Contentment Content Management System / News: Recent posts

I'm not asking for the removal of the project from SourceForge, but I really don't have any need for SourceForge tools anymore. I've been able to find a Subversion repository on my own (no thanks to SF.net) and the tools available for development on CPAN have generally proven superior to SF.net. I think Brian D. Foy summarizes my general opinion of SF.net in a use.perl journal entry from 2002:... read more

I uploaded the latest version. Since 0.9.8 Beta, most of the changes are related to the addition of unit tests (I know, I know, I should have started with them). Anyway, there is now a framework in place to write more tests and, if one has Apache::Test installed, it is now pretty easily possible to write full system tests---which I will start writing now.

The system now includes a FastCGI target in addition to the regular CGI as well to help get past the overhead of establishing a database connection. At this point, I'm a little hesitant to add a mod_perl target as the system is pretty dependant upon the CGI module still. However, that's planned eventually.

This is a pretty significant fix because the 0.9b2 through 0.9b4 were essentially broken because of a failure on my part to thoroughly test them. I've mostly fixed the problem, but the system really needs unit tests to avoid this in the future. This also means that http://contentment.org/ is back online and fully functional again.

Added a new update that adds support for File::System and a bunch of other miscellaneous updates. This includes changes in the Changelog from 450 forward. I'm going to try to make this clearer in the Changelog in the future.

Okay, after much waiting and hand wringing over how best to do this, I've made the first release of Contentment. I've switched to using Perl-style version numbers, so the version number is "0.009_001", which can be shortened to just 0.9b1 (Version 0.9, beta release 1).

Anyway, see the web site for more details. I'm going to update the home page fully to reflect the changes soon. I'm going to put together a change log for the next release so that folks will know what's been going on.

Okay, technically, this version of Contentment isn't a successor of the previous releases, but to prevent confusion I'm moving the number forward and discontinuing/disbanding all previous code. I'm hoping to come up with some sort of Subversion/CVS mirror that will allow me to keep working with Subversion, but keep an identical copy in CVS. Otherwise, I don't have a good place to put a public Subversion repository, so I may just have to go back to ole faithful CVS.

I've discovered that I'm apparently starting to show early signs of dementia--forgetfulness. The 0.5.1 update is not just a maintenance release. It is quite a major release including lots of functionality that I have not described in the release notes.

I'm not going to describe those features here either. I'm just going to say that 0.5.1 is very much more complete than stated. The 0.5.2 release will contain more details. In the meantime, I think I'm going to have my head examined...*sigh*

I've released an update to Contentment that should allow it to use the latest update to Persist. Contentment 0.5.1 requires Persist 0.5.3 to function

This is a bug fix release because the testing system was broken on 0.5.2. I also forgot to include front-end support for the bytable option to first and next in Join. (This is a bug, not a feature enhancement since it should have been in the last release!)

This release fixes these problems and a couple bugs discovered in the PostgreSQL and DBI driver because of these changes.

Phew! Hopefully the next package released in this project will be Contentment, but a number of changes needed to be made to the core of Persist before continuing efforts elsewhere.

This update includes three big changes: (1) inclusion of a new build and testing system, (2) support for ordering, row limits, and row offsets, and (3) drops the explicit_join method from the API.

The new build system takes away all the tests that were in each driver directory and replaces them with one suite of tests that may be applied to all drivers. This provides better standardization of the regression tests and allows us to show that each driver behaves the same way for a certain set of operations.... read more

There was a mistake in the MakeMaker scripts for building Persist that prevented Persist.pm (the central package!) from being installed. I've known about this for at least a week, but was hoping to release the next version soon enough that it wouldn't be a problem.

The next release is still a few days off and I'm feeling guilty for having a broken package posted here and on CPAN. I have fixed the problem using the 0.5.0 source and have independently fixed the problem in the HEAD which will become 0.5.2.... read more

After toying with the idea of replacing Persist with another similar and more mature tool, I've decided to update Persist instead. This release of Persist is the first step in that direction. This version of Persist has a new mixed positional/named parameter syntax for the front and uses a named parameter syntax only in the backend.

This version also replaces the stupid and broken date support it had with the TIMESTAMP type with a much better date system based upon the DateTime package and ISO 8601.... read more

In the last two weeks, I've been working on making the Apache Director more flexible by adding a new module called Contentment::Match. Essentially, this system adds much more flexibility to the ways the Director can map external URLs to internal ones. Some effort needs to be made yet in making sure the reverse translation occurs properly (when necessary), but for the current demo, this system will work well.... read more

This is an important milestone for the Contentment project. For the first time since the last major rewrite, there exists a working demo. The demo is a little stupid, but it's a start. I consider the basic core of the engine to be done. It will yet require some tweaking, but I don't see any major changes in the near future.

The Persist update is mostly to complement the changes made in Contentment and make it happy. There weren't any really big bugs in this release, but some aesthetic ones I wanted to fix.... read more

I have determined a plan for the next release and it is going to break a few things, so I think a full minor release is in order. The "To Do List" for the upcoming release is as follows:

1. Add the Mediator architecture.
2. Rewrite the testing system so that all tests are grouped in one
place (i.e., no more component-centric tests since nearly none of
them only test one component).
3. Add the XSLTMediator.
4. Add a stylesheet for converting the generic XML document format
used by Contentment to HTML and then make that part of the demo.
5. Move the Contentlet packages back to Contentment::Contentlet. I
don't really want to create another root-level package when
Contentment goes onto CPAN. It's not like the Contentlet's
package name will ever come up again after registration anyway, so
we don't really need it short.
6. Add the demo and appropriate instructions for running it.... read more

This is a pretty minor release that adds the Security Monitor feature. This is basically a session-based security system. There is a default implementation (Contentment::Monitor) and a test-implementation (Contentment::Monitor::Open). The default denies everything and the test-implementation allows everything. Both are bad ideas, but serve their respective purposes.

The next release will likely contain a simple demo as Contentment begins to get useful. The next major focus is going to be link management and presentation. This will probably require a custom security monitor and some interaction with Axkit (http://axkist.org).

The rewrite of the Contentment system has been completed and refined. This code is still very Alpha. Contentment is also not yet very useful as it lacks a security manager and other refinements. These I hope to have added for the next minor release.

The new release of Persist 0.3.2 has been made because there was a bug in the Memory driver that caused it to fail when a deletion was attempting on an empty table. This shouldn't be an exception and stopped Contentment from functioning, thus, the new release.

The first major step towards a release of Contentment has been achieved. This release of Persist is mostly a collection of bug fixes, documentation updates, and a total reorganization of the unit tests. Some additional features have been added since 0.3.0, most notably several new datatypes have been added. See the Release Notes for details.

Though it is considerably past my normal bed-time, I wish to go ahead and post that the rewrite of the core components of Contentment has been posted to CVS. Basically, this means that the ideas that have been mulled over in Explorations 1 through 9 have finally reached fruition (http://contentment.sf.net/index.php?page=exploration).

There is still quite a bit more work to be finished before the next release of Contentment. The core is written, but it is by no means stable. I need to implement a completely new battery of tests to verify Contentment. Before I can do this, I need to do the same for Persist as a number of important improvements have been made there as well. The plan is to flesh out tests and documentation for Persist and release (and also post to PAUSE for insertion to CPAN) then to do the same for Contentment.... read more

Persist is it's own project and has always been. It was piggy-back riding on Contentment because that was initially convenient, but I always intended it to stand on it's own. I have renamed Persistent to Persist to avoid namespace clobbering with another similar project named Persistent by DWINTERS (on CPAN). At this time, Contentment has not been adjusted to this change (neither in release or CVS), but will be one of the changes once the present rewrite is complete.

After the initial completion of the 0.1.x release, there have been some problems with the architecture. I expected this and have come up with fixes to the problems I have encountered thus far. These changes are mostly according to the information found in the Exploration essays I have posted online (http://contentment.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=exploration).

I have recently added some augmentation to the Persistent framework to assist in the rewrite and the rest of the rewrite will, hopefully, follow shortly. This rewrite will include a new emphasis on the use of XML in generating content, new roles for the Director and Manager components, an additonal Context component, a new Resolver component, a new Session Manager, and a real database schema which will eliminate the Lazy-style components of 0.1.x.... read more

This is a bug fix update. I realized after uploading 0.1.0a that I had forgotten to document and test anything in the Persistent packages. This fixes that problem (and a number of bugs discovered because of it).

This is redundant as this release was made previously, but this time it's Perl-based. See the README for install notes, but it's mostly a typical Perl installation. As for actual features, this release really doesn't have any. It's pretty useless and parts are dysfunctional. This was done on purpose so that I could start testing everything early. Hopefully, 0.2 or 0.3 will be useful on a small scale.

We're moving from Java to Perl. I've been developing this off of SourceForge for a while so that I could experiment to find the best solution. A basic useless Contentment system is written and will be posted here as soon as I can get the CVS repositories renamed. Development will continue from here in the future.

The last rewrite was hoped to be the last major rewrite, but I believe some changes are in order. This rewrite isn't nearly as huge as the last, but it does change the API. No CVS updates or other changes have been posted recently as I have been working out the design details on paper before doing any coding.

The 0.3.x system successfully divided presentation logic from business logic. However, this still led to some rather ugly coding on the part of the Contentlet designer. The new 0.4.x system further divides the presentation logic into what I refer to as "content logic" and "design logic". This really gets to the core of what I wanted in the first place. I want a content management system that does not require the content logic and design logic to be tightly bound. ... read more