| Developing for Copper, in Customization |
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 Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:35 am Post subject: Developing for Copper |
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Hi,
My company uses Copper for its project management. Of course, its vanilla install doesn't fit quite right for us, so there have been modifications to the system. I'm now in charge of it.
While the Copper code is clean and is reasonably organized, modification becomes difficult due to the lack of documentation and large "God-classes" comprising the entire functionality of a module.
If someone has to customize Copper heavily, documentation (code and manuals) and an extensible class hierarchy would help tremendously. Since it appears I'll have to do major overhauls to the code, I'm in that group.
I have some questions for the Copper team and anyone else reading:
- Can we submit code to be included in the core?
- Is there any repository for modules or user patches?
- Who of you are interested in submitting patches to the Copper team and/or user community?
- Is it possible for the Copper team to provide incremental patches as new features are completed?
- Is there a set release schedule?
- Does (or can) the Copper team allow more visibility (read-only issue tracking program or something) regarding what's under development? The point being, can I tell my boss "just wait 5 weeks, the Copper team is doing it".
- Is there any list gathered together for planned features or features under consideration? I see a lot of new feature requests in the forums, but I don't have a good idea of what the team is going to be doing.
All said and done, I would love to see a more fully-documented codebase, as that will make customizing the system more attractive to developers.
thanks
Chris |
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Ben
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| Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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All good points Chris.
In short, while we actively encourage collaboration, Copper isn't an open source initiative, so we're really careful to keep some of our priorities under wraps.
The other issue we have is with resourcing, as between customizations that we undertake for customers, and other business, we're probably putting out 1-2 releases a year.
We're currently in development of our 2006 version of Corporate which will include some tighter backend initiatives, as well as a bunch of new functions. Once this is done we're heading into development of the Enterprise version, then to Standard, to corporate etc etc etc.
Contact me off forum and let me know what you're up to. While I know that there are a bunch of bespoke modules out there, I also know that once they're built and functioning those customers don't tend to come back to the well (at least until we hint at a new release  .
Regards,
Ben. |
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luke
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| Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:12 am Post subject: a second vote for this! |
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Joined: 24 Jan 2008
Posts: 11
Location: Chirstchurch, New Zealand
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We are also heavily customizing copper to better suit our business requirements and would have to agree with all of the points and requests Chris has made.
The biggest issue would have to be submitting code to be included in the core, so that when we go to upgrade there are less conflicts with our customizations. Otherwise upgrading becomes a less attractive option.
Currently we track all of our customizations using subversion in the hope that this will make the upgrade path less painful. |
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Ben
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| Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:17 am Post subject: |
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Thanks Luke, this post was from back in 2006, but we're still a commercial entity that needs to be careful what we add to the code base for the benefit of all customers.
By all means we're happy to receive requests and certainly add them to our database, but please understand that only the most popular items can be added to the software.
Its great you guys are customizing though. |
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