[Discuss] phpBB 3.1 Ascraeus is upon us

[Phillip]

Awesome work, you guys. Nice to see the upcoming stuff and features for phpBB 3.1

[DionDesigns]

o answer the question literally - 100% of mods' functionality *can* be implemented with extension.

I call bullshit on this. Every current bridge between phpBB 3.0 and WordPress/Joomla (maybe Drupal too, but who cares about Drupal these days) is impossible to port to 3.1 without core edits. Why? Several reasons, but most importantly, there are conflicts between function names. Bridges must change some function names in phpBB in order to load phpBB and WordPress simultaneously. That's impossible with a plugin/extension.

Every person currently using a bridge between phpBB and WordPress/Joomla will be forced to choose between a bridged site and phpBB 3.1. I suspect that in almost every case, phpBB 3.1 will not be what is chosen.

I made the decision to do phpBB 3.1 core edits in my BridgeDD PRO WordPress plugin because I wanted to provide a WP↔phpBB bridge to people who choose to migrate to 3.1. (IMO 3.1 isn't an upgrade to 3.0, at least in its current form, hence my use of the term "migrate".)

This issue isn't limited to bridges. Much of the code in phpBB 3.1 is still essentially the 3.0 code base, which was not written with plugins/extensions in mind. Until that code gets an overhaul and contains sufficient numbers of lightweight hooks (they are almost non-existent today), core edits will be required to port the functionality of many of the popular 3.0 MODs.

[MichaelC]

o answer the question literally - 100% of mods' functionality *can* be implemented with extension.

I call bullshit on this. Every current bridge between phpBB 3.0 and WordPress/Joomla (maybe Drupal too, but who cares about Drupal these days) is impossible to port to 3.1 without core edits. Why? Several reasons, but most importantly, there are conflicts between function names. Bridges must change some function names in phpBB in order to load phpBB and WordPress simultaneously. That's impossible with a plugin/extension.

Every person currently using a bridge between phpBB and WordPress/Joomla will be forced to choose between a bridged site and phpBB 3.1. I suspect that in almost every case, phpBB 3.1 will not be what is chosen.

I made the decision to do phpBB 3.1 core edits in my BridgeDD PRO WordPress plugin because I wanted to provide a WP↔phpBB bridge to people who choose to migrate to 3.1. (IMO 3.1 isn't an upgrade to 3.0, at least in its current form, hence my use of the term "migrate".)

This issue isn't limited to bridges. Much of the code in phpBB 3.1 is still essentially the 3.0 code base, which was not written with plugins/extensions in mind. Until that code gets an overhaul and contains sufficient numbers of lightweight hooks (they are almost non-existent today), core edits will be required to port the functionality of many of the popular 3.0 MODs.

That post was not made for a team member so please don't take it as the official word.

Some very select edge cases cannot be done with extensions however I would be interested in seeing what you mean by 'many of the popular 3.0 mods' as almost all the most downloaded 3.0 mods have already been ported to extensions. The code base has had many events added and we will continue to add them in the 3.1.x branch as they are required by extensions.

Bridges are a separate category from MODs/Extensions although all new code in phpBB 3.1 uses namespaced classes and most functions are now prefixed with `phpbb_`. Also, every file in phpBB has been touched by 3.1 and most code has been massively overhauled. Whilst some code remains the same yes, that does not mean that it cannot be 'hooked' into with the event dispatcher.

If you have specific examples of things that cannot be done in 3.1 extensions without core edits we'd be glad to hear of them on Area51 so we can rectify that.

[PayBas]

For someone who creates bridges (which I too use from time to time, so props for the work), and thus has a vested interest in getting all the hooks/events in place before release, I don't see much in the way of contributions... or even request for comments on this subject. Either from you or others.

Seems like a missed opportunity to make your own life easier .

[arod-1]

o answer the question literally - 100% of mods' functionality *can* be implemented with extension.

I call bullshit on this. Every current bridge between phpBB 3.0 and WordPress/Joomla (maybe Drupal too, but who cares about Drupal these days) is impossible to port to 3.1 without core edits. Why? Several reasons, but most importantly, there are conflicts between function names. Bridges must change some function names in phpBB in order to load phpBB and WordPress simultaneously. That's impossible with a plugin/extension.

2 things:
1) i think you confuse between "i did not find a way to do something" and "doing something is impossible". i am not intimately familiar with the problem, and my php-fu is not the greatest in the world, but i will be very surprised if this indeed represent a problem that cannot be solved. it is, of course, possible, but you should not confuse between "i failed to solve a problem" and "the problem cannot be solved".
i will re-quote Jeffrey Case: "almost anything is possible. You can even teach a goldfish to play the piano, if you use enough voltage.''. most probably, the problem you deemed impossible-to-solve just indicates you did not apply enough voltage.

2) can you supply a list of function and classes with conflicting names between phpbb and any 3rd party library (drupal, jumla, wordpress, any other package you want to build a bridge for) ? such a list will be very helpful to the developers - it sounds like a very reasonable request/demand/bug report asking to rename those functions into phpbb-specific namespace.

peace.

[BondGamer]

So can you create a login bridge extension or not?

[PayBas]

This is getting off-topic. Please move the discussion about specific extensions either to the Extensions Development forum, or make a RFC topic on Area51 in which you specify what kind of changes you want/need in the core.

[Marshalrusty]

Honestly, the announcement of the new version of phpBB made ​​me very happy ... but at the moment given the lack of compatible mods, all the difficulties to perform the update, I think sincerely stay a year or two under phpbb 3.0.12 ...

For IT, it will be easy to update their respective forum ... but you probably forget the thousands or millions of forums created by users with no knowledge in php and computer.

We definitely do not forget. The fact is, you can happily keep using phpBB 3.0.x if you like. There will still be a 3.0.13 release at some point, and security fixes (if necessary) will be provided well past that.

You may simply find, at some point, that the features offered in 3.1 or 3.2 are compelling enough to warrant the effort for an upgrade. The choice for when is entirely up to you.

[Danielx64]

So can you create a login bridge extension or not?

Well when I went to make one, no. And part of what was due to symfony.

If you go and look up using symfony with WordPress, you will see that people have issues doing just that.

2) can you supply a list of function and classes with conflicting names between phpbb and any 3rd party library (drupal, jumla, wordpress, any other package you want to build a bridge for) ? such a list will be very helpful to the developers - it sounds like a very reasonable request/demand/bug report asking to rename those functions into phpbb-specific namespace.

peace.

Well what would you do if there was a problem with naming due to symfony or twig? Good luck in renaming the functions there.

[Marshalrusty]

I guess the obvious question is: why didn't you file a bug report about that? Or start an RFC topic?

The point is that 3.1 is designed so this kind of stuff should work. So if it doesn't, then it should be totally possible to make a few changes to make it work.

[DionDesigns]

For someone who creates bridges (which I too use from time to time, so props for the work), and thus has a vested interest in getting all the hooks/events in place before release, I don't see much in the way of contributions... or even request for comments on this subject. Either from you or others.

Seems like a missed opportunity to make your own life easier .

http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic ... 76#p213276

That was written by the author of WP-United, more than four years ago, and it does a fairly good job of describing the problem in 3.0 (and now in 3.1) with bridges. I could say a lot more, but I don't want to follow your descent into snarkiness.

The code base has had many events added and we will continue to add them in the 3.1.x branch as they are required by extensions.

First, thank you for fixing the JS bug in the countdown timer.

I probably wasn't very clear. The issue here is that the 3.0 code used in 3.1 (and there is a lot of it) wasn't written in a way to properly support plugins/extensions. I have no doubt that will be addressed in 3.2, but right now, it is an issue with adding hooks/events.

This would also be a good time to be proactive and not reactive about hooks/events. There are many obvious places where they should exist, even in the 3.0-based code. Here's two examples. First, filtering most database query strings, and second, creating an array to generate what will be assigned to a template, and then filtering the array before calling $template->assign_(block_)vars. They have been done sparingly in 3.1; they should be done globally in 3.2.

i will re-quote Jeffrey Case:

Way too easy, and not worth my time.

[Danielx64]

I guess the obvious question is: why didn't you file a bug report about that? Or start an RFC topic?

The point is that 3.1 is designed so this kind of stuff should work. So if it doesn't, then it should be totally possible to make a few changes to make it work.

Not to be a smart ass but Dion's post above shows that issues were posted on area 51 yet none of the devs give a cent about it.

[Marshalrusty]

Five developers replied, so I wouldn't say "none of the devs give a cent about it". The issue is that it's one post made so long ago that phpBB 4.x is mentioned (which was later scrapped in favor of a more iterative approach). There are 42 pages in that forum, and this is on page 36. It would have been nice for someone to bring it up again, or at least bump the topic with a "this is still an issue". Remember, we're only human. If something is important, the community needs to bring it up.

[noth]

and how many Admins on here want to build a bridge extension anyway? 2%? never even heard of it so I think I'll sleep soundly tonight

[Marshalrusty]

and how many Admins on here want to build a bridge extension anyway? 2%? never even heard of it so I think I'll sleep soundly tonight

Well, I think the more interesting question is how many admins would use it if one were available. I imagine the number is not insignificant.

In any case, we'll fix this, but it would be great for those involved to tell us exactly what is needed.