Development

The Consortium will attempt to deal with any major issues, but will not not fund any development. It will be up to individual developers, working either for free or funded by a third party (eg. The Steering Group) to undertake any development work and systems testing. John van Breda is the lead developer and will ensure that changes and coding meets the required standard and he will also need to be satisfied that the changes have been adequately tested.  The final checking, compilation of the code and the work to incorporate any change into an R6 build will be undertaken by the Consortium, where it may be subject to additional testing. Developers will need to fund this work and are advised to obtain  agreement from the Consortium (contact Mike Weideli) before starting a project. They should provide an outline of what they are proposing and the time scales. Providing the Consortium approves the change the developer will be advised of the Consortium costs involved. The Consortium will make sure that no two developers are working on the same area of code. Code must not be added the Develop Branch in the repository without Consortium approval. The Recorder 6 source code is open source, so developers may make their own changes and submit them for consideration, however, it is strongly recommended that the Consortium is consulted first.

Developers should be aware that many changes to Recorder 6 will also require changes to the database. This may involve changes/new entries to data held in tables, changes to/new stored procedures or user defined functions, or new tables or changes to existing ones. Developers are responsible for ensuring and testing that any changes they make do not cause problems elsewhere in the system. Developers should prepare their own scripts for these changes giving them file names unique to them (not within the R6 update sequence). The scripts form part of the submission to John van Breda for checking. They will be given a file name within the R6 Update sequence once approved.

In addition to the above changes can potentially affect the Recorder 6  addins, system supplied XML Reports, Batch Updates, Recording cards and Rucksacks. Developers must make every effort to ensure that where this happens they make the necessary changes and submit these with the other changes.

The Consortium currently has an agreement with the Recorder 6 Steering Group not to make any major changes in functionality without first consulting with the Steering Group as a representative of the users.

The acceptance of a change or the funding of a change should not be taken to imply any control over the final product.       

Webmaster mike@Lfield.co.uk.  Last updated 28/12/2017