[Systers-dev] GSoC Update and Final Items for Completion

[Jennifer Redman]

We are pretty much at the end of the our Summer of Code projects.  The
evaluation period starts today.  We have some additional testing that needs
to be finished up and code to push to production.  Here is an update on
where we are now and what needs to be completed this week.
 - Anna's wishlist branch is ready to be pushed to production.  Today I'll
merge her branch with the stable branch and queue it up to be pushed onto
Artemis (production).

There are lots of bug fixes and some redesign of things like the required
essay questions and how they are handled -- which are a significant
enhancement.  Unfortunately, we are having some issues with system logging
on Artemis and this needs to be fixed before the code is rolled out.
 Hopefully, those issues will be resolved in the next few days.

- Malveeka's membership branch is on deck for testing.

The membership adaptor is really our most experimental -- pushing the
boundaries of Mailman 2x - features.  We probably won't be able to push this
to production during the next few weeks, because it is a bit of radical
change.  Malveeka's code looks very good and it is our our hope is that it
we can get this into production over the next few months.  This is a good
branch for anyone who'd like to do some work with python and authentication
to take a look at for possible contribution.

- Kanika Vats ORM branch is ready for a second round of testing

Kanika Vats' ORM branch passed the first round of testing with one exception
-- removal of some hard-coded passwords.  She has fixed that item and
actually worked on a second revision to make her code more
object-orientated.  She is now testing a merge with Anna's wishlist branch
(which is the new "stable").  It is my expectation that we will be able to
push this to production fairly quickly once a second round of testing is
complete.

- Merges into development and stable branches

I've been doing a little bit of shall we call it "advanced" release
management in the interest of testing/moving to production quickly.  When
everything is completed we will have a new stable branch and a new
development branch.  My expectation is that stable will contain the wishlist
and ORM branches, while development with have all three.  Annie Lee has
volunteered to help out with release management and she has been pitching in
when she can to help with testing.  Once things settle, I'll spend some
additional time working with her on how to manage the branches and the
releases.  If anyone else would like to be part of  the release management
team let me know.

Release management is pretty complicated especially when dealing with a
distributed development process -- but it's something that is worth learning
if you have any interest in community-developed software release cycles.
 Every project, of course, does things a little differently.

Overall, it has been a great summer, and I'd like to thank all our students
for their patience as we went through a major learning experience as I'm
sure they did as well.

Hopefully, all of our students are willing to post summaries of their
experience this summer to both Systers and systers-dev and continue as
contributors -- after we've finished up the final testing.

We'd like to roll everything into a Mailman - Systers' Special Edition  for
more public use in the very near future.

As always we can use some testing help so stay-tuned for updated
instructions.


Jen