Question thread #37

[pauamma]

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

Comments

[casimirian]

Is there a diagram of how Dreamwidth works and its dependencies?

[denise]

No diagram that I know of, but bin/checkconfig.pl checks for dependencies.

[casimirian]

Ah -- I see! Thank you.

[denise]

The wiki has a bunch of useful info about installation and configuration, too!

[casimirian]

Sophie has already provided me with a small server that I'm able to develop on. Now I have to learn how to maintain it. I'm reading the wiki now. It's very helpful! :)

[denise]

The good news is that Dreamhacks are virtual environments that you don't have to worry too much about maintenance on -- Sophie takes care of the server-wide stuff and all you have to worry about is keeping your copy of the code up to date and the like. :)

And welcome to DW development! We're thrilled to have you. If you're going to be submitting patches, you'll need to submit a Contributor Licensing Agreement, which will allow us to use your code, and the Dev Getting Started page on the wiki has a bunch of useful tips.

[syntheid]

Out of curiosity, what's the current state of Dreamwidth's APi? I saw there were some discussions about creating a new one and deprecating the xmlrpc, but I couldn't tell if any progress was actually made on that.

[denise]

It's being worked on!

[me_and]

It is!? Is that work happening anywhere I can see? Planned changes to the API are relevant to some of the design/spec work I'm currently working on (or at least working on when I'm sufficiently sane to do so).

[denise]

sooo, over the past six years, every time we've kicked off a conversation about the API redesign it gets bogged down in details and people argue about all the little things and the conversation dies off either because it gets bikeshedded to death or because the person who decided to take point on it realizes the scope of the work that needs to get done and runs far, far away. (This is why it has been six years with no movement!)

This time around, somebody who wanted to work on a particular project realized it would only be possible with a more modern API, and we decided that we would try it the other way this time: first version of API v2.0 (minimum viable for that project, etc) done as part of that, and then we open it up for discussion and collaboration and the like after that.

[marnanel]

Given the API discussion above-- is anyone actively working on an Android client? If they are, can I help?

[denise]

Not at the moment -- the legacy API isn't really worth programming against. We've had a few people start working on mobile clients (both iOS and Android) before, but efforts stalled pretty quickly.