430085 - l10n dashboard

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 606204

(mozilla.org Graveyard :: Webdev, task)

Description

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Currently, the l10n dashboard on http://l10n.mozilla.org/dashboard/ is a bunch of static html files, while the webdashboard on http://l10n.mozilla.org/webdashboard/ is php code.

In the not too distant future, I'd like to use some templating engine for the dashboard, sadly, I don't speak php at all. Using python makes sense, as some of that data is coming from buildbot, so in the model space, there's a chance for code reuse between the code generating the data and the code using it.

Pascal, who writes the webdashboard, doesn't speak python.

Gandalf speaks both, and has been hacking on django stuff, I had some rudimentary pylons going on. I've started to use sqlalchemy for a bit of my buildbot stuff, and used mako templates there. Nothing there that could be moved over to django, though, I'd say.

Loooong story, I don't want to hack on this alone, and if I ever want to deploy the dashboard, I guess I shouldn't. So in order to make that happen, what's the right foundation to work on?

php? Can't contribute myself
python? If so, pylons, django, something else?
Or plain C? (Just to add something a definite "no".)

Comment 1

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

I'd go for python for the sake of maintainability.
I really don't care what cmf you want. django, pylons, or something else.

I'd avoid tasm and cobol.

Comment 2

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

if it's python, I won't have the skills in the short term to help on that, so that would be on your shoulders and gandalf's to code it. Learning Python is part of my wish list for the next two years, no problem about the lanuage, I just don't have time for that now (and learning Italian is actually way higher on my list ;) ).

Regarding maintainability, I know that Gandalf is religious about Python, my POV is that there are millions of PHP/ASP/JAVA/PYTHON... web apps maintained in the world, the only real maintainability problem is to have somebody do the job, not the language. Given that it is a web app, you should ask the Web team what they think of it, because we may well need their help in the future and they may also have their own preferences regarding code/CMS/infrastructure.

Comment 3

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Yeah, I knew I'd be totally cryptic.

Webdev, getting your comments is actually 90% of this bug.

Comment 4

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> if it's python, I won't have the skills in the short term to help on that, so
> that would be on your shoulders and gandalf's to code it. Learning Python is
> part of my wish list for the next two years, no problem about the lanuage, I
> just don't have time for that now (and learning Italian is actually way higher
> on my list ;) ).

C'mon, you're doing this cause you know Italian is easier ;)

> Regarding maintainability, I know that Gandalf is religious about Python

False. I'm religious about Java and SmallTalk. Every other language is just a dust on the shoulders of those giants.

Actually, over 4 years I've spent working on big CMS/CMF systems in PHP. I know PHP much better than Python.

>, my POV is that there are millions of PHP/ASP/JAVA/PYTHON... web apps maintained in the world, the only real maintainability problem is to have somebody do the job, not the language.

False.
I don't think it's a proper place for religious wars, but just for the sake of this conversation in the topic of "maintainability". Keep your position of "I don't know Python" and look at:
1) http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/django/
2) http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/drupal/
3) http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/

and please, confront the coding patterns.
I do agree one can write clean php code and scale it and maintain it for several years. It just usually doesn't happen because PHP has not been planned with this in mind.

Bottom line is that I can code in any of those except ASP. I do thing that python is the best investment extended OO model, but I'll help no matter of the choice, so I'll just try help with whatever you'll do. All in all I did some hacking on MediaWiki which included getting to understand the process flow, nothing can scary me now.

Comment 5

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Webdev is primarily a PHP shop, but we don't mind Python.  No big preference there for this project.

If you do choose Python, we'd recommend against sqlalchemy - morgamic has more info on that but from what I hear it's hard to use.  Polvi has used django in the past and seemed happy with it.  I haven't used it enough to comment.