Re discussion with Myk, I suggest we start moving the hard-coded HTML code into templates. Myk suggests we use the Template Toolkit ( see http://www.template-toolkit.org/ ) and since he's used it already in bug 84338 and it appears to be stable and supported, why not? The purpose here is to make Bugzilla's install and customization much easier, and to allow for simpler upgrading, additionally. It does have high impact, of course, but it can be done in phases.

I think this was a part of Red Hat's changes, which are also currently in use over at bugzilla.gnome.org. We might want to consider taking code from what they use.

I use the following directory structure for the attachment/request trackers: templates/ global/ attachment/ request/ Here is what I propose for Bugzilla in general: template/ default/ global/ [one directory for each major component...] custom/ This second directory structure, along with the template search path "template/default:template/custom", allows installations to customize Bugzilla UI on a per-template basis without forking any code by placing files in the "custom" directory that override files with the same name in the "default" directory.

bugzilla.ximian.com uses a subset of the redhat.com modifications that provide templates for a few key pages (bug_form.pl, enter_bug.cgi, query.cgi, and soon buglist.cgi). When 2.14 gets released, we'll be porting those changes to that codebase. Would you guys be interested in those patches as a solution to this bug?

Myk, since you were working on this already for Bugzilla, your call on this one.

I'm very interested in seeing what RedHat has done. Is there any chance you can do a diff of your current setup (or perhaps attach the templates) so I can see how they did it?

A diff will not be simple to do; the changes are substantial and varied, and our setup is also quite a bit out of sync with CVS (hence my desire to wait until 2.14 is released, and do work based on that.) However, I can definitely attach some of the complete relevant files in the morning.

Louie, any progress on attaching those files? I'm particularly interested in buglist.cgi.

Although it is possible to write an entire web application using the toolkit's directive language, complex logic is still easier to read, write, and maintain when written in Perl, while the directive language works well for variable substitution, basic looping, and logical operations. When templatizing Bugzilla, developers should be careful to leave the bulk of application logic in Perl scripts that generate data structures that they pass to templates for parsing and display. The templates should contain only the minimal logic necessary to present the data. For more information about this approach, read the following paper on the Template Toolkit: http://www.template-toolkit.org/tpc4/paper.html

Moving over to the new "Bugzilla" product, "User Interface" component.

Comments in the IRC channel suggest considering Text::Template for this project. Here is more information about Text::Template: http://search.cpan.org/doc/MJD/Text-Template-1.31/Template.pm And here are some comments relevant to this consideration: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=39e49091.41bb%2425a%40news.op.net&output=gplain There are a number of differences between the feature sets and installation requirements of the two packages, but in my opinion the fundamental relevant difference is that Text::Template uses embedded Perl in templates while Template Toolkit uses its own simplified directive language. Both packages satisfy my fundamental goal in this project: to separate logic from presentation for easy customization of the Bugzilla UI to prevent forking and keep installations on the branch. Template Toolkit better satisfies a second goal of this project--to enable non-programmer UI designers to contribute to Bugzilla--because its simplified directive language is easier to understand and hack (or ignore) for those contributors.

and Template-Toolkit is also harder to install :-( However, if we can talk the TT guys into fixing the installation quirks (or help them with it even :) maybe it won't be an issue. One thing worth noting for the docs, is install will be much easier if you answer NO to all the optional stuff.

*** Bug 98638 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

So far there's been lots of grumbles about dependencies but no one has actually sent any messages to the list about it as far as I know.

One of the things suposedly fixed in version 2.04c (IIRC) is the CPAN dependancy reporting. From what I've gathered, this is a developers only release, so it didn't make it to CPAN's servers. I believe 2.05 is supposed to be due out in the next few days and that should be a "general" release. Perhaps it will make it easier :)

I have worked extensively with HTML::Template for the last couple years. In fact I can't think of a project I haven't worked on in the last 2 years that I didn't use HTML::Template in. One of the nice things about HTML::Template is the ability to create our own tags through the use of filters. I have never used Template-Toolkit, but I would definitely like to help in this effort, especially if you all decide to use HTML::Template.

Paul, Several folks working on Bugzilla have already made significant headway using Template Toolkit to templatize parts of the application. TT also has filters and just about every other feature I have come to expect from a template system, along with extensive documentation and an active developer community. http://www.template-toolkit.org/ I encourage you to take a look at TT and how it is used in Bugzilla (f.e. attachment.cgi) and participate in the effort to templatize the rest of the app.

This is now on the "we really want this for 2.16, but won't hold the release for it if it's not done by then" list.

Paul, FYI: I think part of the motivation for using Text::Template is the ability to move beyond HTML and use it to generate XML and RDF from the same data. To me this is one of the /big/ plusses behind moving towards templating.

Luis, Let's also make sure that we make the distinction that I pushed for use of Text::Template but it was decided upon Template-Toolkit which is very different. Does anyone know if Template-Toolkit can be used for other more general template processing for generating XML, etc. documents or is it very closely tied to HTML?

recent discussion on the template-toolkit mailing list seems to indicate you can use it for damn near anything.

Yes, Template Toolkit is very generalizable. I have patches that use it to generate RDF descriptions (bug 103778, bug 72837), JavaScript code (bug 72837), and SQL queries (bug 98801). I have also developed code that uses it to generate mail messages and am considering places where it could be used to generate Perl itself.

I've built RedHat RPMs of Template-Toolkit and AppConfig, get them from http://nogin.org/RPM/perl-Template.html and http://nogin.org/RPM/perl-AppConfig.html To be honest I haven't yet tested if they are any good, but at least it's a place to start.

BTW, Template toolkit is now available on CVS: Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 08:54:55 +0000 From: Andy Wardley <abw@kfs.org> To: templates@template-toolkit.org Subject: [Templates] CVS access to TT2 code base After something of a struggle, the TT2 code base is now available under CVS from tt2.org. cvs -d :pserver:cvs@tt2.org:/template-toolkit login password: 'cvs'. To fetch the TT2 source: $ cvs -z3 -d :pserver:cvs@tt2.org:/template-toolkit co Template2 (or set CVSROOT=:pserver:cvs@tt2.org:/template-toolkit) This is now (tentatively) live and includes Aleksey's patch. Template3 source will be going up in the next few days.

I've been convinced that this should be an all-or-nothing process as far as affecting a released version, since things discovered during parts of the process might cause things in other places to have to be altered, and the less we screw with it after a release the better.

Dave, could you elaborate? Is there a specific problem you think will occur if we release a version of Bugzilla that contains a combination of templatized and non-templatized scripts?

While building a Debian package for Template-Toolkit-2.06, the build kept dying when running ./bin/gifsplash or ./bin/ttree from the Makefile. I tracked this down to the fact that neither of these programs could find the Template Toolkit modules that were just built into ./blib/arch and ./blib/lib. This patch fixes Makefile.PL to include those paths when running those programs during build. I believe this affected only those users who didn't already have a (recent) version of the Template Toolkit module installed. This patch will aid those building packages (RPM, deb, etc.) or building and installing the module manually. The patch will also clean up some temporary files that are created by the build process, but which are not removed during a 'make clean'.

Myk: I'm two months late with the answer to your question (I'm still digging through bugmail, I finally got smart and wrote a filter to look for bugmail that mentioned my name in the comments :) I'm not so sure what I meant anymore, but I'm mostly happy with how it's turning out, provided we can get the damn patches checked in. :-) I think I was concerned with templates having a common naming scheme, using similar techniques to pull variables in, etc.

ddk: Did I correctly see that your patch to the Makefile.PL was checked into the tree for Template-Toolkit? So 2.07 should include it... But 2.07 isn't out yet. How do we need to deal with this? Should we just toss this patch in contrib, and mention it in the docs, since 2.07 isn't out yet? Should we change Bugzilla to require 2.07 once it's out so the patch won't be needed anymore?

Not exactly this patch, but something similar was checke into cvs in December. The latest development release, 2.06d should have this in...

The dependencies here are out of date. Instead of trying to update them, just query for 2.16 blocker bugs with "Templat" in the title :-) Gerv

This isn't really a blocker for 2.16, and the two open bugs it depends on are targeted at 2.18 and untargeted, respectively. Reducing severity and pushing it out.

Comment on attachment 64514 [details] [diff] [review] Fix Makefile.PL of Template-Toolkit-2.06 This patch got rolled ito the TT source at some point

*** Bug 49225 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

The User Interface component now belongs to Gerv. Reassigning all UNCONFIRMED and NEW (but not ASSIGNED) bugs currently owned by Myk (the previous component owner) to Gerv.

Reassigning back to Myk. That stuff about Gerv taking over the User Interface component turned out to be short-lived. Please pardon our confusion, and I'm very sorry about the spam.

This bug's dependencies are not going to get fixed for 2.18, so neither is this. Gerv

*** Bug 238363 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This bug has not been touched by its owner in over six months, even though it is targeted to 2.20, for which the freeze is 10 days away. Unsetting the target milestone, on the assumption that nobody is actually working on it or has any plans to soon. If you are the owner, and you plan to work on the bug, please give it a real target milestone. If you are the owner, and you do *not* plan to work on it, please reassign it to nobody@bugzilla.org or a .bugs component owner. If you are *anybody*, and you get this comment, and *you* plan to work on the bug, please reassign it to yourself if you have the ability.

All pages has been templatized.