What is the future of phpBB????

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Ger
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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Ger »

Well, one thing that still is a major issue I think is the amount of work one has to dig into before being able to contribute. As stated before, there are many folks in the community that are able to write solid code and that way should be able to contribute, but don't. As stated by DavidIQ:
Tapping into the MOD community is an excellent idea...except that most of those in the MOD community that know how to work git or care to learn are already involved but there are countless others that just don't have the time or don't want to bother learning to use git. Even attaching a patch to a tracker ticket seems like an impossibility for some even though we have instructions on how to do it.
I've asked for a good, simple explanation on how to install and setup Git for contributing to phpBB about 1,5 years ago. Still, there isn't anything better that https://wiki.phpbb.com/Git
But that starts with the "basics" that aren't understandable for a mere Windows user.
It was promised back than that some basic guide should be written and made easily foundable, but still noting.

However, I managed to git clone phpBB in Netbeans, enabling me to see the files. After cloning, I wanted to install it, simply pointing my browser to localhost/phpbb3/phpBB. Bummer.

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Fatal error: You have not set up composer dependencies. See http://getcomposer.org/. in C:\wamp\www\phpbb3\phpBB\includes\startup.php on line 176
Well, I got and installed composer, restarted Wamp and tried again. Still no dice. Tried to search for how to make this work, but nothing.

Disappointed again, I give up trying to contribute for about the tenth time in 5 years. It's made too hard for a simple community member to contribute.

So again I ask: make a simple HOWTO for people how they must setup a project to work on, submit patches, etc. Only then will development really open up and thus speed up. Other open source project can, so why can't phpBB?
Above message may contain errors in grammar, spelling or wrongly chosen words. This is because I'm not a native speaker. My apologies in advance.

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Arty
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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Arty »

That is a valid concern and I believe team is doing everything possible to make it easier.

Learning GIT is easy and if you have any questions, devs are always happy to answer in #phpbb-dev
Composer stuff is now included in repository so you don't need to install it yourself.

And get rid of *AMP. Those packages cause nothing but troubles. There are many precompiled PHP and Apache packages that are very easy to install. mySQL has easy to use installation wizard. *AMP is not needed at all.

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Ger
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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Ger »

Arty wrote:That is a valid concern and I believe team is doing everything possible to make it easier.
I don't want to be a pita, but after several years of asking, there still isn't a basic guide.
Arty wrote:Composer stuff is now included in repository so you don't need to install it yourself.
I actually tried that yesterday and checked out the repository again today. Still the same error. What's wrong?
Arty wrote:And get rid of *AMP. Those packages cause nothing but troubles. There are many precompiled PHP and Apache packages that are very easy to install. mySQL has easy to use installation wizard. *AMP is not needed at all.
I've developed on XAMPP en WAMP for years on about a dozen projects in total. Never had any trouble with it. Why isn't phpBB working with it?

This only strengthens my point that the barrier is too high. Most people use either WAMP, XAMPP or LAMP. If phpBB doesn't work properly on those packages, there should be a guide on howto setup an environment for development.

Or do I simply have the wrong files checked out? I followed the "guide" here and checked out git://github.com/phpbb/phpbb3.git. I got the develop branch.
Above message may contain errors in grammar, spelling or wrongly chosen words. This is because I'm not a native speaker. My apologies in advance.

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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Paul »

Ger wrote:
Arty wrote:That is a valid concern and I believe team is doing everything possible to make it easier.
I don't want to be a pita, but after several years of asking, there still isn't a basic guide.
Arty wrote:Composer stuff is now included in repository so you don't need to install it yourself.
I actually tried that yesterday and checked out the repository again today. Still the same error. What's wrong?
Because you didnt read the readme? It tells you how to get the composer files.
Arty wrote:And get rid of *AMP. Those packages cause nothing but troubles. There are many precompiled PHP and Apache packages that are very easy to install. mySQL has easy to use installation wizard. *AMP is not needed at all.
I've developed on XAMPP en WAMP for years on about a dozen projects in total. Never had any trouble with it. Why isn't phpBB working with it?
phpBB works perfectly under xammp, I have both 3.0.x as 3.1.x working on my local windows install.

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DavidIQ
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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by DavidIQ »

He isn't the first to have problems with the composer files nor will he be the last if we continue insisting that the users run some commands to get them. This really needs to change. Users are majorly put off by this and simply give up dealing with 3.1. We don't/wouldn't make them get latest of the other vendor additions...not sure why this is done for this particular one.
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Ger
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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Ger »

paulus wrote:Because you didnt read the readme? It tells you how to get the composer files.
I got composer installed. But what readme are you referring to? docs/README.html doesn't say anything about it.
paulus wrote:
Arty wrote:And get rid of *AMP. Those packages cause nothing but troubles. There are many precompiled PHP and Apache packages that are very easy to install. mySQL has easy to use installation wizard. *AMP is not needed at all.
I've developed on XAMPP en WAMP for years on about a dozen projects in total. Never had any trouble with it. Why isn't phpBB working with it?
phpBB works perfectly under xammp, I have both 3.0.x as 3.1.x working on my local windows install.
I've worked with phpBB in WAMP and XAMPP without problems in the past. Arty suggests/implies that my composer problems could be caused by my use of *AMP.

Anyway: I'm already done with this, again. I'll look into the development info in a few months again. This is getting way too off topic anyways, my point is simply that the future of phpBB is uncertain because (among other reasons) contributing is made too hard. That's not good for an open source project.
Above message may contain errors in grammar, spelling or wrongly chosen words. This is because I'm not a native speaker. My apologies in advance.

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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Paul »

DavidIQ wrote:He isn't the first to have problems with the composer files nor will he be the last if we continue insisting that the users run some commands to get them. This really needs to change. Users are majorly put off by this and simply give up dealing with 3.1. We don't/wouldn't make them get latest of the other vendor additions...not sure why this is done for this particular one.
It is not something difficult tbh, the composer binary is already in the repo, and in the readme it says you need to run the composer command. Doesnt seem to be that hard for me.This is also for just development, for releases these files are ofcourse included.
Ger wrote:
paulus wrote:Because you didnt read the readme? It tells you how to get the composer files.
I got composer installed. But what readme are you referring to? docs/README.html doesn't say anything about it.
https://github.com/phpbb/phpbb3#installing-dependencies

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Ger
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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Ger »

Finally. I had to enable the extension=php_openssl.dll in php.ini and than point my cmd to

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C:\wamp\www\phpbb3\phpBB>php ../composer.phar install
Anyhow: this only emphasizes my point: information is way too fragmented over various places. One really has to want to contribute and do quite some searching before he can only begin to write the code he actually wanted when he thought: "Hey, I can improve this, let's go contribute!"
Above message may contain errors in grammar, spelling or wrongly chosen words. This is because I'm not a native speaker. My apologies in advance.

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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Frug »

Ger wrote:
Arty wrote:That is a valid concern and I believe team is doing everything possible to make it easier.
I don't want to be a pita, but after several years of asking, there still isn't a basic guide.
Hi. As a windows user and a not very good developer, i can tell you that Git isn't super easy to use, but it's not particularly hard either. The sad thing about Git is that once you know how to use it there are about 4 commands that you type over and over to make it work, and that's it. Suddenly it seems stupidly easy. But figuring out which 4 commands suit your workflow and do what you expect them to do is a time consuming exercise in google-fu. I could probably write up a step-by-step manual that will give you this for phpbb, but the problem then becomes what happens if you make a mistake and need to reverse the change? It can go down another road and you'll end up reading for an hour or two either way. They do have a windows GUI that's less powerful but quite easy.
Anyway, you can in theory edit files straight on github using the edit button on their web interface. For tiny corrections, this would work. For big ones I'm sure it's error prone since you can't test the actual file.

Composer is another issue entirely. I've also used it, and it was painless and easy to use when I did it through SSH on my linux server. Two commands and done (actually four commands because Linux always throws curve balls at you unrelated to the task at hand). But on my casual home machine? Haven't tried. Probably easy, but I understand the reluctance to go down that road. The answers here going on a tangent telling you to stop using WAMP and that the commands are easy are part of the problem, not the solution, imo. Suddenly what should be a trivial installation for you to start editing php becomes a journey through composer land and wamp stacks... but why?

Oh hey look, fluxbb doesn't require any of this... I wonder if they will when they base 2.0 off of Laravel (which also uses composer)? Maybe. I bet they make releases faster, but this is off topic.

DavidIQ wrote:He isn't the first to have problems with the composer files nor will he be the last if we continue insisting that the users run some commands to get them. This really needs to change. Users are majorly put off by this and simply give up dealing with 3.1. We don't/wouldn't make them get latest of the other vendor additions...not sure why this is done for this particular one.
Simple question about composer here. Why is this done at all? As far as I can tell, all composer does is download a few files based on dependencies. Why is this left to devs at all instead of having the files that composer pulls dumped into the git?

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Re: What is the future of phpBB????

Post by Ascareus Kratos »

to be honest
right now phpBB may be left behind myBB and SMF.
though i think the 3.1 will bring some new air
but because of its long stage, the other platform may be get developed more and more
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