I will be posting a similar message in my blog to explain some of what has happened in the past few weeks. I am feeling terribly guilty for the delay with this release and while it appears that nothing is happening, there has been a huge influx of work on the Store Module lately. As soon as I get access to Gemini, you will see how many issues have been resolved.
While we are on the subject of DotNetNuke module development, it is a little more involved than just fixing a line of code here and there. Since it is an open source project, the code has to come from you and you have to own the rights to the code in order to contribute it to the project. It is not acceptable to port code from a book, nor it is easy to prove ownership when your client paid you to write the code in the first place. In fact, you have to sign a disclosure to contribute source to DotNetNuke. Does this mean I can simply post code from the forum to the project?
Beyond the legal stuff, then you have to deal with the reality factor.
For example, lets say we want to add a simple field to one of the tables. You have to...
- modify the abstract class to handle the new property (BLL)
- modify the controller class with overrides to the (BLL)
- add a control to view/edit (UI)
- add resource entries for localization (UI)
- modify the SqlDataProvider overrides as required (DAL)
- write script to alter the table including databaseOwner and objectQualifiers tokens (DAL-SQL)
- write script to alter the stored procedures including parameters (input) and return values (output) (DAL-SQL)
- package the module and upload it for testing (PA)
After that, does your code still work? Does it play nice with the existing system? Ok, let's update the change log.
Now let's say that the next version of the Store works right out of the box. Will the next version work quietly with existing data? Do you need some update scripts to manipulate the database? What about all of the data already stored in the database?
Forgive me, but I think you get the drift of my post.
Did I mention multiple code bases without compiler directives in .NET 2.0? <chuckle>