Forum OpenACS Q&A: Immediate Future of the SDM module

Posted by Nathan Reeves on 05/31/00 01:58 AM

Just wondering what the immediate future is given the eventual plan
to integrate SDM with BITS. Interested to know as I've been trying
to use it but noticed that a number of the tcl files under admin are
missing. Checking the source on the sourceforge cvs shows that files
are missing and its not me missing them.

At the moment I'm attempting to setup things manually in the DB, but
is openacs likely to be moving to a completely changed version of the
SDM??

Great work so far, keep up the good work.

Cheers

2: Response to Immediate Future of the SDM module (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 05/31/00 02:07 AM

Actually, BITS is an OpenACS module that is not part of ACS/Oracle. SDM is part of BITS and it is only present in OpenACS as well.

What things are missing in the admin pages ? Ben is making lots of changes in the code committed to the CVS tree so you may be seeing incomplete work.

3: Response to Immediate Future of the SDM module (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Adida on 05/31/00 02:19 AM

Okay, let me try to clear things up cause I think I caused confusion. BITS (Bug and Issue Tracking System) is a combination of the new ticket tracker (new-ticket), the todo manager (todo), and a team manager layered on top of user groups (team). These three pieces compose BITS.

The Software Development Manager (sdm) is separate, and has a lot of duplicated functionality. I was thinking of merging BITS and SDM, but I'm not 100% sure anymore that this is the right idea. BITS can be used to do things like help-desk management, stuff that is not software related. SDM is entirely software-related, with an enforced release process and such. So, you shouldn't expect a big merge anytime soon, cause both pieces are working happily at their own specific tasks.

Now, on the status of each. BITS is working really well now with a bunch of new features. The entire admin/ directory is gone from new-ticket because it was a stupid way to do things, and now the admin functionality is folded into the top-level new-ticket files. The SDM is also undergoing some major improvements, most notably with a CVS interface, patch management, and more cool things. SDM basically replaces SourceForge functionality (ahem, did I say that out loud?).

If you want to work with stable version of both, I recommend holding off until the full release of OpenACS 3.2.2 next week. We'll do as much as we can to keep things compatible in later versions.

4: Response to Immediate Future of the SDM module (response to 1)

Posted by Nathan Reeves on 05/31/00 02:29 AM

Ben, extremely good to hear.

Just to expand on Roberts mail, I hunted through SDM a bit and found that if I copied the /sdm/pvt to /sdm/admin/pvt, alot of the 404 errors dissapear. Just coming back to me now, was there a problem with the admin portion of SDM not checking the groups properly so anyone could play with the admin functions?? This the reason pvt doesn't exist below admin??

Had to edit /sdm/admin/package-modules.tcl to remove 'current_version' from both the SQL statement and also the html output, as the field doesn't exist in any of the sdm DB tables.

Also seemed to be missing update-packages.tcl from /sdm/admin.

Now I've copied the pvt directory around, starting to fall into place.

Cheers

5: Response to Immediate Future of the SDM module (response to 1)

Posted by Nathan Reeves on 05/31/00 02:36 AM

Okay, Slightly off-topic from the thread I created here, but is there a way of deleting a package without resorting to manual DB changes??

Cheers

6: Response to Immediate Future of the SDM module (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Adida on 05/31/00 02:42 AM

The sdm/admin directory is obsolete. Don't use stuff in there. A new admin interface will soon be available. It will probably simply involve making a top-level SDM admin group, where membership implies administrative control of all packages.

And no, there is no way to delete a package currently. Add it to the feature request list!

7: Response to Immediate Future of the SDM module (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 05/31/00 02:46 AM

Or you could help everyone by adding this functionality yourself (deleting a package). It's an itch that you have, and by scratching it, everyone will benefit (hint, hint!)