[Mapbender-dev] Report from the Mapbender Code Sprint at FOSSGIS 2010

[Astrid Emde]

HEllo Mapbender Community,

The fourth day of the FOSSGIS 2010 conference in Osnabrück, Germany
(Friday 5th of March) saw a day of Mapbender hacking. A dozen developers
and power users flocked around Mapbender to discuss general issues and
hack a bit. The agenda (link) listed several points we wanted to address
explicitly.

One important question was the next release. The last year has seen
massive refactoring and a lot of new functionality and finally Mapbender
ships with an install script. But a lot of old modules, especially quick &
dirty hacks broke during the refactoring. The more generically focused
developers favor a clear cut and to remove old stuff. The more
user-implementation focused developers favor a slower approach and keeping
the broad set of functionality, even if it means to carry along old stuff.
Many Mapbender installations are long lived and typically host metadata
for hundreds and thousands of services and users who need the web mapping
platform in every day work. This puts a lot of responsibility on the
development group to create stable software and smooth upgrade paths.
Therefore it was decided to release a bug fixed version 2.6.1 next week.

One important goal of latest development has been the leverage of jQuery
and jQuery UI to pimp the Mapbender front end. Adopting jQuery and being
able to include tons of PlugIns make Mapbender look and feel a lot more
up-to-date and addresses the user's desire for sleeker user interfaces.
Another very important improvement that came out of the refactoring
efforts is much cleaner code which will make it a lot easier for new
developers to get into Mapbender.

Therfore it was decided to step up a full version number in summer with
new features and most importantly a clean and well documented API. A full
version step also justifies that some older installations will brake at
some points. This is an invigorating decision as it will allow us to be
cleaner and meaner with old stuff. The new Mapbender API will make
developing much easier and more fun in.

The first release candidate 3.0 will come out after the Bolsena hack
sprint. It will include a thorough integration of OpenLayers, a completely
refactored user interface and potentially even a connection to a metadata
bucket with thousands of OGC services to choose from. But that is another
story.

Have fun.

Read more about the Sprint at:
* http://www.mapbender.org/2010-03-05_Mapbender_Development_Sprint
* Blog: http://www.osgeo.org/node/1009