Tasks for the Fall

We've finalized the list of things we want to accomplish between now and December, in order to be ready for beta use in the Winter term:

Bug tracking system: we need to build a simple issue tracking system (like Neon's) that integrates with Subversion, the rest of Hippo's user interface, and the server-side scripting framework. UI, database work, testing—this has it all. 3 people needed; one slot spoken for.

Server-side scripting: one of the big differences between Hippo and other systems (like SourceForge and GForge) is that Hippo has to support dozens (possibly hundreds) of more-or-less identical projects (for courses like 207, in which each student is working on their own version of each assignment). Creating these one at a time through a web interface would be painfully slow, so we need to build a Python library that can talk directly to the data model classes in Hippo. That way, administrators and profs can write little scripts to create projects, user accounts, bugs, and so on. (Why Python? Because there's a version written in Java, called Jython, and since we're teaching it in courses, we can reasonably expect profs to know a little about it.) 2 people needed; both slots open.

Email system: the Helium team made a good start on an email management system, but lots more need to be done. Spam filtering, threading… it's a long list. 3 people needed, all slots open.

Testing frameworks: this team will *not* be responsible for testing Hippo (each team will be required to test its own work). Instead, this team will integrate and customize some open source testing tools, like HtmlUnit and HttpUnit, so that everyone else can test the user interfaces they're building. I expect that some of the work this team does will be folded back into the official releases of those tools, so if you're looking for an extra line on your resume… 2 people needed, both slots open.

Server-side subversion: David James is already at work cleaning up the Java interface to Subversion, so that we can make it do what we need it to do on the servr side. No more bodies are needed for this one.