Jump to:
| Project: | Google Highly Open Participation Contest (GHOP) |
| Component: | Task idea |
| Category: | task |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | closed (won't fix) |
| Issue tags: | Performance |
Issue Summary
Task title
Make suggestions to improve the performance of PHPtemplate.
Task description
Many of the more widely used themes for Drupal use PHPtemplate as the theme engine, notably drupal.org itself. This engine is developed in PHP and is purportedly very fast, has a low footprint and is very versatile. Furthermore it is developed for Drupal specifically; see here for more details on the engine: http://drupal.org/project/phptemplate. There are discussions going on as to how to make Drupal in general faster, ie decrease the page load times and as many web sites depend on PHPtemplate as their theme engine, it would make sense to see whether the performance of the engine can be improved as well. This task is to find ways to improve the performance of PHPtemplate and propose the changes to the issue queue of PHPtemplate.
Resources
For you research it is not necessary to download PHPtemplate in itself, you are sufficiently suited when you have a default install of Drupal and for instance the Zen theme (http://drupal.org/project/zen).
You will benefit from the use of the following module: http://drupal.org/project/devel
You can do a general search for external resources with http://www.google.com/search?q=phptemplate+performance
A more focused article on Drupal performance is here: http://drupal.org/node/79237
And of course you are free to use any PHP profiler you are comfortable with.
Primary contact
[tbd]
Comments
#1
A few concerns:
1. There is no deliverables section of the task. What specifically should the student do to complete the task.
2. What if the student finds that there really are few ways to improve the performance. Maybe he/she finds 1 ms here and there that can be gained, but nothing else. Since it's kind of hard to "prove" a negative (in the sense that there is no way to significantly increase performance) how will the reviewers know that the student has satisfactorily completed the task?
#2
I thought the issue was clear enough:
Please let me know what more information you need to promote this.
#3
Please see the task guidelines at http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/wiki/Ho...
Each task needs a clear deliverable. For example, a patch marked RTBC in XX issue queue, or a handbook page in the XXX section describing YYY.
Saying "find ways to improve the performance of PHPtemplate and propose the changes to the issue queue of PHPtemplate" is a bit vague, IMHO. See my concerns from comment #1. I'm just a bit worried because you describe PHPTemplate as "purportedly very fast, has a low footprint". If that's still the case, it might be difficult to make suggestions about how to improve (at least ways that significantly improve performance).
This task also needs someone who is capable and willing to mentor the student and review the work.
I'm not saying you need to completely rewrite the task--just add a sentence or two so it's clearer what is expected of the student so that it's easier for everyone to tell when the student has completed the task.
Thanks!
#4
Fair enough. Replace the paragraph titled Task description with
Task description
Many of the more widely used themes for Drupal use PHPtemplate as the theme engine, notably drupal.org itself. This engine is developed in PHP, has a low footprint and is very versatile. Furthermore it is developed for Drupal specifically; see here for more details on the engine: http://drupal.org/project/phptemplate. There are discussions going on as to how to make Drupal in general faster, ie decrease the page load times and as many web sites depend on PHPtemplate as their theme engine, it would make sense to see whether the performance of the engine can be improved as well.
Deliverables
* Create a benchmark test to profile PHPtemplate.
* Make suggestions to improve the performance of PHPtemplate
Unfortunately I cannot be a primary contact or mentor, but I can check the issue´s progress from time to time.
Hope this helps
#5
#6
I really like this idea. I feel that the only thing this still needs is a mentor. Perhaps you can contact one of the PHPtemplate developers and ask them to accept the role.
#7
no patch was attached?
#8