Paul,

For github, I find there are just 3 key concepts to understand. They are kind-of counter-intuitive, but once you grasp these you'll understand it better.

  1. You will be used to working with centralised repositories, where people checkout stuff, make changes, and commit it back. Github doesn't work that way. It is not really centralised, and everyone works on their own. So, if you want to get stuff from a repository that you want to be able to change, the trick is to fork the repository. That makes a copy in your own github account that you can work from. Now, there are two repositories for the same code (yours and the place you forked from). (P.S. If you just want to get stuff but not change it, then "clone" is fine.)

  2. The second strange thing about git (and github) is that when you get a local copy of the repository, you are getting the _entire_ repository, including the history of all changes to it from day zero. With something like svn/cvs, you would just get a specific revision, but with git, you get the whole thing. The disadvantage is space and bandwidth. The advantage is that you can do all your revision control work locally (commit, revert, log, switch branches, etc) without Internet connectivity. Clone the OVMS repository, and work on it for a long plane flight - including committing changes, working with branches, etc. Once you are back in civilisation, you can synchronise your local changes with the repository it is cloned from (so long as you have write access - which you will as you are just working on your own forked version of the repository).

  3. The third thing just follows on from the first two. Pushing and Pulling. You will be making changes to your local forked copy of the repository, but at some time you are going to want to synchronise with the upstream version you originally forked from. To pull in changes made upstream since you forked, you just pull/merge in the master repository you originally forked from) - in general you should do this often, to stay up to date and to reduce the chances of conflict with local changes you are making. To contribute back to the master repository, you send a pull request to the maintainers of the master repository (for the OVMS vehicle firmware there are 3 currently). The maintainers will review your changes, and if all is ok merge them into the master repository. 

From the coding point of view, I really want to sort out the HTTP API, but that means getting OAUTH working. It would be great if you have time to help with this - but I guess it is new to both of us. From the perl point of view, I can handle it. The issue I have is the overall framework and getting an OAUTH server working in PHP under drupal www.openvehicles.com. What we need is:

  1. The user App goes to www.openvehicles.com for authentication. He logs in, and the server presents him with a list of permissions (e.g.; read gps location, read historical data, read battery status, etc) that the user can give the app. The result is an authentication blob that goes back to the App. This is PHP code in drupal.

  2. The App then goes to the api, presents the authentication blob, which the api server then validates and returns a security token. This is perl code in the OVMS perl server.

  3. The App then goes to the api, presents the token, and gets the data requested. This is perl code in the OVMS perl server.

  4. We need an Apps screen on the www.openvehicles.com server, which shows the user which Apps he has authorised, and allows him to revoke those authorisations.

This is standard OAUTH, and if we follow the standard, client side Apps will be easier (using standard libraries) and it will be simpler to work with third parties (such as IFTTT). The issue is that the coding of OAUTH servers seems very poorly documented, in either PERL or PHP/drupal.

Once we've got the authentication framework resolved, finalising the API should be relatively simple. It would be great if you can help with the OAUTH stuff in PHP+drupal.

Regards, Mark.

On 13 Jan, 2014, at 5:12 pm, Paul Churchley <paul@churchley.org> wrote:

Now I have taken my first look at the Github I feel rather dejected. I thought I was a reasonable PHP programmer but looking at the code for the vehicle and server I find that I am hopelessly out of my depth from a coding perspective. I know php so the fact it is perl doesn't help. There is a lot of commonality but it is sufficiently different to make it difficult for me right now. It isn't that the code is bad... it isn't bad - it looks great! No, it is just that I think I am so out of practice combined with it being perl I think I am not going to be as much help as I had imagined (hoped)... well, not for quite a while anyway :-(

Still, I am sure there are many things that need doing that I can do so I look forward to helping with those. I perhaps just need a bit of guidance on what needs doing that I am actually able to do!

I think a crash (or not so crash!) course on perl is my starting point. My php and general programming background will mean I pick up the basics pretty quickly but it is the finer points that will take a while I reckon. I'll start on that this week and then at least I might be able to understand what has already been coded and maybe tackle bugs etc even if I find it difficult to code from scratch.

In the meantime, I am also getting to grips with Github... it is also not as easy as I had imagined and I am a little scared that I might do something that corrupts the origin repo! Heeeelp! I am using command line Git and Windows Github at the moment but I am about to install Eclipse so I shall hopefully use that for Git instead as it is all nicely integrated. Does anyone else use Eclipse?

I also have Visual Studio 2013 for Windows development. I am wondering if I might be able to create a version of the phone app for Windows phones... would that be useful? I am not a Windows developer but creating Windows phone apps is something I would like to get to grips with so again, it wouldn't be quick but I might be able to come up with something useful.

Something else I could probably do is a web interface (or develop the existing one if it already exists) to bring the phone app functionality to the web? Any use?

I am very comfortable with databases and mySQL so if there is any database stuff that needs doing I would be keen to be involved.

There is so much for me to do to get me up and running it is almost overwhelming! I must just take it a stage at a time. Any guidance/advice on where you think I would be wise to start would be very much appreciated.

Any suggestions?

Paul

PS I am not trying to "muscle in" on any aspects of OVMS... I am just in "brain-dump" mode for now until I find my place in the team... where ever that happens to be! I am cool with doing anything I am able to do... or nothing, if that is preferred :-)


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