[Veryquickwiki-announce] [ANN] Development direction

[Gareth C. <ga...@cr...>]

Hi,

VeryQuickWiki is now nearly 3 years old has been downloaded over 10,000 
times.

I wish to freeze any development on the version 2 code stream of 
VeryQuickWiki from the 16th of July. As of that date, only bug fixes 
will be accepted.

I had started a re-write for version 3, but given the huge amount of 
functionality that has been added to version 2 over the last 6 months or 
so, I've decided it would be better to just refactor what's there 
already. I'll spend a couple of weeks on version 3 myself, release it 
and then open it up to further contributions.

The main changes I intend to make are:

1. Stop using the trailing part of the URL as a virtual wiki indicator 
and just using a URL parameter instead. This will mean that no restart 
or web.xml modifications are required to add/remove/change virtual 
wikis. Now that there is a "go to topic" box to enter topic names in 
directly, the format of the URL is not really important from a human-use 
point of view. This will of course mean that security constraints with 
URL patterns can no longer be used to give different virtual wikis 
different security... so that creates the need for the next point.

2. Add built-in lock-down of virtual wikis that will demand 
authentication. To do this safely all request handlers must check for 
authorisation, which gives rise to the next point. This will also enable 
implementation of full user/group security in the future. Tobias has 
already added LDAP support for usergroups in the next VQWiki 2 version 
and there is no reason why this can't be extended into a more general 
user/role authorisation system for those who require it.

3. Turn all of the existing servlets into "wiki action classes" a la 
MVC, Struts etc. Some actions do already exist, but I'd like to get the 
rest of them into this format leaving WikiServlet as the only servlet 
(and controller). This will also take away the sometimes messy 
forwarding and despatching between servlets and replace this with simple 
delegation through the action manager. The action manager will be 
responsible for checking authentication/authorisation.

4. Restructure the project code and start version 3 in a new CVS module. 
This will get rid of the various bits of junk that have crept in over 
the last few years. The new structure will be Maven-friendly so that 
Dan's work on creating a Maven project can be used properly. The new 
code will include an Ant build script and a Maven project xml and 
properties.

Thanks,

Gareth.