[PP-main] todo list derived from spec

[Joakim Ziegler]

On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 03:28:48PM +1000, avi at itsg.net.au wrote:

> here is a list of things that would need to be done to make
> the spec i posted become a reality. please post anything you can think of
> that i have missed.

> implementation wise, i was thinking:
> * Central and Mirror Servers
>   + database - MySQL
>   + web server - apache
>   + scripting - PHP (easy to use, XML parser support)

I have a few comments to this. First of all, using mySQL is a bad diea
because of the licensing. People are free to make their own choices on what
to use, but I have a strong feeling that Peer Press shouldn't push mySQL as
the standard solution, at least.

I'd also very much like to see this stuff implemented in C. I realize it'll
make it harder for people to hack around with, but I think it's easy to make
a case for why his is a good diea, just look at Slashdot collapsing under its
own weight. Probably something like a C core with functionality to link it to
at least PHP and Python would be a better idea. This also opens for the
possibility of suing an embedded database, which would make it a lot faster,
SQL queries are slow, and there's no significant gain in using a full RDBMS
anyway. In that case, we need to look at what embeddable DBs are available.

Either way, with a C core, we could probably make the entire thing an Apache
module, which would make it extremely efficient, at least for the central
servers this wouldbe an issue when the network grows.

> so far i haven't had much feedback on anything that i've posted.
> if the approach that i'm taking is (un)/suitable, please tell me as
> response so far (positive or negative) has been scarce. (email me
> privately if you prefer). that way i can figure out whether or not this
> stuff is actually useful to anyone.

I think this sort of hands-on approach is quite useful. I'd like, however, to
formalize a few things a bit more before proceeding with the implementation.
I'll post a small list in a few minutes, outlining how I think we should
proceed from here.

-- 
Joakim Ziegler - simplemente r&d director - joakim at simplemente.net
 FIX sysop - free software coder - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer
      http://www.avmaria.com/ - http://www.simplemente.net/