OpenACS 4.2 Alpha

This is an alpha release of OpenACS 4.2. This release has been subjected to an organized test effort, but please bear in mind that we are still in the process of developing testing tools, methodology, and scripts.

Please report bugs using our Software Development Manager at the OpenACS website. The latest information on installating this alpha release under Oracle 8.1.6/7 or PostgreSQL 7.1.* can be found there as well. Currently the toolkit will not install under Oracle 9i due to Oracle having made "delete" an illegal name for PL/SQL procedures and functions.

You may want to begin by reading Ars Digita's original documentation on installing under Unix/Linux or Windows. The basic process is unchanged, and we expect to update the documentation for our beta release.

After installation, the full documentation set for acs-core provided in the original aD release can be found by visiting http://[your-host]/doc.

Note on installing packages

The APM will die if you attempt to install more than a few packages at once in the Oracle version. This is due to the list of required files being stored in a varchar which is limited in Oracle to being 4,000 bytes long.

Site Wide Searching

If you're using Oracle 8.1.6 or 8.1.7 Enterprise Edition you may want to uncomment the SQL that causes InterMedia to keep online searching online while indexing. The feature doesn't exist in Standard Edition and OpenACS 4 now defaults to being loadable in SE. Just grep for 'sync' to find the code.

Also be sure to read the documentation in the Site Wide Search package's sql/oracle directory. The APM doesn't execute the SQL for this package, in part due to the fact that some steps need to be run as the Oracle user 'ctxsys'.

If you're using PostgreSQL be sure to read the documentation on installing the Open FTS driver for OpenACS. It's included in the package as a text file. As with the Oracle version, there are steps you must take manually in order to get this feature working.

Testing Notes

Here are some notes from our testing group. While not quite up to date it should give you some ideas of where things stand.

Summarised Testing Status

Skin
Minimal
Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: Page
Test Coverage: Minimal
Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: Bboard
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments:

Package: Static Pages
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: Ticket Tracker
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments: Don tested personally

Package: Ticket Tracker Lite
Test Coverage: Unknown
Suggested Status: 
Comments:

Package: Acs-lang
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments: Oracle only

Package: Simple-survey
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments:

Package: Portal
Test Coverage: Extensive
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments:

Package: Notes
Test Coverage: Extensive
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments:

Package: Bookmarks
Test Coverage: Extensive
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments:

Package: Clickthrough
Test Coverage: Extensive
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments:

Package: Acs-mail
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: Acs-messaging
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: File manager
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: File Storage
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: Site-wide-search
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments:

Package: General Comments
Test Coverage: Extensive
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments:

Package: Acs-events
Test Coverage: None
Suggested Status: 
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-datetime
Test Coverage: None
Suggested Status: 
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-tcl
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-templating
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-util
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-Content-repository
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-content
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-kernel
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-subsite
Test Coverage: Reasonable
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments: 

Package: Acs-bootstrap-installer
Test Coverage: Extensive
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments: Developers have used this extensively

Package: Acs-api-browser
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments: Automated Testing

Package: Acs-workflow
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Release w/caution
Comments: 

Package: calendar
Test Coverage: Minimal
Suggested Status: Alpha
Comments: Don tested personally