Documentation: Add TODO.

[usenet/newsstats.git] / doc / TODO

                         NewsStats To-Do List
                         ====================

This is a list of planned bug fixes, improvements and enhancements for
NewsStats.

Bug numbers refer to the Mantis issue tracker at <http://bugs.th-h.de/>.

* General
  - Improve Documentation
    The documentation is rather sparse and could use some improvement.
  - Add a test suite
    There is currently no kind of test suite or regression tests. Something like
    that is badly needed.

* Additional features
  - Add hierarchy information (GroupInfo - Bugs #19 #20 #21 #22 #23 #24 #25 #26)
    NewsStats should be able to recognize invalid (i.e. officially not existing)
    newsgroups and - optionally - drop them from the list of groups. On the
    other hand, it should recognize existing, but empty groups and add them with
    a posting count of 0 to its list.
    NewsStats should be able to do that for any past month.
    It would be nice to make up a kind of hierarchy database from that with
    information like description, charter and moderation status. You should be
    able to get a list of valid groups for any given month (with a bit of slack
    for late creation and deletion), optionally including the previously
    mentioned information; and you should be able to get the history of any
    group.
  - Add other reports
    NewsStats should include some other kinds of reports (stats on used clients,
    on postings hosts/servers, ...)

* Individual improvements
  + NewsStats.pm
    - Add error handling when reading config (Bug #13)
      NewsStats should check if all mandatory options are set. Some syntax or
      content related checks would be in order.
      Some other tests - working database connection, valid database and table
      names - would be nice.

  + install/install.pl
    - Add / enhance / test error handling
    - General tests and optimisations

  + feedlog.pl
    - Add / enhance / test error handling
    - General tests and optimisations

  + gatherstats.pl
    - Fix database updates when re-running (Bug #18)
      Change REPLACE to DELETE with subsequent INSERT INTO (erase wrong data,
      i.e. non-existent groups)
    - Enhance TLH checks to allow for more than one TLH
    - Make gatherstats aware of hierarchy lists (Bug #17)
      A current (!) list of existing groups (checkgroups or INN active) should
      be honored, with optional modifications. Non-existing groups should be
      (logged and) dropped, existing groups with no postings should be set to 0.
      Hierarchy elements (*.ALL) must be taken into account.
      Perhaps invalid group names should also be checked (but what characters
      should be considered "invalid"?)
      GroupInfo (see above) could be an alternate solution.
    - Add gathering of other stats (clients, hosts, ...)
    - better modularisation (code reuse for other reports!)
    - Add / enhance / test error handling
    - General tests and optimisations

  + groupstats.pl
    - output: fix formatting - GetMaxLength does not work for special queries
      like -l or -b
    - beautify output (formats / captions)
    - -a: improve code - it doesn't make that much sense to get first/last
      month from database just to query that same database with a time period
      that equals no time period ... this part of the WHERE clause should be
      dropped instead
    - change precedence handling of -m/-p/-a: drop -m if -p or -a are present,
      drop -p if -a is present
    - save report(s) to a file (Bug #27)
    - better modularisation (code reuse for other reports!)
    - Add / enhance / test error handling
    - General tests and optimisations