Developer UI for PackageDB

[ranjith kannikara]

I name is Ranjith Babu Kannikara. I am a pre-final year student in
govt.Engg College Thrissur, kerala(india). I have been learning
c,python,and their APIs for quite good amount of time. And Java and
Lisp as of now. I have little experience in working with some large
code-base from the last year GSOC in which I have worked with the Zope
Foundation in project 'Porting Zope2 to python2.5' .
My GSOC proposal is for making the PackageDB Developer UI more
flexible and friendly for the developers so that It wont waste the
valuable time of the developer. The present Developer UI is outdated
and needs serious changes and some additional options that will make
it easy to handle the acls, within much lesser time and with much less
effort. And it implemented by including more check boxes and buttons and
by setting reminders for works to be done.

The ideas are listed in detail in the wiki page
https://fedorahosted.org/packagedb/wiki/NewDevUI

The works to be done over the project have a flow like this..
* Aggregating the options that are to be there in the UI.
* Arranging the options with check boxes and buttons instead of select
boxes.
   :- ie arranging the options in rows and coloumns with each rows
start with a user and the check boxes/buttons in
     the row contains the permissions that can be given to the user.
   :- if there is more choice of permissions for each user then
checking itself will be annoying then there will be some
     extra coloumns( 2 or 3 ) of check boxes corresponding to each
user like 'give full permissions' 'give minimal
     permissions' and a custom set .
   :- these boxes, as their names indicate, will automatically give
checkings in a set of boxes the developer may define
      a custom set if he find himself giving a set of permissions
together quite often.
    ( I can make a picture of how the UI will be like after the
summer, and it will be easy for me if I could get the other
     options than 'Approve' and 'Awaiting for review' )
* After the list of the users a button to add new user can be given
which will expand to a text box on click. And this check box will
automatically search and match the text with the names in the list
user as it is entered in the box. ( Implementing such a button and
text box wont be difficult with javascript ).
* Such a button can be provided for the co-maintainer/watcher or the
button it will be enough to provide provisions in the first button it
self to make the new user co-maintainer/watcher once a new user is
added.( All these work belongs to the UI and it will not be difficult
when each button are defined to perform the background works for these
options assigned to them.
* In the page, Toshio have given (https://admin.fedoraproject.org/
pkgdb/packages/name/python), we can see links to bug reports, package
status etc. Another link named ' Active Requests'  can be added there
which will refer to a page that lists the active requests. The
requests can also be arranged so that it can be handled within no time
but this needs me to get an idea about the possible requests a
developer can get.
* As the requests are being listed it is easy to track what happens to
the request and and if a request is being left unnoticed or in some
state of waiting this track can be used to get the list of requests
that needs sending remainders. ( Here i need some more help from some
one else to generate the automatic reminders)
* As our implementation of the new UI will be much like a new
Interface with either the background or the existing page itself as
background for the new UI. In such way of implementation it will be
easy to show the respective EOL only and give options to switch in
between them.

Awaiting your reply
Ranju

-- 
http://www.ranjithkannikara.blogspot.com/