The Future of SquirrelMail 1.0

[Paul J. T. <th...@ok...>]

I have heard a lot of great ideas concerning ways to tweak and improve the 
SquirrelMail 1 tree. In response to these discussions, I wanted to set forth 
some guidelines for this continued development.

Here is a (possibly incomplete) list of the types of work that should be done 
on the SquirrelMail 1 tree.

 1. Resolving SquirrelMail security issues, as may arise
 2. General perfomance tuning and improvements
 3. Rewrite of embarrassing code in SquirrelMail
 4. And, of course, fixing bugs as they are found

About item 3, I know that Luke has some work already underway to rewrite some 
of his IMAP code that he has described to me as embarrassing. This kind of 
thing would also be ok if someone came up with a neat, and relatively simple, 
rework of somethings that would provide for some substantial benefit.

I guess the main point that I am trying to get across is the importance of NOT 
leaving our user base hanging until SquirrelMail 2.0 is released, or at least 
out in some preliminary state.


Rough Roadmap for SquirrelMail 1 Releases
=========================================

First, release SquirrelMail 1.0 as the new and improved SquirrelMail. Then, 
make maintainence releases, as necessary, for bug fixes, performance tuning, 
and/or security updates.

   * SquirrelMail 1.0.0 (today!)
   * SquirrelMail 1.0.1
   * SquirrelMail 1.0.2
       .   .   .   .
       .   .   .   .
       .   .   .   .
   * SquirrelMail 1.0.N

At the same time, work would commence on SquirrelMail 1.1. This development 
tree would be for the limited larger changes that will be done to the 
SquirrelMail 1.0 tree. These fixes are not things that solve or address the 
major things we plan to deal with in SquirrelMail 2. Rather, it is just for 
those rewrites of sections of code that just need to be done.

   * SquirrelMail 1.1.0
   * SquirrelMail 1.1.1
   * SquirrelMail 1.1.2
       .   .   .   .
       .   .   .   .
       .   .   .   .
   * SquirrelMail 1.1.M

At some point in the future, Luke, head boss-man for the Squirrelmail 1.1 tree 
will determine that his changes are ready for the world. At that time, 
SquirrelMail 1.2 will be released. This will replace 1.0 as the stable branch 
for SquirrelMail and will continue with standard maintainence releases, as 
necessary, for bug fixes, performance tuning, and/or security updates.

   * SquirrelMail 1.2.0 (today!)
   * SquirrelMail 1.2.1
   * SquirrelMail 1.2.2
       .   .   .   .
       .   .   .   .
       .   .   .   .
   * SquirrelMail 1.2.X

Oh yeah, at the same time as the SquirrelMail 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 trees are in 
progress, work will begin on the development tree for SquirrelMail 2. This will 
most likely exist as SquirrelMail 1.9.

  * SquirrelMail 1.9.0 (first development release)
  * SquirrelMail 1.9.1
      .   .   .   .
      .   .   .   .
      .   .   .   .
  * SquirrelMail 1.9.Z

And of course, at some time this tree will become ready for the world. That 
will result in the first release of SquirrelMail 2.0 will be made. As you can 
probably guess, this tree will follow as the Squirrelmail 1.0 and 1.2 tree, 
with a 2.1 development tree following, to later become a 2.2 release.

And that's it for now.


For Now
=======

Basically, at this time the projects to kill the "log level bug" and convert 
all applicable "foo" to 'foo' should continue. Also, the idea someone had to 
convert echo and print statements into HTML is a good plan also. With this, 
however, care should be taken to maintain readability of the code involved (a 
big judgement call).

If anyone has any comments, criticisms, objects, or so on about this plan, let 
us know!

Good work, everyone. SquirrelMail is awesome!

-- 
Paul Joseph Thompson
Oklahoma State University
th...@ok...