looking for guidance to move partkeepr forward to Symfony 3.4 then 4 then 5

[Daniel Calcoen]

Dear community,

PHP development and Symfony framework is not my domain of expertise...but I have a brain, some experience, eager to learn and free time.

The only activity I saw in this direction is the branch of Eric Moon. And I know of his frustration feeling hopeless in front of the amount of changed required.

I'm not discouraged and I want to try, I found Partkeepr handy and I wish to continue using it for several years more.

I already forked the branch from Eric Moon and applied over it some of the patches in the pull request queue

https://github.com/ghost-from-the-past/partk_to_symfo3

This is where I'll do all the work, to not pollute Partkeepr (also I don't have write access there ... )

I installed PHP 7.3.27 because Symfony 3 say it requires at least PHP 7.2.5 and in the Ondřej Surý repository the version is 7.2.34 then is jumps to 7.3.27.

https://readthedocs.web.cern.ch/display/PARTK/Partkeepr+v2+-+php+7.3

I downloaded composer 1.10.21 because reputation-vip/composer-assets-installer 1.0.4 requires composer-plugin-api ~1.0

https://readthedocs.web.cern.ch/display/PARTK/install+composer

(I'll start to work this week in removing this dependency to go for Composer 2 as my first task)

then I'll experiment with

>composer install

advancing the Symfony to 3.x and modifying the composer.json until obtain the lowest set of versions for all dependencies having a success output from "composer install"

completing the "environment" requirements to fix the frame and start to work.

From here I'll need the support from experts to direct me on what to modify first.

Eric Moon mentioned that the entire backend is based on a very early implementation of platform-api (called dunglas-api in the Partkeepr code).  There is no direct upgrade path as it was essentially rewritten from the version in Partkeepr to the version needed for symfony 3.

I'm sorry, due to my ignorance I don't fully understand this implications. If somebody with the knowledge can explain that in more detail and even better giving a set of task in sequence to accomplish the modifications I'll be more than happy to follow the instructions. Like you tell me what to do and I do the donkey job.

(if the persons in the main development judge is better to do this in the Partkeepr space of github I propose to create a branch v1.4.0 with the actual state where the users could continue to stay safe and continue with a non operational master until we reach an operational state with Symfony 3.4)

As in any collaboration any help is welcomed and highly appreciated.

Regards

Daniel

[adlerweb]

Hello Daniel,

thanks for looking into this. I can't add much, as I havn't followed the latest experiments with newer Symfony versions, but briefly tried to get PK working with S3/S4 in the past. Last time I checked the main problem was, that a lot of PartKeeprs core functionality was build on Symfony modules no longer maintained or even working with a newer Symfony. Scrolling over the current list Sensio and dunglas/api-bundle come to mind, but I think there were some others. So I think rebuildung at least parts of the internal structure of PartKeepr to other modules or concepts will probally still be required.

Florian

[Daniel Calcoen]

Thanks Florian

I'll do a list of all the dependencies in a page like this

https://readthedocs.web.cern.ch/display/PARTK/PartKeepr+1.4+-+symphony+2.7

then we can identify the ones that should be replaced, marked put a little comment in the functionality (why it is used and for what) and extract and replace one by one.

As I mentioned I have time.

Regards

Daniel

[Daniel Calcoen]

Dear all

In the case anyone is interested this is just to say that I'm advancing (slowly) at the same time I'm learning.

My notes in the dependencies are in this page https://readthedocs.web.cern.ch/display/PARTK/dependencies+PK+2

I'm at the last commit of api-platform/code (the renamed dunglas/api-bundle)

https://packagist.org/packages/api-platform/core

I will start moving to api-platform/core v2 this weekend if I have time, if not the next weekend.

Regards

Daniel

[Daniel Calcoen]

Dear all

after a lot of small migrations I'm now at Symfony 3.4.10 with Dunglas migrated to Api_platform, several other migrations and PHP 7.4

the repo : https://github.com/ghost-from-the-past/partk_to_symfo3.git

composer runs without errors

/usr/bin/php7.4 /usr/bin/composer install
also without error

/usr/bin/php7.4 bin/console cache:clear --env=dev

/usr/bin/php7.4 bin/console cache:clear --env=prod

I get warning for the cache with

/usr/bin/php7.4 bin/console generate:extjs:entities

now I'm launching localhost/setup

And checking what I broke in the code

My knowledge is very limited and I advance slowly... any help from more skilled people is really welcomed.

Regards

Daniel

[Daniel Calcoen]

Dear all,

following the advice of dreamer I did fork of partkeepr and pass my work to a branch.

I deleted the repo partk_to_symfo3 and my work is now in my fork of Partkeepr

https://github.com/ghost-from-the-past/PartKeepr

branch towardsSym3

https://github.com/ghost-from-the-past/PartKeepr/tree/towardsSym3

I progressed up to the database card on the setup

Regards

Daniel

[Søren Thing Andersen]

Dear Daniel,

I just want to say "Thank you" for embarking on this quest. I really hope you succeed.

Best regards

Søren Thing,

Denmark

[ajoeiam]

On Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 7:50:48 AM UTC-5 daniel....@xxxxx.com wrote:

Dear community,

PHP development and Symfony framework is not my domain of expertise...but I have a brain, some experience, eager to learn and free time.

The only activity I saw in this direction is the branch of Eric Moon. And I know of his frustration feeling hopeless in front of the amount of changed required.

I'm not discouraged and I want to try, I found Partkeepr handy and I wish to continue using it for several years more.

Like you , Mr Daniel, I thought I might be able to help - - - except with 0 programming knowledge and no experience - - - well - - I thought I might look at some of the big picture stuff.

Went to Symfony  and bluntly asked.

(Question like: project sorta stalled at the point of using symphony 1.xx. Its a great project - - - what would be the recommendation from the Symfony dev group as to

the likely most effective way to update. (Idea has been Smyfony 1.xx to 2.xx to 3.xx to 4.xx to 5.xx to the now newest 6.xx.))

The response was quite blunt.

Redo the project.

I would think that would mean using the logic from partkeepr and re-writing the code from scratch.

To me - - - this makes sense - - - a one time re-write and maybe into something that might not need to be updated every 18 months due to the update frequency of the tools used and then Partkeepr is for long term use.

What say you all?

Me - - - - I would like to help where I can but that's not in the coding (docs/logic/testing is where I think I might be useful).

Over to you - - - can we revive a great project?

TIA

(for any responses including the take a hike kind but then I hope that that responder is ponying up some time and work)

[hartman...@gmail.com]

Suppose some developer(s) who have both web application programming and electronic design / EDA experience -- a combination which I imagine might be quite rare -- step forward to re-develop PartKeepr from scratch to become current with the newest Symfony... but if that version of Symfony becomes obsolete within a year or two requiring yet another rewrite, where will we be?

Software like PartKeepr needs long-term stability. If indeed a rewrite is needed, then I think the first step should be to research web application frameworks and select one which appears to provide the most long-term stability.

One more thing: I would love to see this project revived but unfortunately I am not able to help much here myself with coding. I would like to offer this food for thought though: for PartKeepr to succeed long-term, there needs to be an organized community of maintainers around it. A one-person project is not sustainable long-term, neither for the person nor for the community. Some funding wouldn't be a bad thing either. All of this needs some sort of organization. That is a non-trivial undertaking. Therefore, it perhaps makes more sense to look for an existing open source organization willing to take PartKeepr under its wing.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers,

Nathan

[Action Jack Recycles]

hello all

I hope everyone is well today. So to start off I am just an old TECH with a bunch of electronic components in unmarked drawers . I happened across partkeepr the other day and thought this would be exactly what i need. unfortunately after many hours I was unable to get partkeepr working.  Although I have experience in ladder logic programming like RS 500 and others I am totally lost when it comes to programming Linux . So i wouldn't be much help if any in repairing Partkeepr . I totally appreciate that it is free open source software but can see the time and effort it took to create Partkeepr in the first place and even more time and effort to revive. The point I am trying to make is I would be willing to pay a reasonable price to purchase a long term Partkeepr or even donate what I can. My hat is off to anyone trying to create a free software, Thank you!

I do have a question would it be possible to setup Partkeepr as a standalone database program that would compare offline data to online data . So if there was a temporary loss of internet service the database stored in the local computer would still be available? Would this also make future updates only involve updating the interface not the whole program ?

Paul