Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] Email rant (was Weekly Rant ... mini version tonight)

[Chris Weiss]

Well, i could blow hot air all afternoon on the subject, but I'd to hear what
the "core team" thinks about this.  The current email app is bad: it doesn't 
work
all that well, it's slow, and it does not provide a polished image of any sort.

Here's the conflict though:
-It has been phpGW's policy that no feature additions or replacements be 
commited
to the stable tree.  Only bug fixes, and only the fixes that can be fixed 
without
rewritting the whole damned thing.
-It's been Angles policy to do whatever it takes to have a stable and well
performing email app for a "stable" production environment, even if it means
rewritting the whole damned thing.

What this boils down to is that Angles "new" code must go into head, and no one 
can
take advantage of it for months.  This means people either have partialy broken
email in "stable", or have to be stuck with a feature lame email app.

I really don't get what the big deal is as long the changes do not affect the 
core
phpgwapi.  See the problem is that you cannot just co HEAD anytime you want and
expect to even be able to install it, more or less take advantage of the new
features.  Growing apps need to be able to have a different release cycle than 
the
API.  Email will be a growing app for a long time, and since actually developing
for HEAD isn't possible most of the time, developers need to have something to
develop against, and that should be the stable API.  Once the HEAD api becomes
stable again, then the apps can have the needed changes made to move to it and 
do a
new full phpgw suite release.