Hi Gordon, congratulations! I would really like to see a full documentation for all 31 modules e- commerce modules. I think showing a strong base of documentation and support for e-commerce would bring a tremendous amount of development dollars to the platform. If we could start working together to get administration help documentation for the main modules that would be great! Matt, thanks for all your hard work. New companies are being launched based on all your hard work! Cheers, Kieran On Dec 12, 2005, at 4:17 PM, Gordon Heydon wrote:

Hi,

On Mon, 2005-12-12 at 17:46 -0600, Matt Westgate wrote:

...

Gordon Heydon ( http://drupal.org/user/959 ) has accepted my invitation to be the new ecommerce package maintainer. Gordon has been with the Drupal community for more than 4 years and has written several ecommerce contrib modules.

I'm very excited about this transition and look forward to helping him (albeit on a smaller role) take the ecommerce package to the next level. Who knows? Maybe it'll even get documentation ;-)

I would like to thank Matt for this great opportunity, and give a quick outline of where in the short term of where I am going to be taking E-Commerce.

Basically the first task that needs to be completed is getting out a 4.7 release. To do this there is 1 big job, and a couple of smaller ones.

1. Update to use the new forms api. 2. Merge one of the sub-product patches. 3. Maybe Postgres support.

I think this will get us to a very good 4.7 release that everyone can be proud of. The first and main job that needs to be done before anything else is the update to use the forms api. I am going to need help with this and I am going to create a new task that will assist in the co-ordination of all the conversion so we can keep track of this.

If there is anyone that wants to help please contact me, so I can make sure that no-one is doubling up on modules.

Once again, Thank you Matt for the privilege to taking on such a great development, and Thank you for creating such a great contribution to the Drupal community.

Gordon.

Welcome to your new role, Gordon. You bring both a solid track record in ecommerce and some great new ideas. And thanks Matt for your great work, and for ensuring continuity. Given the size of the ecommerce code base (comparable in number of modules to all of Drupal core), the Forms API upgrade is going to be a considerable task. It would be great if there were a way for users of ecommerce to pitch into this effort--either through direct coding or through financial sponsorship. The payoffs, of course, will be quicker ability to use the package in 4.7 plus opening the way for further improvements. Thoughts on how we could organize this? Nedjo

gordon, i think it might be a real good idea to set up a similar system that we used for core forms api conversion, so you don't have to manage a gazillion patches. i've been working with bzr for a while now to maintain a big core patch, and i like it a lot. i've been looking for a good test case to use it in a small group development situation, and think this might be the perfect situation. would you be interested in giving it a whirl? benefits would be: 1. way easier for you to manage the submissions from multiple coders 2. more information for the drupal community on the potential usefullness of bzr as a code management tool i think jblack would be willing to help us get things set up for this, and i would be willing to pitch in some conversion help if we went this route.

...

Given the size of the ecommerce code base (comparable in number of modules to all of Drupal core), the Forms API upgrade is going to be a considerable task. It would be great if there were a way for users of ecommerce to pitch into this effort--either through direct coding or through financial sponsorship. The payoffs, of course, will be quicker ability to use the package in 4.7 plus opening the way for further improvements.

Thoughts on how we could organize this?

I know for 1 thing, that the update to the ecommerce to use the new formsapi will take quite a while. I am looking for a few good coders to get at least the core complete.

I am hoping to get the store module done in the next couple of days, to hopefully kick start the process.

Any other ideas will be most welcome. Gordon.

Hi, On Sun, 2005-12-18 at 19:33 +0200, Adrian Rossouw wrote:

On 18 Dec 2005, at 7:13 PM, Apartment Lines wrote:

...

gordon,

i think it might be a real good idea to set up a similar system that we used for core forms api conversion, so you don't have to manage a gazillion patches.

once again, Bryght will happily give anyone wanting to work on this access to our public svn server. The one we used for forms api.

Just let me know =)

I could see the reasoning behind using the bryght svn server for the forms api, but I think that it will be just as easy to use the contributions cvs server. Basically at the moment ecommerce is effectively broken in cvs, so people committing directly into ecommerce repository for a while to fix the forms api and related issues will be ok. This also means that all the people who donate time to getting a 4.7 release will get credited on drupal.org for there time (and on the flip side we will also know who to blame). This is an extremely important module to a lot of people of I feel that any changes have the be accounted for, and recognised who did them. With E-Commerce we are directly affecting people money and cash flow. We are dealing with Credit Cards, so I feel that accountability is a very important thing in E-Commerce. In the next week I am going to create a new task where everyone can co-ordinate the development effort, and also create a web site where we can test all the changes which will automatically update from CVS every x hours. Gordon.