Page History

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Taher highlighted that the OFBiz project used the trunk in a different way to other open source projects. In other projects the trunk is normally the place where innovation happens and so this means that it is generally unstable. However in OFBiz the trunk has been kept stable which means that we are not actively using it to innovate or try out new functionality that could improve OFBiz. Instead branches have been used but they can quickly become dead branches that are too hard to merge back in.

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After a lot of discussion the general feedback was that we begin using the trunk for the framework re-factor and communicate to the community that it may become unstable because of this.

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The Way Forward

• Taher went through a list of possible areas to start re-factoring. After some discussion it was decided that we will put together an initial batch of work to do that is publicly available so that people can assign themselves to a task. We need to ensure that people are comfortable picking up a task and assigning it so a mix of straightforward, easier tasks as well as harder more complex would be included.
  
  
• We would look to implement the framework changes in the trunk and 15.12. The changes would not be back ported to any of the live release branches. This means that anyone using the current releases would not be affected by the framework changes. (Jacopo suggested that because of the framework changes it might be a bit harder to upgrade so we could possibly consider extending the life of the release branches to compensate.)
  
  
• Jacopo mentioned that changing the framework code that is not exposed to the applications is fairly easy so this would be a good place to start.
  
  
• Jacopo also suggested that during the re-factoring process if people have performed a change but see many places where a similar change is needed, then it would be good to publish the template showing how the problem was fixed. This would help other people to fix problems in other areas by using the template and adjusting it.
  
  
• We briefly discussed the need for better test coverage and it was suggested that if people are not comfortable doing code changes then they can also help with improving the tests.