[mantisbt-dev] Mantis + Zend Framework = manzen

[<gi...@gm...>]

So, it is a long time since I started brewing this idea, that is,
start using an higher level tool to build new stuff and gradually
rewrite old one.

Several times I found in the Zend Framework (but I'm pretty sure
that's not only Zend, it just represents a modern and maintained piece
of PHP code) the tools needed to easily replace our external
dependencies or implement new features; for instance, I had a branch
where I got rid of rssbuilder replacing it with Zend_Feed and another
one with openID auth working with Zend_Auth

However, the "gradually rewrite" part was the hardest one to achieve
and it was obvious that without a good plan for the transition I could
not possibly propose to stop development and redirect all developers
in a grand rewrite with little hope for success.

Fast forward to today, I am happy to let you know I managed to prepare
a branch that fills that gap, so it would be possible to start
developing new stuff with this new system, while retaining the old
code and pages until a replacement is ready.

The branch is called "manzen" and lives here:
https://github.com/giallu/mantisbt/tree/manzen

Right now it's a minimalistic wrapper so that every request is passed
through pubilc/index.php, checked against the /legacy directory and,
when the requested page exists, served from there.

Now the plan is to understand how we could start moving stuff from
legacy, I hope to take on this task soon. I encourage everyone
interested to try cloning the repo and having a look around the
(little) code I added to do this trick.

Of course, I will be more than happy to discuss both general issues
and implementation details, so feel free to post your opinion on the
topic.

Cheers

G.


-- 
Gianluca Sforna

http://morefedora.blogspot.com
http://identi.ca/giallu - http://twitter.com/giallu