State of VStar (Sep 19 2009)

This and future updates will give an overview of the state of VStar development.It's hard to believe I was talking about VStar in Chicago more than a month ago!I spent most of the first week after returning to Australia resisting the urge to fall asleep at midday. :) In fact, I didn't do much for the first couple of weeks after getting back except sleep and work at my day job.Since then I've been doing the following:o Adding to and working on entries in the SourceForge bug and feature list: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=browse&group_id=263306&atid=1152052o Reading CitizenSky postings.o Watching the VStar Team grow and corresponding with you.o Improving the codebase.Here's a summary of what some on the team have been up to:Nico is wowing us with his beautiful About Box images, making it difficult to choose. :)Mike is adding to bug reports, continuing to test after a post-CitizenSky break, sanity checking my ideas (as a domain expert), and being an advocate for VStar. I look forward to seeing him replacing my simple VStar help page with something more substantial.Adam has grabbed the SourceForge bug list with both hands, updated some tickets (tracker items), added new tickets, and submitted code patches, many of which have made it into the codebase.Sara and Elizabeth have been and continue to be wonderful AAVSO liasons and idea-sanity-checkers. They help me to understand why the database is the way it is, and act as variable star domain experts. Sara has recently moved the previously limited-access specs, requirements, and pre-CitizenSky development notes to the SourceForge project wiki I just set up: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/vstar/index.php?title=Main_PageSara is also adding to bug and feature tracker entries and I believe Elizabeth will soon too.Sergei, a fellow Adelaidean, has been walking through VStar code and design with me (usually over coffee). Apart from getting him up to speed with VStar, this has lead to a couple of bugs being found and fixed. When time permits, Sergei plans to write unit tests and possibly tackle some SourceForge tracker items.I'd like to thank Arne and Aaron for giving me the chance to get VStar started and to Rebecca for inviting me to talk about and demonstrate VStar last month.At the talk, Arne asked me when I thought the current phase would finish. I suggested a rough figure of a few weeks, but promised him a better estimate when I got home. I've just updated the Gannt chart to show what major features are left in the current phase of VStar and their likely duration. View the PDF here:http://vstar.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/vstar/trunk/doc/plan/VStarPlan.pdfTasks shown in light blue are completed, even though of course there may be bug tracker entries for some of them.Tasks shown in orange are essentially tasks that still need to be commenced.Dark blue tasks are partially completed.Dates and durations for new or partly completed tasks are a approximate.There is a correspondence between the requirements shown on this page: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/vstar/index.php?title=Phase_I_VSt... the tasks.Once all of this work is complete, that will mark the end of phase I.If you are interested in working on any of these tasks or bug and feature tracker items, please let me know.The best way to keep up to date with what's happening with VStar, and with howit's progressing is to:o Go to the VStar SourceForge site to see the daily activity: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vstar/o Look at the Bug and Feature Tracker: see link above.o Better still, install Subversion (http://www.tigris.org) and check out the "trunk" of VStar: svn co https://vstar.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vstar/trunk vstarperiodically updating (with "svn update") to get the latest.If there SourceForge or other areas you think you should have access to but don't, please let me know.Also, see my blog entry about VStar and CitizenSky at http://dbenn.wordpress.com if you didn't already.Questions and comments welcome!