potential roadmap for pearweb

Hi all, I think we could get things moving along in pearweb with a few focused changes to the existing codebase. I'd like to suggest this basic idea as a starting point: 1) remove the magic * add explicit includes to pear-prepend.php in all files that need it. After doing this, we will have a better sense of how things should work. * In addition, stuff that is specific to the manual should be handled with the peardoc build. The sidebar is (or should be) static HTML, and login is not needed. Once we have done this, it will be a lot safer to try out removing something from a specific file. In other words, if it seems right to remove database initialization from one of the web pages, then it can be done on that page without fear of affecting the entire site. I'm still trying to work out an apache-test-based test framework as an idea for pearweb, but this requires time, and I haven't had enough yet. Basically, once we have working unit tests in place for pearweb, changing things is easy: just change it and run the tests to see if it broke anything. In addition, we probably need to provide a testing mysql database that people can use to test pearweb remotely. Once we have this, it will be easy to make a PEAR-installable package of pearweb using some of the new package2.xml features. This, of course, could significantly reduce the barrier to entry for hacking on pearweb. Greg