Hi Harald,
Thanks for your thoughts.
- a common thread I am seeing within the forums is that Joe and the other devs, while working hard, are frequently apologizing for lack of communication and/or lack of pointing out certain issues and shortcomings on the main site. Guys, you are running a business now – and the most important part of a business is to keep your customer informed. The way I see it, while I pay $250 for a good product, support and adequate information is part of that product. While I understand that you are all working tirelessly to make Virtualmin the best it can be, claiming “I was too busy to mention lack of x86_64 support” (as an illustration) doesn’t really cut it, especially when you customers have to find that out the hard way. I know you’re all busy, so let me suggest a magic word: WIKI!
You know, I became aware of this problem and honestly thought I had resolved it about a week ago. I’ve started posting news items every two or three days, whenever I release anything new, fix a bug, or documented something new. I’ve updated the FAQ to include details about the Early Adopter period, as I don’t want anyone jumping in if they’re expecting a perfect product the moment they buy.
Anyway, in my defense, the x86_64 problem has been resolved–took a few days longer than anticipated, but I dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s. There was a news item about it on the front page and everything! This was the straw that broke the camel’s back and made me realize I wasn’t keeping people informed enough and in the right places. I even made some changes to the front page news item, so more items are listed and they stay visible longer–this is a way to get things right out front where they can’t be missed. That’s actually a big part of the problem. To stick with the x86_64 problem, the supported operating systems list was documented long before anyone started complaining about x86_64 support–it just wasn’t in an obvious enough place. So that’s why the news quarter of the page is now where everything important is showing up. Am I still falling short?
Anyway, this past week I’ve really been trying to keep the information flowing at a pace that doesn’t quite match development speed, but does keep people informed of the things they need to know before deciding to buy an Early Adopter release.
- I assume the current version available is EA2, right? There doesn’t seem to be anything clearly identifying it as such. Since there is much talk about EA2, EA3, etc on the forums, it would help being able to identify versions easier.
I’ll refer you to the latest release announcement. From the previously mentioned news section of the front page,right on the front page:
http://www.virtualmin.com/news/item?item_id=15856
See? I am doing better about keeping folks informed!
It’s not quite EA2, but pretty close. Mandrake is fighting me a bit, but I’ll have him knocked down soon. I rushed out a pre-EA2 in order to get x86_64 support on the Red Hat platforms out the door.
- There are a number of problems in the script installers (for example, the phpBB2.1.6 installer is outdated, points to a download location that 404s, as the application has gone through 2 revisions since EA1; other scripts require ‘magic quotes’ to be on, but the default appears to be off, so the script won’t install… etc)
Will be fixed today. I forgot to file a bug on this one, and Jamie catches things in the bug-tracker faster than here. My job includes the monitoring the forums for things that need to be addressed, whereas he only checks them occasionally. The bug-tracker sends to the right person immediately. I see that you’ve filed a bug for this issue, so I’m sure it will be resolved fast.
You say, “a number of problems”. What else have you got? We don’t know if we don’t get reports. We test the stuff, but with so many installers, things fall behind pretty easily. Once the installer is finished for all platforms, I’ll be free to manage these kinds of issues more effectively–a lot more testing, and a lot more aggressive version tracking–but right now testing the installer and core features are getting a lot of my time.
- Is there an API for writing an installation script?
Yes, but the best docs are currently the scripts themselves. It’s actually more of a set of conventions, than a traditional API–kind of a Ruby on Rails sort of feel. If you put things in the right place, name your functions correctly, and include the right information, things will work out nicely. Because the necessary actions are so well understood, the functions can make a lot of assumptions about the code being written, so a lot of code can be reduced away into the conventions. Because of that, examples will probably always be the best documentation even after I get a proper API doc written up. I did do a quick write-up in the developer forum, when the Script Installer was first added, to give a rough idea of what goes into an installer:
http://www.virtualmin.com/forums/message-view?message_id=3317
Feel free to ask questions. Me and Jamie have agreed that enabling third party developers to work faster and easier is one of the most important things we can do to make Virtualmin the best platform for virtual hosting.