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Meeting Minutes
Participants:
Taher Alkhateeb, Ron Wheeler, Gil Portenseigne, Nicolas Malin, Kulwant Singh, Deepak Dixit, Sharan Foga, Jacopo Cappellato, Jacques Le Roux
We started the call with basic introductions and then a discussion of the agenda.
Proposed Scope of Work
Taher began by talking about
previous project initiatives that haven't progressed because they were seen by the community as too hard to do
the fact that the community would also like to improve OFBiz and innovate, but before we can innovate, we need to tidy up and clean up the code
that a framework re-factor will hard but essential to the future of OFBiz
As a framework re-factor will be a lot of work
breaking the work up into bite-size chunks could be a good solution
by keeping it simple we could actively manage it and also attract people from the community to help because the workload may not seem so overwhelming
The general feedback to these points were that everyone agreed that the re-factoring would be a good thing and that it would bring benefits to the project.
Straightforward vs Complex Re-factoring
Taher mentioned that he saw two main types of re-factoring
- Clean Re-factor (Straightforward)
This is fairly small and doesn’t change the signature. Examples include
tidying up code
cleaning or standardising variable names
formatting
cleaning up XML files
2. Design Re-Factor (Complex)
This is a re-factor that impacts the design and incorporates changes to the current design.
This could range from a small to a large re-factor of code.
A design re-factor is something significant so it would be good to share any proposal with the community for feedback and comments. Jira could be used and if there is a lot of concern regarding the change a branch could be created to verify the change before it is merged back
Re-factoring Impact on Applications
Ron raised the point that any re-factoring that impacts the applications could cause problems for current users. Although the re-factor would not change any of the existing functionality, it could potentially change the way applications interface to a class or interface.
There was a detailed discussion around how this could be handled. The re-factoring will at some point impact the applications. We will need to document the impact and publish information for people wanting to use the re-factored code. We also need to keep the rate of change under control so that we can address and fix any issues that come up.
Depending on the changes required and the impact this could be either straightforward or complex so would need to be assessed on a case by case basis.
Making Use of the Trunk
Taher suggested that we do not have big commits so that we keep the changes small and traceable. He also recommended that we do not have big commit bursts where lots of commits go in too quickly. Small steps with an agreed plan of work is more controllable.
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.
Jacques suggested that re-factoring work be done using the trunk and back ported to an unreleased version (e.g 15.12). The project has always recommended the stable releases for production users.
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.