[Xapian-devel] Xapian Github Organization

[Dan Colish]

Sure, I'll put together a ticket. I didn't mean to be misleading earlier by supporting GitHub. 

--
Dan

On Oct 10, 2012, at 9:54, James Aylett <james-xapian at tartarus.org> wrote:

> 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
>