Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Package maintenance & lingering bugs

Collapse
2: Re: Package maintenance & lingering bugs (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 10/04/04 01:51 AM
Jeroen: this is a really important topic, thank you for bringing it up.

I should note that the project page that I've set up isn't completely done yet. The packages that have "Description" in the description column have not been updated yet.

I agree that we need package ownership or gatekeepers, and I'd love to see some attempts to define these roles. Perhaps there could be three tiers of package developers, depending on how much time or effort people are willing to put into the package.

My reason for putting together the project page was motivated by the same frustration: it seems confusing who is responsible for what (and how to become a contributing part of the community), and I haven't seen much activity from the OCT recently. Perhaps they are busy with client work? That's good in a way, but I've been wondering what's up.

I'd also like to see us develop statistics on OpenACS that we can use to measure the growth of OpenACS. Are we attracting and keeping developers? And perhaps more importantly, are we attracting and keeping administrators who install our software but don't program them?  My take is that we are very slooooooooooooooooooowly growing, but that's really not going to cut it if we want to keep OpenACS as a vibrant platform.

Collapse
5: Re: Package maintenance & lingering bugs (response to 2)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 10/04/04 07:05 PM
What do you think about putting the following processes in place:

- Update the documentation automatically in a central place. It shall only be necessary to edit the documentation XML file of the stable release and get the documentation generated in HTML and committed to CVS. Someone keen on writing a BASH script to do this ?

- The release begins by updating openacs.org to that release. Once this is done publish the release. But maybe Joel can post the steps necessary to cut the release (once the branch is deemed release worthy).

This way we find more bugs that annoy us and fix them as all of us are using openacs.org. And the documentation is easier to maintain, thereby making it more likely for people to maintain it in the first place.

Collapse
7: Re: Package maintenance & lingering bugs (response to 5)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 10/04/04 07:31 PM
Malte: these are great ideas, I think.

Of course, the work doesn't happen automatically. We need volunteers to do the openacs.org upgrade testing. It can't all fall on Joel's shoulders.

I asked Jeff about generating the documentation automatically. He said there are often errors that need human intervention, but perhaps that could be part of the script: send an email to the doc group saying: "hey, something went wrong, better take a look at it".