Life and all that? I still have that, too :-)
1) Beginning mid of Nov it depends whether I'm available full time. The project I worked on for the last 1.5 years is finished and and I'll have to look for a new job then. If this takes longer I can spend my full time for... how long? It depends, as well... on how intense I search and on the respond(s).
2) Laanx shows the stats already, doesn't it? OK, sometimes with delayed up-to-dateness. What is to do/planned there?
3) The Server Concole is also the main issue I targeted with my reply.
What I did so far:
- I downloaded
/planeshift/SC/ put it to my
htdocs, adapted
*settings.php to my local system
- I downloaded
/planeshift/planeshift/src/server/database/mysql and used it to create the MySQL tables
-
ps_dev_doc.zip was helpful, as well
- Running the SC I detected that some tables (
sys_privileges,
sys_modules,
sys_programs) and a field within a table (
banned_until in
accounts) are missing
- I created the table
sys_privileges and the missing field from infos I found in the XML-files in .../SC/schemas
Now I'm stuck, since
sys_modules &
sys_programs are still missing, and I do not have a clue how they should look like in detail. I extracted at least the column names from
database.php (
sys_modules: "rcdid", "display_name", "sys_name", "sequence" and
sys_programs: "rcdid", "display_name", "sys_name", "sequence", "parent_id"). I can guess that the IDs are
INTEGER and the names are
VARCHAR. But, as a programmer since decades (NO, I am not THAT old...it's just 2 decades :-) I prefer formalism rather than guessing. I wonder how
grumpytoad could setup a working environment? What does she/he know/have which I don't? However, even knowing the table layout would not help too much, since these tables obviuosly contain the infos for the menu structure in the navigation area to the left. And my clue is even lesser which menus and sub-menus should be there.
BTW, I saw some things in the DB design where I asked myself, whether this is a cool trick I was not aware of, or whether this was just a...hmmm...unlucky design decision. Who is the one who knows about the DB and its design, so that I can direct my questions to her/him?
"
And now to something completely different...":
Does the SC have to be in PHP? I think "
...requires a complete overhaul and redesign." allows, maybe even requires, such a question to be taken seriously. You surely know that canning sometimes is the best way to begin a phase of evolvement in SW design.
I'm not surprised that the SC obviuosly lacks a few things. The WWW was originally not designed to support highly interactive applications with quickly reacting user interfaces to enter lots of information real-time. It's intention was to spread information worldwide, in no time, that's it. All the pretty things we have nowadays are just add-ons to a system which was not designed for such add-ons. Great that all the things work how they work, but it still has limits. And it's the hard job of programmers to break these limits - and I really mean: break.
So, what about something else, which is designed for such apps, is strong in networking, is platform independent, well-known, well-supported, with great IDEs available, which can be run with a click from a web page? Java, for instance. (
Look here what i'm working on at the moment.)
If you don't like the idea in general I would like to suggest the following:
- We take a part of the SC which is not too complex (the smaller, the better) and which is more or less independent of the rest
- We (I, to be precise) port this to Java (including wishes and suggestions from the people which work with it)
- We start a test phase, see how it works, and decide then
