[arch-dev-public] Status Update on porting archweb to django 1.0

[Dusty Phillips]

Hey all,

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update on the status of the
archweb port. I've been working on it, its not being ignored. Its
taking longer than I had originally planned because instead of just
porting it to 'make it work', I've decided to update it to make it
follow the newest guidelines. For those aware of django, I'm rewriting
a lot of views using generic views, taking advantage of "new"forms in
places where raw html forms are being used, and so on. In addition,
I'm rewriting certain sections to clean them up and more or less "make
them my own", and I'm also cleaning up similarities between
archweb_dev and archweb_pub to ensure there is less duplicate code.
I've also removed several pages in archweb_dev that I presume were
copied from archweb_pub, but aren't really necessary in the developers
backend. So basically, its turned into more of a refactor/rewrite than
a simple port.

The net result will be substantially fewer lines of code and hopefully
fewer bugs, easier and faster fixes, more familiarity with the code
for me, and more exciting possibilities in the future. The bad part is
that it could take quite a while to happen. I'm less than half done
porting/refactoring/rewriting the archweb_dev side of things right now
(in about three concerted sessions), and am uncertain as to my time
availability in the future. I'm thinking of running django 1.0 and
0.96 independently so that we can have archweb_dev on 1.0 for testing
and debugging while I work on the port for 0.96. This will hopefully
uncover some of the bugs before it goes public and lets face it, I
like it better when you guys are screaming at me than the general
public. You're so much more polite even though you have the right to
demand more of me. ;-)

Dusty