"QOF is external" discussion (was: c.shoemaker@cox.net: Re: QOF is external)

[Christian Stimming]

Thanks for digging this out, Benoit.

Note that in this announcement Linas says "I started the QOF project...", and 
he says "I'm not sure how things will play out in the future." There is no 
statement here whether gnucash should not contains its own QOF code any 
longer, including the full control over that. For those who thought this 
would be "yet another external, loosely-related project" the announcement 
obviously only says exactly that and nothing else.

It's of course pointless to speculate how the discussion would have ended if 
at that time we would additionally have discussed the question "Should 
gnucash stop development on the QOF code, and should the QOF code only be 
developed in the spun-out project that happens to be called QOF"? The point 
is that this has neither be discussed nor agreed upon. 

@Neil: So again, it is wrong if you assume that the gnucash developers (be it 
"all", or "the majority", or "not only Linas but everyone else too") would 
agree to your statement "QOF development happens at SF" or had agreed to that 
before. I'm sorry for you that this wasn't clear to you. As I said before, I 
clearly disagree to that statement and instead I strongly vote that the 
development of QOF code for gnucash should still continue in gnucash's SVN 
and under the gnucash terms of development, not in the external project that 
happens to be called QOF. Maybe that's a "not yet", but it's certainly true 
for now IMHO.

Christian

Am Donnerstag, 12. Januar 2006 05:51 schrieb Benoit Grégoire:
> On January 11, 2006 02:18 pm, Chris Shoemaker wrote:
> > > All QOF development happens at SF.
> >
> > You're implying that the gnucash developers have agreed to stop
> > development of the in-tree QOF and develop QOF only in your fork at
> > SF.  Have any gnucash developers (other than yourself) done so?  
> > (...)
>
> Well, there was never a definitive plan, but there was certainly no
> opposition to the move to SourceForge at the time.  Just to put everyone on
> the same page, here is Linas's original announcement to QOF, over two years
> ago: 15/06/03
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>------------------------
>
> Hi,
>
> I've just started the QOF "Query Object Framework" project on
> sourceforge.  QOF consists of that part of the GnuCash engine
> that isn't about accounting.  I started the project because
> I want to use the GnuCash query framework in another project
> of mine (GnoTime), and after thinking about it a bit, it seemed
> good to split it out into its own component.
>
> QOF consists of Derek Atkin's Query objects, Rob Browning's
> KVP trees, Bill Gribble's Numeric classes, Dave Peticolas'
> GUID's & events, and my own fractured Backend, books, & sessions.
> For now, I plan to keep the code in sync with GnuCash by hand.
> I'm not sure how things will play out in the future; I have
> no immediate plans.
>
> The really big deal in QOF is the query framework.  I think its
> unique: there is no code out there that I can google that provides
> generic structured query functions for generic objects, without
> forcing you to use SQL.  I think QOF can fill an important need
> for programmers who write apps that need to have reports, and
> are sophisticated enough to realize they need queries, and yet
> are not ready to convert thier app to an SQL app.
>
> The other big part of QOF is that it can act as a cache for an
> SQL backend.  Note, however, that this part is 'under construcion'.
> Done right, it should make it easy to add SQL support for the
> Business Objects in GnuCash.  However, this work hasn't been
> started, and needs volunteers.  In particular, I'm hoping
> that anyone who has contemplated the SQL re-write for GnuCash
> can help in this area.
>
> QOF compiles on my box, but I haven't yet checked in all the
> Makefile.am & configure.in into CVS.  Hopefully, I'll have a
> version 0.1 out shortly. If any of the regular GnuCash developers
> want developer access on sourceforge, let me know.
>
> http://qof.sourceforge.net
>
> --linas
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--------------------------.