[Planetlab-devel] PLCWWW merge

[Thierry Parmentelat]

Hi Reid
please see my comments inline
-- Thierry

On Mar 4, 2008, at 5:51 PM, Reid Moran wrote:

> Thierry,
>
> Most of the work we have been doing on the web is rebuilding the  
> code into an OOP code base rather than the massive amounts of  
> scripts that just contain lots of duplicated code.  Lots of this  
> code is not checked in right now as it is being tested on our test  
> server and not to be included in the nightlies.  Also, often the  
> code on our live website differs fairly substantially than the code  
> checked into build, this is because we expose a lot of things on  
> PlanetLab that are not apart of MyPLC etc.
This is most unfortunate, as until your code can make it into svn  
there's really nothing we can do about that merge;
I can honestly not see any reason for not checking in your code; if a  
separate branch would make this easier please let me know.
>
> I would love to poke around on your live website if I can register  
> an account?  Unless it is exactly the same as the module checked in,  
> then I can just build that over here and poke around.  Either way  
> tho, everything is much easier to see in a web GUI when you have a  
> real populated db and can see real world data.
Please contact directly support at planet-lab.eu if you would like an  
admin access there (a lot of our features apply to admin accounts  
only) - please note that this runs a build from oct. 2007 so it's  
currrently a little bit off - nothing major though.
Otherwise, we are planning to migrate our private deployment on 4.2 as  
soon as the last showstoppers go away, that is as soon as Faiyaz gives  
the green light. I can give you admin access there if you wish.
Until then, you can indeed play around with a private build out of the  
onelab distribution, since our code it indeed exactly the one that I  
committed in this new branch. You do not need to build that yourself,  
just use something from http://build.one-lab.org/onelab/ (there's  
currently almost no activity on this module right now)
Also please note that you can very easily switch from one PLCWWW to  
another now that this is rpm-packaged.

>
> I'll be discussing the differences with Faiyaz and Tony when they  
> return and we'll get a better idea of the task ahead once those  
> discussions are complete.
>
> Thanks for the heads up!
>
> Also, just to start discussion on the subject:  how do you feel  
> about drupal?  would you be ok with moving away from it?  how much  
> do you use its functionality, if at all?
I am probably not the best person to comment on that - probably  
Thomas, Xavier and Guthemberg, who run PlanetLab Europe, would have  
more comments.
However, as far as I am concerned from a strict development point of  
view, it is my feeling that drupal provides the right level of freedom  
for operations people to customize their page and so on; and until  
there is a well identified and compelling reason to switch to another  
CM system, I would advocate that we stick to that. In addition to the  
extra development time, switching to a new system would need another  
learning curve, and current content would need migration, etc..
In other words, I believe that improving more visible matters would be  
a more efficient way to allocate our time.
That being said, the current content of PlanetLab Europe is not  
exactly large imo.

The major reason why I would like to push towards this merge is that  
there are a few things that would deserve being improved, such as  
displaying more relevant info about nodes (in particular in the slice- 
nodes view), and taking advantage of the clip&sort functions that the  
API now has for better performance. I am refraining from working on  
these right now because it would just enlarge the gap.

> -Reid
>
> Thierry Parmentelat wrote:
>> Hi all
>>
>> This is just a quick note to state again that, as agreed in Paris  
>> with Faiyaz last week, we expect that you guys (Princeton) are  
>> going to try our (onelab) web pages out, so that a merge can be  
>> attempted starting from our code.
>> I haven't been following this module on your end closely for a  
>> while; but among the things that would need to be addressed would  
>> be Stephen's attempts to separate logic and layout. For the rest I  
>> don't know whether your version has mostly bug fixes or new  
>> features, and knowing this would be interesting.
>>
>> In any case, in the hope to ease that process:
>> * I have just moved our code into the planet-lab's svn as a  
>> separate branch at
>> http://svn.planet-lab.org/svn/PLCWWW/branches/onelab
>> * I will create an entry in trac so we can gather information on  
>> this move
>>
>> -- Thierry
>>
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