"James A. Treacy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I subscribed to this list last week and am underwhelmed by the
> amount of traffic here. I was hoping for a vigourous discussion
> about the development. Is anything being done? How are people
> supposed to contribute if they don't know what areas are being
> worked on or in need of a developer?
My time was rather limited for the past 5 months or so because I was
preparing my dissertation proposal. Now that that's done and I've
gotten the lab back up to speed, I should have more time, and I'm
happy to answer questions about development stuff. I'll also answer
"how do I compile this" questions when I can, and when I think I know
the answer.
Frankly, though, since I use Debian, I don't have the problems that
others do, so not being able to reproduce them makes it extremely time
consuming to track them down (via email). Right now, I'd generally
rather spend my GnuCash time on something I can do better. A lot of
the questions seem to have been .rpm related lately, and I'm really
the wrong person to help there.
Linas is currently (correct me if I'm wrong Linas) on a semi-vacation
from GnuCash. That's fine, he's earned it. The engine's no trivial
piece of work, and it's working more or less fine right now.
With respect to what's up and where we might be going. So I don't
have to wear myself out typing, here are the relevant bits of what I
said to someone (who's joining us) recently in private mail to give
them an idea of what's going on (I've added some new editorial bits,
mostly enclosed in []):
First thing you should do is subscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Then you should then check out the latest CVS tree, and get it to
build on your system. This may be a little tricky because GnuCash
depends on quite a few other pacakges. If you've got a Debian system,
it's not too bad. I used the current Debian unstable packages
(lesstif/gnome/guile, etc.) here. The only think you'll have to
install in /usr/local manually is XmHTML because there's no Debian
package yet.
In case it helps, here's the configure command I use:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/opt/gnucash \
--with-opt-style-install \
--with-gnome=/usr/local/opt/gnome \
--with-xmhtml-includes=/usr/local/src/XmHTML-1.1.5/include \
--with-xmhtml-libraries=/usr/local/src/XmHTML-1.1.5/src
then
$ make motif
$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/src/XmHTML/src ./gnucash data/splitdemo.xac
or
$ make gnome
$ ./gnucash data/splitdemo.xac
to run it.
Once you get that going, let us know, and we can talk about what you
might want to do next. In the end, we tend to be fairly strongly of
the "code talks" model, but we do like to talk about who's doing what
so we don't waste time.
Right now, I suppose I'm "in charge" of the GNOME register and the
Guile stuff. Here's what we're planning (that I can think of right
now):
* GNOME will eventually replace Lesstif as the UI [working-on-this:
me, Jeremy].
* Guile will be the extension language for the app itself, and will
slowly take over even more functions. C may even eventually
become the "secondary language" rather than the primary one
[though don't hold your breath -- this will only happen if it
seems both natural and advantageous. working-on-this: me].
* We've got the financial engine and other API's published via SWIG
so that people will hopefully be able to write standalone scripts
in perl, python, guile, etc, though we don't really know how well
this will work out. It's still experimental, and potentially full
of memory leaks. Right now we depend on SWIG internally to
provide access to the C functions from guile, but if SWIG doesn't
work out, we can switch to something more Guile specific (like
G-wrap) for this, and drop SWIG [for accessing the interfaces
internally, we can still use it as a way for people to script
GnuCash from other languages that aren't embedded inside
GnuCash. working-on-this: me].
* People have made noises about allowing you to replace the existing
backend with an PostgreSQL interface.
* We have eperl and XmHTML for the help system and for generating
reports (though the latter is in it's infancy) [working-on-this:
Linas].
* We have plotutils for generating graphs, and it's available from
both C and Guile, but though it's integrated, I haven't made much
progress with the actual report functions since I've been tied up
with other things. I've started a couple of sample Guile
functions to generate a pie chart, but haven't gotten too far
[working-on-this: me].
* I've settled on GtkSheet for the GNOME register widget, and that's
what I'm working on right now (now that I've finished pulling most
of the UI independent code out of src/register/table-motif.[hc].
I'm talking with the upstream author (Adrian) as I go to get the
features we need added [working-on-this: me].
This is all just off the top of my head. Let me know when you're
ready, and we can talk about whatever you're interested in.
Oh, and the existing development model is
* Linas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is "in charge" of most things, though he
can be incommunicado at times...
* Jeremy is "in charge" of the GNOME UI (except the register and the
prefs stuff ATM)
* I'm working on the stuff I mentioned above.
* Linas is in charge of the CVS archive, so you send him patches. I
recommend using "makepatch" to generate them, it'll make your life
a lot easier. I just keep two trees checked out,
~/gnucash/upstream and ~/gnucash/working. The former I just keep
"up to date" with the current CVS tree (via "cvs -z3 update -Pd"),
and the latter I work in. Then I just use makepatch to generate a
full patch between them whenever I'm ready. (Makepatch is
available at
<URL:ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/authors/id/JV/> or
at any Debian archive (both the upstream source and the Debian
packages).
Again, welcome, and let me know if I can help.
--
Rob Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930
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