[geeklog-devel] GSoC 2010 is on

[Joe Mucchiello]

At 05:55 PM 2/16/2010, Vincent Furia wrote:
>Also, why is it the case:
>But the basic call to COM_getPermSQL must support users' groups or a 
>social plugin is a non-starter.
>
>With a plugin model, other plugins can be enhanced to check core 
>geeklog group permissions as well "user groups".

Why duplicate the group structures? Why duplicate the code in 
COM_getPermSQL in a plugin? There already exists the 6 permissions 
fields found on most tables. Why not take advantage of the existing 
infrastructure? Why not take advantage of the existing and well known 
best practices? If the socnet plugin has to implement its own group 
handling code and its own permissions code why bother putting it on 
top of Geeklog? What is Geeklog providing besides login services at 
that point? The whole point of building social networking on Geeklog 
to be able to take advantage of stuff Geeklog already provides.

>If user groups aren't supported, plugins can gracefully degrade to 
>only supporting COM_getPermSQL.

Or there can just be one well-known, well-supported API that does it 
all for you and you don't to check first to see if this is a socnet 
enhanced object or not. The existing code just works. No need to 
gracefully degrade. The grace is built in.

The code change I'm describing only involves tightening the existing 
code to make sure it makes "2" groups invisible on the admin side. No 
other changes are needed to support this idea. The alternative 
involves the socnet author writing a complete group system and 
permission system from scratch, basically duplicating a bunch of code 
that's been in production for around 10 years. You really think that 
makes more sense than enhancing the existing code in a few places?

I would offer to write the patch but I don't have a good track record 
with getting my patches accepted into core.

----
Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com 



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