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Lance Edgar 2025-10-19 09:05:08 -05:00
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# Rattail's History
[Rattail was born](http://is4c.coop/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=120&p=494&hilit=rattail#p494) in February 2010, as part of a general discussion about rewriting the [[http://is4c.coop/|IS4C]] project.
At the time, Lance Edgar from [[http://mamajeansmarket.com/|MaMa Jean's Natural Market]] and Tony Schmidt from [[https://sac.coop/|Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op]] were the only two developers. (In retrospect this was good, as it was hard enough coalescing *just two* mindsets and organizational needs then.) MJ needed a point of sale application to replace the clunker they'd been using for some time, and SNFC needed a customer order tracking system where they had none before.
Since both proposed projects had internal free reign over database design etc., and since their underlying schema needs were quite similar, the extensible schema was the first thing to be written. The command/option framework was built shortly after to provide the means to administer databases, e.g. upgrading and (un)installing extensions.
MJ really needed a back-office solution in addition to the point of sale (in fact, the way I'd figured it at the time, they needed that *first*). Since SNFC intended to write a web-based order tracking system, it made sense for SNFC's order system and MJ's back-office system to share as much code as possible as well. (After all, why wouldn't MJ want a web-based back-office system?) RattailBONE was created to provide a means of sharing this web app code.
Ultimately RattailBONE did not do a good enough job and in ways hurt more than it helped, as compared to writing a Pylons application directly. rattail.pyramid eventually was created after Pyramid supplanted Pylons, though no production apps have yet to come of it. Certainly rattail.pyramid would be developed with preference over RattailBONE, but it is unclear at this point how soon web development will resume at all for either.
*...enter the present...what follows is both bleeding-edge and inevitably outdated...*
Tony began dabbling with Django and eventually it stole his heart. He seems to very much hope for a Django-based solution where possible, though it remains to be seen how strong that desire is for the POS piece. More investigation must be done to determine how, or even if, Django will fit into the Rattail picture.
All this talk about a POS has spurred some thoughts about how rattail's structure could be improved. It seems equally important to truly define what rattail is trying to do, as well. Therefore this documentation has been started to establish a proper foundation upon which the rest could be built.