Kramer Pond Hackfest 2007
The objective was to have an intense few days of work, focusing primarily around the development of an architecture for the Monk interface. The vision was to be somewhat isolated, removed from most family and friends, ideally with water close-by, and finally, with internet connectivity. Given that we were looking only a couple of weeks ahead during peak season, we were very fortunate to find Kramer Pond Lodge, a rustic venue that provided an excellent backdrop for our work.
The following people participated in the Hackfest:
- Matt Bouchard
- James Chartrand
- Amit Kumar
- Andrew MacDonald
- Piotr Michura
- Matt Patey
- Mike Plouffe
- Milena Radzikowska
- Steve Ramsay
- Johnny Rodgers
- Stan Ruecker
- Stéfan Sinclair
- Maryanne Wynne
We were regaled by Maryanne's gourmet cooking and made full use of the facilities, including the hot tubs, fire pits, and (swimmable) pond.
About half of the group arrived Sunday and began work planning and designing for the days to follow. Some work was also required to configure a local server to host proxy calls and other services that we needed (to minimise trips to the satellite internet connection).
Monday we had a general meeting and agreed on some general goals and principles for the hackfest, including striving towards a Workbench architecture, with a view of integrating the Nora and Featurelens applications (as an intermediate step before re-implementing them as individual native workbench components).
We sub-divided into several groups, some of which practiced extreme pair programming, which by all accounts was a worthwhile experience.
- Monk Proxy (Amit, Steve, Stan)
- Monk Work Flow Designs (Milena, Piotr)
- Workbench UI Effects (Johnny Rodgers, Matt Bouchard)
- RAP Server\-Side Workbench Architecture (Andrew MacDonald, James Chartrand, Matt Patey)
- MonkBench Client-Side Workbench Architecture (Stéfan Sinclair)
- Monk Event Logging Stack (Mike Plouffe)
Significant progress was made by all groups. Here are some of the highlights:
- we now have a fairly complete set of Proxy calls that should support a wide range of interface components
- we have a new work flow design that is partly inspired by the Flickr organizer and should be flexible enough for our purposes
- we have some neat prototypes of UI effects using the Moo JS library
- we have a mechanism for logging events that includes server-side and client-side modules
- we have early examples of RAP components that use the Eclipse extension architecture
- we have an early example of a vert light-weight client-side architecture where typed events are sent to all registered components
- we are still uncertain if a client-side or server-side architecture would be better for the workbench - we'll revisit the question in 3 weeks
- we have a tentative schedule for the next few weeks with specific time commitments from most of the hackfest participants
Here are some pictures that have been posted:
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnnyrodgers/sets/72157601511998901/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/11680606@N04/sets/72157601528551449/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/monkeyswithtails/sets/72157601514550031/
