Re: PHP/MySQL tasks on the art.ubuntu.com website

[Henrik Nilsen Omma <henrik ubuntu com>]

Morgan Tocker wrote:

> Hi Henrik,
>
> Sorry to reply off list, I just wanted to ask a stupid question... as
> I haven't been actively following the art mailing list.
Sorry to put the reply back on the list :) , I just want the other 
people interested in the PHP-dev side of it to see this also. And these 
are not stupid questions :)

> Where is the art.ubuntu.com code repository, and how can I best merge contribute changes? (also what is you're staging/build system for rolling out
> fixes).
>  
There isn't an art.ubuntu.com code repository and we'll probably not 
make one. So far I've just checked out a local copy from the gnome CVS 
(http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/art-web/), made changes and tested locally 
and then deployed on the site. I then submitted patches to the art.gnome 
team who has committed the useful ones. My code and patches are here: 
http://art.ubuntu.com/source/

It's obviously more work to continue patching against the art.gnome 
version and it requires making sure it serves both requirements, but I 
think it's worth it (and good open source practice).

>  
>
> > * Code comments and cleanup: there are very few comments in the code. It
> > might be a good exercise for someone to go through and add sensible
> > comments and perhaps even clean up the code in various ways if they have
> > the experience to do that. I already abstracted out some hard-coded
> > things like site name, contact email etc., from the original gnome
> > in-line versions to variables in the config file, but more of this could
> > be done.
> >    
>
> I suggest php-doc style comments in line.  Without having seen the
> code, there's now a good pear packages for handling configuration
> settings.  I try to make code as beautiful as possible -- is there a
> risk here that if I touch too much I'll break something upstream, or
> is it a fork already?
>  
First: We are trying hard to _not_ make this a fork, because there is 
still lots of sensible development ahead that both these two sites, and 
possibly others, can benefit from. That will require some more work in 
keeping features abstract, but that probably makes for better code in 
the end anyway.

If you want to use Pear packages, you should probably check whether this 
will be accepted upstream by Thomas and Benjamin. One reason I'm copying 
the lists all the time is to bring people into these sorts of 
discussions (sorry for the spam everyone). I'm sure added comments will 
be fine even if they touch very many files, as long as they are useful 
(but I would suggest starting from the gnome version and submitting your 
patch there).

btw: I'm putting some devel thoughts here: 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuArtWebsite/Devel

- Henrik