[pskmail] jpskmail forked

From: Per Crusefalk <per@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: pskmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:13:52 +0200
Hi all,

I have forked jpskmail today. A fork is a major decision and I have been
trying to stay away from it for months now. 
The fork is howewer needed if I am to continue working on the client.

A bit of background information is needed here. The client was initially
created by yours truly as a proof of concept, 
all it did in the beginning was to transmit pings and short aprs
messages. Rein then joined in and we worked hard 
to get the client fully working. The latest version we produced was 0.36
and its still out there.

During all this Intermar was working on a separate project, a native
windows port of the pskmail client. 
That client is aimed at sailors and doesnt look like "our" jpskmail at
all. Its a completely different interface, 
there are some images of that here:
http://www.pskmail.de/downloads/praesentation_psk_mail_tagung.pdf

When we had the multi platform client working Intermar proposed to use
that instead of their own client
and build their complete gui within the same project. To do that you
have to clean the code so that user interface
and logic is completely separated, which in itself is a good thing. So,
Sebastian (Intermar developer) did a nice
job where he created a base class that both clients would implement. All
the logic was removed and placed in a
common class and so on.

The problem for me here is that none of the new stuff is documented or
even commented, there isn't a single
comment within that new code. I have to trace everything and find out
how its done, how is exception handling performed etc.
There are numerous new files and classes that are only used by the new
client and if I change anything to, what used
to be, "our" client parts then I have to implement it again on the other
client.
The clients will be completely different but use the same name, that
sounds to me like a maintenance nightmare.

Anyway, after the new architecture was in place all development
completely stopped on "our" client. I put an open streetmap
tab on the client but when I tried to update received aprs data I had to
trace logic through unfamiliar, uncommented,
classes, implement new method signatures in the base class, implement
new callbacks, update both sides and so on...
It was just time consuming and frustrating. 

So, I started to build a gui to control my hsdpa modem (ubuntu lacks a
pin entry app)
and also a better ncdxf beacon app instead of working on the client...

So, where its now I can decide between completely abandoning the project
or fork it. I'll try a fork.

73 de Per, sm0rwo
[pskmail] jpskmail forked

Other related posts:
