Just a few minutes ago, I fired up my web browser and pointed it at the FlexWiki code I've been hacking on. To my complete amazement, the home page actually rendered! It was riddled with errors, and it crashed when I tried to edit a page, but the blasted thing actually showed me HTML that wasn't the ASP.NET error page…I practically peed myself.
As you may have read here before, I've been working on refactoring FlexWiki for quite a while. I started tracking my hours in October of 2005, but I really started this effort a few months before that. I generally try to work on it every day, but the realities of work and family mean it's much less often than that. Still, I see I've put in over 100 hours on it. If nothing else, that makes me feel pretty good about having "paid" for all the open source software I use. :)
There's a metric boatload of things to be done before FlexWiki 2.0 is ready to go, of course. I think my next few months will look something like this:
- Fix the 10,000 bugs I introduced.
- Develop a performance test suite to characterize the behavior of the application.
- Run the test suite.
- Analyze the results.
- Make improvements, including the caching provider that was part of the original reason for doing this massive refactorization.
- Goto 3 a lot of times.
- Write the security module that got me started on this hellroad.
- Goto 1 a lot of times.
- Release!
- Goto 1 a lot of times.
- Take a break from FlexWiki. Maybe to work on FlexWikiPad. :)
Still, this really feels like turning a corner. Yay me.
Thanks for all your hard work on FlexWiki. My team uses the current version everyday!
ReplyDeleteCongrats man! Can't wait to see it.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait? Uh oh... :)
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Will the new version be open source?
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to install new version now (any alfa releases)?
How to join this project?
Yes, the new version will be open source - CPL license, same as the current one.
ReplyDeleteYou can install it now if you're willing to build from source, as it's checked in to CVS, but it wouldn't do you much good - still too buggy.
You are more than welcome to join! The best way to get started is to sign up for the mailing list at flexwiki-users@lists.sourceforge.net. You can get there via the project home page at http://sf.net/projects/flexwiki
Craig,
ReplyDeleteis the 2.0 development in HEAD/MAIN or in some specific branch?
2.0 is in HEAD. 1.8 is in a branch called (IIRC) branch-1.8.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the FlexWiki site? It's been down the past couple days. I was just getting into it and BAM, I lost access to the documentation.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we're not sure what's up with it at this point. We're looking into it.
ReplyDeleteIf you have any questions about FlexWiki, feel free to contact me directly. Or try the flexwiki-users@lists.sf.net mailing list. Sorry about the trouble with the website.
No worries. I was just getting to know FlexWiki when the site went down. I was trying to get familiar with the more advanced farmatting. Are the docs posted anywhere else? Fine job you're doing by the way. This is a great product. Thanks,
ReplyDeleteThe docs are not, to my knowledge, posted anywhere else at the moment. It would be lovely if we were able to keep them up to date and zipped up with every release, but we don't have the resources for that right now.
ReplyDeleteNo worries. If I can ever get a spare moment I'd live to contribute where ever I can. Thanks again for a great product. ;)
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome!
ReplyDeleteIf you're looking to help out, one thing you can do right now is to download the new 2.0 bits from builds.flexwiki.com and hammer on them to find bugs (there are lots). The flexwiki-users mailing list is a good place to report them.