Add a forum app to OCP?

[bhaugen]

The purpose of adding a forum to OCP is for increased transparency in areas like the CVN group candidacy process, so that comments and information can be more democratically accessed and acted upon. On the priority of this task (from enric, telegram): "this in case we want it, should be after for the organization process. which is not so urgent"

See https://djangopackages.org/grids/g/forums/ Here are demos of the first three apps:

• http://askbot.org/en/questions/
• http://misago-project.org/
• http://community.spirit-project.com/

[Edit: the Spirit demo is not really a demo of the forum, just a splash page advertising the features.] [Another edit: added the actual demo for Spirit.]

I'm looking at those from a technical viewpoint and will post findings as comments on this issue. If other people can add comments on features, usability, etc, that would be useful.

[bhaugen]

Excerpt from Telegram chat:

[7:46:31 AM] Enric: Askbot seems more active community and the graphic quite betterm but being a QA im not sure if is flexible enough for needs of multiple projects [7:55:45 AM] Bob Haugen: What else do you think is needed? [7:56:32 AM] Enric: like to pot all opinions at same level, and not just a question with answers... and the PM could be something that if we merge in the forum then we dont need to build that by their own i meent the private messaging [7:58:39 AM] Bob Haugen: http://spirit-project.com/ says they offer private messages [8:07:00 AM] Enric: spirit seems not have very active development

[edit: added here, not in telegram] Djangopackages says Misago also offers private messages.

[bhaugen]

Technical issues with the first three forum apps:

Integrating forum with OCP:

http://misago-project.org/thread/integration-options-with-other-django-projects-489/

The biggest problem with making Misago 0.5 work with other things is that its not build around django.contrib.auth. Back when project was started there was no good way to change user model used by Django's auth, and it lacked hooks required for easy extension, so I've decided to roll out my own auth. Your best bet would be forking 0.5 and doing necessary changes in auth yourself.

Here's Askbot on the same issue: http://askbot.org/doc/askbot-as-reusable-django-application.html

Spirit seems made to be installed in other projects, but their documentation is limited.

Documentation

Askbot and Misago are pretty good, Spirit is lacking.

Team

Askbot has 2 regular contributors, Misago and Spirit have 1.

Requirements

• Askbot:
  • Coffin>=0.3,<=0.3.8
  • Jinja2==2.8
  • Lamson<=1.3.4
  • akismet<=0.2.0
  • beautifulsoup4<=4.4.1
  • django-avatar==2.2.1
  • django-celery>=3.0.11,<=3.1.17
  • django-compressor>=1.3,<=1.5
  • celery==3.1.18
  • django-countries==3.3
  • django-followit==0.2.1
  • django-keyedcache<=1.5.1
  • django-kombu==0.9.4
  • django-picklefield==0.3.0
  • django-recaptcha>=1.0.3,<=1.0.5
  • django-robots==1.1
  • django-threaded-multihost<=1.4-1
  • django-tinymce==1.5.3
  • django-transaction-signals==1.0.0
  • django>=1.8,<1.9
  • which means if OCP goes to Django 1.9, Askbot may hold us back
  • html5lib==0.9999999
  • jsonfield<=1.0.3
  • markdown2<=2.3.1
  • mock==1.0.1
  • oauth2<=1.9.0.post1
  • pyjwt<=1.4.0
  • pystache==0.3.1
  • python-cas==1.1.0
  • python-openid<=2.2.5
  • pytz<=2016.4
  • requirements-parser==0.1.0
  • regex
  • sanction==0.3.1
  • simplejson<=3.8.2
  • unidecode<=0.4.19
• Misago:
  • Node.js runtime with LESS
  • 60 megabytes of RAM for Misago process
  • from requirements.txt:
  • django~=1.9.6
    • (which is one more Django version than OCP as of now)
  • djangorestframework==3.3.3
  • beautifulsoup4==4.4.1
  • bleach==1.4.3
  • django-debug-toolbar==1.4
  • django-crispy-forms==1.6.0
  • django-htmlmin==0.9.1
  • django-mptt==0.8.4
  • fake-factory~=0.5.7
  • html5lib<0.99999999,>=0.999
  • markdown==2.6.6
  • path.py==8.2.1
  • pillow==3.2.0 psycopg2==2.6.1 pytz requests<3 unidecode
• Spirit
  • Django>=1.8,<1.9
  • which means if OCP goes to Django 1.9, Spirit may hold us back
  • django-haystack==2.4.1
  • whoosh==2.7.0
  • mistune==0.7.1
  • Pillow==3.1.0
  • django-infinite-scroll-pagination>=0.1.3,<0.2
  • django-djconfig>=0.4.0,<0.5
  • unicode-slugify==0.1.3
  • pytz

Tentative conclusion about requirements:

Askbot and Misago seem to have heavier requirements than Spirit.

[XaviP]

Yesterday I was reading about these forum apps for django. It seemed to me that spirit was the easier to integrate in a django project, with less requirements and lighter, but it's lack of documentation and mainteniance. So, no easy solution, but I was thinking about install it as an integrated app in ocp (not pip, as a fork) and adapt it, and include it in the ocp repo, to take the mainteniance by ourselves. I don't know if it's the best solution.

[bhaugen]

Spirit seems to be mostly a one-programmer project, so I think if we want to work on it we should at least try to engage with nitely.

[bhaugen]

See also http://community.spirit-project.com/topic/73/sites-using-spirit/ and http://community.spirit-project.com/topic/334/single-sign-on/

[XaviP]

Here's a howto integrate spirit into an existing project: http://community.spirit-project.com/topic/318/tutorial-for-not-advanced-django-users/ I leave it here for reference if we decide to use it and for when it's feature of priority.