Blogging Roller

As Lance notes, the Roller code in the Roller CVS main branch, also known as Roller 0.9.9-dev, is in a bad state. The code passes all unit tests, but I'm still working on data model changes. As always, there will be an upgrade script to upgrade the schema from the last release (Roller 0.9.8) to the next release (Roller 0.9.9), but the script might have problems if your database is half-way between 0.9.8 and 0.9.9. Ah, the joys of database-driven webapp development! Anyhow, if you want to try Roller 0.9.9-dev, I would recommend that you wait until you get the all-clear from me (possibly this weekend). Once I wrap up hierarchical categories, I'm going start working on bug fixes for a Roller 0.9.9 release.

BTW, Lance mentioned that I'm working on hierarchical weblog categories. Unfortunately, for a database-based weblogging system like Roller, this is a fairly complex undertaking. In file-system based weblog system, categories are almost trivial. Weblog categories are just directories sitting in the file-system. The hierarchy comes for free. Want a post to exist in multiple categories? Just create a symbolic link. For Roller, the hierarchy must be modeled as associations between tables. Without some trickery, retrieving all weblog entries in a category and all subcategories requires recursive descent with a database query at every level. The trickery is now in place and abstracted in such a way that I can use it for all hierarchies: weblog categories, bookmark folders, and maybe someday, page templates.