[parted-devel] Wiki volunteer wanted

[David Cantrell]

Anant Narayanan wrote:
> Hi David,
> 
>> 1) It's somewhat irritating having components of the project scattered
>> across different environments.  Source repo here, web site there,
>> download location over there, mailing lists somewhere else.  I would
>> like a central location for everything -or- as central as we can make it.
> 
> Trac is a good way to keep things in one place. We keep the releases and
> website at gnu.org; while we let Trac handle the Wiki, Bug tracker. We
> can link the existing repository from Trac (like Otavio mentioned, it
> has a plugin for Git)

I'm not opposed to Trac, but I also know nothing about it.  Introducing 
new infrastructure components gets annoying to those who use them.  Case 
in point, changing version control systems.

New systems need to be implemented seamlessly so development isn't 
interrupted.

>> 2) Is a wiki _that_ useful to the project?  Is there something the wiki
>> can provide that we can't get from the web site and mailing lists?  Too
>> many stimuli mean the project quickly gets to a point where no one can
>> find any useful information.
> 
> Like Leslie mentions, a Wiki is useful for taking quick notes and
> discussions. Mailing lists are Ok for the latter, but not the former.

I disagree.  Wikis are not useful for discussions.  In fact, they are 
terrible at that.  Wikis are useful when you want to post some sort of 
quasi-static information and let other people add to it or change it, 
but that's not a discussion.

This mailing list thread is a discussion and the method works well.  We 
don't have many people on the list anyway, so the mailing list works 
well.  Even for much larger projects, mailing lists work fine 
(linux-kernel, for instance).

My big problem with wikis in general is the huge amount of abandoned 
material that has been added to it at some point and no one really cares 
about it anymore.  While I'm not saying that will happen to our wiki, I 
am saying I see it happen all the time on wikis at other projects which 
results in the usefulness of the wiki quickly going to zero.

Again, not saying that I don't want a wiki, I'm just asking if we've 
thought beyond the "oh hey, wikis are cool, let's set one of those up!" 
idea.

>> 3) Above everything, I'd like stuff stuff to *stop* moving around
>> between version control systems and hosting sites.  The offers to do
>> things are great, but we need to get real work done and leave the
>> infrastructure alone for a bit.
> 
> I agree on this. We've made a lot of changes on the past few months, and
> its confusing. But might I offer my services as your "infrastructure
> person"? I don't seem to coding much anyway, and would be more useful to
> the project this way :)

There is a very high chance that you will be put in this position.  I'm 
writing up something to send out to the list on what I said in the other 
post.

>> I would like our resources to not be tied to any one distribution or
>> company so as to avoid any wrong ideas that people might get.
> 
> Agreed on this; although I don't see a problem with using Debian's git
> repository. It's not very easy to setup a Git repository on a more
> "neutral" environment.

The problem linking the project directly with any one distribution is 
that people suddenly think it's a project for that distribution.  It 
just leads to confusion for users and turns a lot of people away.  It's 
misunderstanding more than anything.

>> But all of these things should be a lower priority than working on
>> parted 2.0, unless you are dedicated infrastructure people.  Speaking
>> of, we don't really have a description of who does what on the parted
>> project.  How about we take some time to work up a diagram of our
>> current structure and then figure out what people we need and what kind
>> of work needs to be done?
> 
> Agreed again. You can leave all this infrastructure to me, while you
> hack away :)
> 
> The timeline and task management features of Trac would be extremely
> helpful in presenting information that you mention. We can clearly
> define roles for every developer, create a timeline for Parted 2.0;
> it'll all be very organized...
> 
> In Summary, setting up Trac someplace would result in:
> 
> Website & Release system on gnu.org
> Version Control (Git) & Mailing Lists on debian.org
> Bug tracker, Wiki, Collaboration etc (Trac) on ?
> 
> The Trac setup will link to the Git repository and Mailing lists, so you
> would never actually need to goto debian.org at any time.

Keep these ideas with you for now.  Sending out my message shortly.

-- 
David Cantrell
Red Hat / Westford, MA