It has been a while since we announced the Koala - Komodo Advanced Localization Assistant - Project. While we work on the project on a nearly daily basis, we are just three students that need to do other work (like preparing for the upcoming examinations...), and because of that, the progress isn't as fast as it could be, if Koala would be our only project, but: we have a target for the final release: August, 23rd - September, 15th - and we plan not to miss it.
Our project schedule is of course more detailed - it consists of four big stages: preparation, implementation, integration and stabilization. That's the process of software development we did learn at our university, and our goal is to develop Koala that way.
During the first project stage, preparation, we've investigated as much as possible how Koala should work and look like, and as a result, we have written the Software Requirements Specification and Software Architecture documents.
In the Software Requirements Specification, we've listed the must-have features and have split them into modules with similar or dependent functionalities. In the now ongoing implementation stage, we are working on that modules separately. What does this mean? We code e.g. the "compare-locales" access module, make a few tests to be able to test it if it works as expected - and leave it there. So it's a single module, not (yet) connected with other modules.
As a result of this software development model, it's not possible to have something you "could touch" now - there won't be anything really usable until the next phase of development.
During the integration stage, we will make an working extension out of the many standalone modules. We will connect the modules through the, in the preparation stage specified, API's, one by one. It may look easier than it'll be, because this stage never comes as expected.
That will be also the time where we will start releasing pre-release versions of Koala: alpha and beta releases. They are to be expected late July.
After getting rid of the biggest blockers, we will enter the stabilization phase, where we will just fix known bugs and look for yet undiscovered bugs, by: testing, testing and testing. Because of that, in the middle of August you can expect an release candidate (hopefully just one).
The final release target is August, 23rd with a margin up to September, 15th.
If you'd like to help us in any way with this project, please drop a line in the comments.
Short update: between writing this posting and publishing it, we already entered the integration stage - but because of our examination session, the integration will start at full speed not earlier than in about three weeks.