For those who have just entered the ManifoldCF project, I'd like to first extend my congratulations once again!
You are probably still trying to figure out exactly what's going on and where we are going. Unfortunately, this being Apache, I cannot actually answer your question, because you are part of the process now, and you will now be able to act on your own ideas and goals for the project. But in the interests of planning and consensus building, I'd like to share my thoughts as to what I think are the major technical issues the project faces. The first and foremost issue is one of testability. ManifoldCF is unique in that every connector requires a system to test against. In some cases this is a proprietary system, such as Documentum or LiveLink. In other cases, it's a large number of web servers. When MetaCarta developed the project in the first place, we had a stable of VMs against which our tests worked. They had proprietary software installed in some cases, or some Apache hackery to emulate a large number of individual web sites. When MetaCarta assets were sold to qBase, those assets included those VMs. We desperately need something like this again. I've tried to get access to the old MetaCarta VM's, but qBase has not yet granted this, and may never grant it due to ongoing technical reasons. Given this, it seems that we need some way of doing the same thing. It would be great to hear your ideas, especially if you have access to any of the proprietary systems we support and would be willing to set up and maintain testing infrastructure. Again, welcome to our new committers and new mentor! Karl
