, having an adequate time for beta and
RC periods are essential to the process. If you are curious about the
issues we have fixed during the RC2 (15 to be exact), please take a peek
here:
http://greatbiztoolsllc.trac.cvsdude.com/mach-ii/query?group=status&milestone=Mach-II+1.8.0+RC2
Lastly, some projects (like Spring) will have RC periods that last many
months. A six week period is a short RC in the terms of open source
software development.
Another thing that is in the forefront of our mindset when developing
new versions of Mach-II is backwards compatibility (BC). I have talked
to people that have upgraded from Mach-II 1.0.10 (circa 2005) to Mach-II
1.6 or 1.8 (circa 2009/2010) without any issues. Suffice it to say that
once a feature is introduced to Mach-II, it is there for the long haul.
The process of deprecating a feature is long and hard -- not something
we are interested in doing so a lot of time is spent on developing solid
features that will stand the test of time. In the end in your terms,
taking the time to learn the HTMLHelper in 1.8 doesn't mean it's going
to change in 1.9. The only thing that would change in 1.9 is the
*addition* of new features that expand the capabilities of the HTMLHelper.
Once I get a better understanding of Mach-II I wouldn't mind helping
the Mach-II Wiki. I think a basic example of HTML Helper that changes
the layout / CSS / Javascript based on a user login would be a good
example to see on the Wiki.
Great, I think that would a great place to start with a contribution
with the wiki and definitely one that is needed. Just to clarify some
points, Mach-II is free and open source. Everybody on Team Mach-II
contributes their time for *free* and this is spare time mind you. I
apologize for the forthcoming rant...
<rant>
I would like to point out that according to the last COCOMO analysis (it
looks at commits / LoC / time to compute figures), the time spent
developing Mach-II is *13 (thirteen) full time man years*. If you were
to pay a developer $75,000/yr (with salary and benefits for an
architectural position -- it is average), the cost to develop Mach-II
from scratch would be about $975,000. COCOMO analysis does *not*
include time spent on sample applications, helping on the mailing lists
*or* writing documentation. Suffice it to say that a lot of effort has
gone into Mach-II in the past six years.
</rant>
If there is anything we can do to help, please feel free to ask us with
specific questions. Sometimes things on mailing lists get lost in
"translation".
Best,
.Peter
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