[Grok-dev] mass ping - grokui.admin

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey,

Souheil CHELFOUH wrote:
[snip]
> During the Cologne sprint, we decided to temporarly part from the
> introspector, to focus on the simple CRUD application admin.
> Where do we stand now, about this ?

I think it's good to continue in this direction.

> I think i'm part of the advanced users of Grok and I never had a
> single need of the intropsector.
> it looks cool and it's pretty, but is it useful ? Do we want it out of the box ?

> if we do, what should we do about it ? What should I base the
> forthcoming introspector on ?

I think we should temporary forget about the introspector in Grok 1.1. 
We can bring it back sometime.

> if we don't, I need to clean a bit the code base, and we have a nice
> grokui base (including grokui.base and grokui.admin).

That sounds good.

> The current admin (0.3.2) is simply not good enough, as it pulls out
> all the packages we wanted to get rid of with the zope.app move.
> I think we need to focus a bit on that package, as it's the very first
> glimpse people get of Grok, when they try it out.

Agreed.

> I'd like us, community people, to think about a schedule and a move
> for this package.
> I don't mind coding it, but, honestly, right now, I feel a bit lost as
> I don't really have a goal.

I think we should have a core grokui.admin package that just allows 
someone to install applications, and do some basic things like a restart 
perhaps.

As an aside (for post Grok 1.1): we could also consider another "mode" 
that seems to be popular with other application frameworks, where we 
simply let the instance and the app be the same. When you start the 
instance, you got yourself an app. I was resistant against this in the 
past, and I still it's valuable to be able to install multiple apps into 
a single instance, but we should at least consider how this might work 
(can the app be persistent, what happens if you change the persistent 
app, etc).

> Thank you for reading my whining
> I hope I'll get LOADS of feedback on that
> At least one, to give me a hint on what's expected :)

I expect:

* a grokui.base package which gives the grokui user interface in some 
pluggable manner.

* a grokui.admin (perhaps?) that allows the user to install and 
uninstall apps and a few other things. Should have relatively small
dependencies.

* in the future: a reborn grokui.introspector. We'll see who wants to 
work on this.

* also in the future: a grokui.config. This would provide a user 
interface to manage configuration that's persistent (per application). 
This includes things like the catalog, user management, but also 
app-specific settings. I think many applications would be fine if we had 
a default UI for such features.

UI-wise I'm also slowly exploring another direction entirely as well, a 
javascript-based client that allows CRUD of data (ZODB or relational), 
building on Grok's model-driven nature and restful webservice platform. 
I think that can be a separate development independent from grokui, however.

Does this help with direction?

Regards,

Martijn