[JDEV] The Jabber Project

[Keith Minkler]

> One thought that kept occuring to me, is that there isn't any documentation
> on this future transport
> interface. (that I can find)

no, there really isn't any.. if there was, it is way outdated, and most likely for 1.0 server, and libetherx..  Documentation is a very weak point of ours,  I think this is becuase our server developers, who are among the few that know how it works, are coding, not writing documentation, becuase that is what we are good at... We need people that are good at documentation to do documentation... I am going to spend some time with Erich Zigler (needo), and finish the Config file documentation first... this is needed BADLY, and will help the move to the new server architecture... as server admins are forced to copy configs, instead of writing ones that make sence for them... I started writing this by documenting all the base module tags, and options, but quickly became overwhelmed, as I am not very good at documentation... what i have done still sits in docs/chapters/config.sgml in the jabber2 CVS module... Hopefully, we can pound this out, get good documentation on the base modules, and ALL of our current components, as well as some good examples of use, then we can move on to other documentation,  Needed after we take care of the server admins is probably API documentation, libxode, libjabber, and the jabberd API... this alone will speed up transport development, and help new programmers enter the jabber world. 

> Wouldn't it be prudent to sit down, before any more code is written, (and
> hair pulled out), and write
> a specification of what the new transport will be? A good document, written
> by our current group of server
> authors, and transport authors, can nail down issues before they become an
> ugly mess. (like the 1.0 -> 1.2 situation)

YES!  I have always wanted this, and we (transport developers) have usually kept the transports in sync, and working the same, but nothing was ever written down to that effect... If we are to survive, we need good documentation, easy to read and understand, and written for those to want to write transports/server code, but are overwhelmed at where to start... I would love to sit down and write documentation, if I could write good documentation, but I feel that my documentation isn't the most helpfull there is out there... =]

> Many projects in the commercial world, have this step. Perhaps someone with
> the .com/.org should start
> this process. (even spending 2 weeks doing this might prevent a lot of
> frustration of transport people)

*nod*, I am definitly becoming a strong advocate for good documentation... I see the Jabber Project dying, it needs new life, but unless you dig in and read code, there is no way to find out how to help... 


In addition to documention writers, I would like to put out a call for a new maintainer of IRC Transport... I have lost interest in this project, since I haven't used IRC in months.. (who needs IRC when you have groupchat *G*)  --- There are a few things I would like to finish up on the project before handing it over... I am speaking of the irc-jabber module in CVS, this is a 1.2 ready IRC transport, IRC parser component, and the IRC gateway (previously svc_irc)... I would like to finish the following before handing it off:

1> svc_irc needs to be updated fully or 1.2 server, it was written against a 1.1.3 dev server, before the advent of the <route/> tag, and this is needed in 1.2 for it to function at all, this needs to be updated, once it is, it should be fully functional.
2> irc-transport needs to be rewritten to support BOTH groupchat protocols, much like Groupchat (conferencing) does now.
3> irc-transport should be updated to use MIO, and dnsrv for DNS lookups
4> possibly rewrite irc-parser to work like the brand new http-parser component.

after these three things are finished, I would like to hand the project off to a capabile maintainer.  Please contact me at tsbandit at jabber.org (email or jid) if you are interested in holding the irc-jabber project torch.

also, if they are interested, I have a cool idea for an ircd that uses jabberd and groupchat on the backend, which would use the jabberd irc-parser component.

Thanks,
Keith