not dead .. just a flesh wound :)
The Repository is far from dead. There will be a maintenance release coming out in Sept/Oct. I had originally planned to have a release done by the end of August, but August became unexpectedly busy and I was unable to spend any time working on the module. In addition to the *paying* day job :) I was asked by the DNN core team to put together a module to track and manage internal module releases for internal use. I designed and wrote the module and it's now being tested. It's a fully configurable workflow module that tracks a release through the various stages of testing through release with email notifications to responsible parties to ensure that everyone knows where a module is in the pipleline and who needs to do what. It's pretty slick and hopefully once it's fully tested and implemented by the core team, it will be provided to the community as another free module. So, unfortunately, that internal project took up any *free* time I had.
Anyway, back to the Repository. Last year, I recruited a team for the Repository module project consisting of developers, QA and support, documentation, etc. and selected a number of people to join the team. Over a period of 9 months, the participation ( with the exception of Mike who has been doing an outstanding job of QA and support ) was next to 0. Although the deveopers were given full access to the source code and Gemini, not a single bug was fixed, not a single file checked out. So, after 9 months, I decided to remove everyone ( again with the exception of Mike ) from the team. I hope to someday build the team back up adding people who are passionate about the project and able to participate at a level that will enable us to provide more frequent releases.
So, for now, it's just me and Mike. The next step is to fix as many Gemini bugs as possible and add as many enhancements as possible and package them up as a new release sometime in the Sept/Oct timeframe. After that is done, I plan to move development of the Repository to the .net 2.0 framework and begin working on a Repository 4.0 release. This will be a re-design/re-write from the ground up, taking advantage of all I've learned over the 4+ years working on the Repository.
Some highlights of what I'm planning for version 4.0:
- a fully user-defined schema for each Repository. Similar to Microsoft Access, you'll start by placing a Repository 4.0 module on a page, define the schema ( data fields ) to store your data then design your display and input forms using the familiar Repository templating method. This will move the Repository module from a very flexible documents module to something close to a configurable application module.
- Greatly enhanced document handling: versioning, check-in, check-out, statistics, etc.
- Enhanced security: I plan to implement a much more flexible security layer. You'll be able to specify roles for not only upload, download, ratings and comments, but view,edit,delete and assign security to individual items and categories.
Anyway, I wanted to assure everyone, the Repository Module is definately not dead. I expect to announce a lot of exciting enhancements over the next 2 to 4 months. Stay Tuned!