Hi,
Hate to keep bringing up Drupal as a model, but I think they've got a
great way of doing this, particularly if the goal is to encourage 3rd
party development on top of a core.
Two key principles here: group everything necessary for a particular set
of functionality together as a module, under a single directory; and
provide a built-in override system that allows local changes to take
precedence over core.
In Drupal, there are some core APIs in an "include/" directory, but much
of the core functionality has been abstracted out into modules that can
serve as examples for third parties to extend. When loading a module,
Drupal has a well-defined search path:
1. sites/<domainname>/modules/
2. sites/all/modules/
3. modules/
... basically with this layout, you can share a bunch of modules in a
single code base supporting multiple sites, but if you need to patch a
module you simply create a copy and put it in a more specific path.
Themes/templates use the same approach, but a path ending in "themes/"
instead of "modules/".
Drupal does rely on mod_rewrite to rewrite all paths to a single
controller/dispatcher, so the filesystem path has little to do with the
URL. It also has several layers of caching -- it only looks for new
module/path handlers when its cache has been cleared, and then it scans
the filesystem looking for possible paths and auto-populates its
"menu_router" table based on what it finds.
I'm not sure what the demand is for multi-company hosting, but I
definitely like having a built-in override system in place so you have
an easy way to apply patches to core files -- without actually creating
essentially a forked version. And having so many different places to
touch functionality that all should go together -- yes, I'd love to see
some cleanup.
I guess I'd suggest turning AR, AP, GL, etc into modules, and grouping
the data objects, scripts, and default UI into a single directory
related to that functionality.
I also think there should be a way to override the UI elements/templates
in a single, company-specific location (similar to Drupal themes) so
that it's easy to apply company branding, etc. without editing core
files. I know templates are already like this -- I'd like to extend it
to the application UI...
My thoughts, anyway -- I've worked with dozens of web applications, and
Drupal's file layout is head and shoulders above the rest, worthy of
emulation.
Cheers,
John Locke
http://freelock.com
On 07/03/2011 02:24 PM, Erik Huelsmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Some months ago, I've mentioned this to Chris: I'd like to change the
> source tree layout. Currently our top level contains documentation,
> code and installation hints, all mixed in one directory. I'd like to
> "disentangle" that. I'd like to create a "src" or "ledgersmb" (or
> lsmb) subdirectory of trunk/; that directory should hold the scripts
> currently in the toplevel directory, as well as the subdirectories
> holding code, templates, etc. In other words: the entire application.
>
> Other subdirectories won't be moved to that directory, such as doc/,
> tools/ and maybe others: those directories which are not strictly
> part of the application - tests could be stored either way, but
> probably should be at the top level, if that's technically an option.
>
> What I'm trying to achieve it a less crowded toplevel directory which
> stores some general overview documents and other information
> *everybody* needs, but nothing else. That should help newbee users as
> well as developers get up and running quickly.
>
>
> Comments?
>
> Oh. As for timing: I'd like to do it as soon as 1.3 branches for the
> 1.3.0 release.
>
>
> Bye,
>
>
> Erik.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable.
Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security
threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes
sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2
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