[Xapian-devel] Xapian Github Organization

[James Aylett]

Half the things you list as requirements – flexible design, decent documentation hosting – I don't consider github to provide. I'm with Olly that cohosting seems to be the right choice for us. However that is to an extent just a feeling – if you want to gather requirements somewhere on the wiki, we can maybe get more confidence and consensus.

James

On 8 Oct 2012, at 16:36, Dan Colish <dcolish at gmail.com> wrote:

> Olly Betts <olly at survex.com> writes:
> 
>> On Mon, Sep 03, 2012 at 08:34:45AM -0700, Dan Colish wrote:
>>> Well at the moment, we're really still using SVN so this discussion
>>> might not be ready to happen. If we are going to use a github org to
>>> host our repos, git should be the SPOT.
>> 
>> I'm not keen to have the master git repo hosted on a proprietary
>> platform.  It's a pattern the Free/Open Source Software community seems
>> to fall into repeatedly, and has lead to problems before (ironically one
>> such instance was the reason git was created in the first place).
>> 
>> As well as the "host on Free Software" point, self-hosting gives us more
>> flexibility, so I think I'd favour that over somewhere like gitorious or
>> repo.or.cz.  If there's some tool we want to install, it's easy to do if
>> we self-host.
>> 
>> I'm OK with having mirrors of the git tree at places like github (like
>> we already do), but I don't think we should make it the master location.
>> 
> 
> The pattern exists because of the many social features available on
> github. I would be happy to use any tool which allows us to market and
> build our community. The main benefit I see is being able to be a highly
> "Watched" or "Forked" project. Some projects which are hosted soley on
> Github have over a thousand watches and hundreds of forks. If you want
> an example of a project which is widely used and only mirrors to github,
> look at GHC[1]. It's an example of what I think those "watched" or
> "forked" stats are worth; next to nothing. GHC still manages to
> cultivate an extremely large user base without Github's help. 
> 
> I do not care where we host our code, because I already have my own
> clone. I can share this code on github, repo.or.cz, gitorious, or over
> email. In fact, email is an excellent conduit for sharing git patches;
> it is how git was originally designed.
> 
> What I do want is to make browsing code, obtaining code, tracking
> changes, and filing bug and feature requests as easy as possible. It
> should have a simple authentication system with support for existing
> Oauth solutions. It should support mobile and desktop browsers. It must
> be flexible enough to match our workflow. Co-hosting documentation is a
> must as well. It must be searchable for all documentation, tickets, and
> commit history. It needs to have a flexible design which we can
> customize to make an enticing and exciting homepage.
> 
> I want the ability to market and promote Xapian better. I want to see
> more developers choose Xapian over the competing projects. I want to see
> new developers coming on and working with us to maintain and improve the
> code base. I want our large community of users to feel more engaged and
> share their experiences. I think we've shown a need for a larger
> community; look at how minimal the dev is when Olly is away. 
> 
> If we want to talk about ideal solutions for project management I could
> go on for quite a while. However, we have a limited amount of time to
> decide. I do not think this is a trivial decision of where we want to
> place the code. I think we should take this opportunity to decide what
> platform will help us promote and grow Xapian more.
> 
> 
> [1] https://github.com/ghc/ghc
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dan
> 
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-- 
 James Aylett, occasional trouble-maker
 xapian.org