Following straight on from the week 2 summary (I’ve been rubbish at blogging recently - never done it much before!)

Here’s whats happening so far. Last week I got my degree result (woo I passed!), so I was in no fit state to work for a couple of days after that. Couple that with my housemate moving out with modem, blogging became a bit of an issue!

However, I’ve now moved back into the lounge (ironically where I spent the beginning of the year before he moved in with the modem!) and am back online.

The plugin is coming on quite nicely - from following some brilliantly written examples (like this one) we now have an eclipse plugin giving a menu along the top, with some mostly function-less options. A documentation submenu opens up your browser to an assortment of links to various parts of the OpenMRS docs.

While I wanted to have the file structure being created by now, it’s been slightly delayed - instead of diving straight in and creating a structure, I’m going through the OpenMRS modules and looking at almost all the different possible file structures - what is essential, what’s likely to be used, and what’s very specialised. With this stuff carefully mapped out, it should be possible to have the wizard present you with “quick start” option and/or an “advanced” option depending on what you want to do.

More details coming soon…

A very delayed post summarising week 2 of GSoC…

The first thing was to do a bit of research. From the beginning of this project I already had some fairly solid ideas in my head of what I wanted it to do. However, there were also a lot of grey areas. There’s a lot of features that I’d like to put in and others in the community want to see as well that may well not be do-able (either they just can’t be done, or can’t be done by me!).

So, a swift email to the developers mailing list cemented some ideas. Perhaps the two most fundamental parts that need to be done would be customizing the sublicpse plugin for version control, and also the module creation wizard. Even if it only got as far as creating the file and directory structure, it would be a good start. From there, it can get more detailed by generating template files for different types of modules, with lots of snippets of example code, and then up-to-date links to the more complete documentation.

With a long mail going round recently discussing a complete revamp of the documentation for OpenMRS, one thing is for sure; this project is going to have to be adapted on the fly as other things change as well!

Aah the joys of database errors. Welcome to version 2 of the blog, freshly set up after the previous one’s database decided to collapse like a flan in a cupboard.

The first week of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is over, and progress so far has been pretty good. In terms of stuff to show off and explain, unfortunately there’s very little. Nearly all my time so far has gone into reading documentation for both OpenMRS and (Easy)Eclipse, familiarizing myself with their layouts and code.

A key section being focused on at the moment is the Eclipse plugin writing stuff - so far all seems pretty good and well written. Have got countless scraps of paper dotted around the desk/floor/walls with notes and sketches and ideas. If all goes according to plan, in the next few days the bulk of the reading will be covered and some of the initial steps of coding can begin. First task? Starting the Eclipse plugin, getting a nice OpenMRS menu and some options, time permitting, have it create the directory structure for a generic OpenMRS module.

I’ve also got a wiki page set up on the OpenMRS site here where, when it’s finished, you’ll find a more detailed plan for the project including realistic goals, hopeful goals, a timeline, and current progress.

Excellent.