[IAEP] gitorious and OLPC

[Bernie Innocenti]

Really Cc'ing iaep this time...  Please reply to this copy.

Cc'ing the i.a.e.p. list and Rudy of OSU OSL.  Keeping all quotation for 
context.


Johan Sørensen wrote:
> Everyone,
> 
> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:03 PM, Mitchell N Charity
> <mncharity at vendian.org> wrote:
>> I've added Bernie to this "explore the big picture" thread.
> 
> Hi Bernie!
> 
>> Back to infrastructure.
>>
>> I've put up a concept draft
>>  OLPC Repo Watch
>>  http://dev.laptop.org/~mncharity/olpc_repo_watch/
>> Differences between draft and vision:
>>  The main missing bit is including forks in the list.
>>   I'm hoping they can simply be first-class, without creating too much
>> clutter.
>>   If not, implementation complexity looks to increase rather dramatically.
>>  Wiki-scraping to get "somewhere random, there's a private repo, or merely a
>>    .xo file"  isn't working yet.  Nor is "it's on google, but the 'olpc'
>> search misses
>>    it, but it was found on the wiki".
>>  Assorted small things, like links being unimplemented.
>>  Filter buttons?  Eg, "hide boring", "hide empty", "hide forks"(?).
>> Notes:
>>  Provides visibility.
>>  This is the first time anyone can actually see all OLPC dev work and its
>> status,
>>  for a somewhat weak value of "all".  And status, and see.
>>  The currently gray "fork" links would link into gitorious (speculative),
>>  which would then mirror in the repo if it's not already on gitorious.
>>  The list currently includes all dev.laptop.org, and search results for
>> "olpc" on
>>  google, SF, github, and gitorious.
>>  Searching for "olpc" didn't turn up projects elsewhere (one on Launchpad).
>>  It's multi-site scraping, so fragile of course, requiring ongoing
>> maintenance.
>>  Despite the datestamp on top, the relative dates are as of yesterday
>> sometime.
> 
> 
> I find that repo watch concept quite interesting, here's another take
> (slightly biased ;)) take in it; when we're capable of automagic
> git(+svn) mirroring, would it make sense to incorporate the
> repowatching into gitorious? That way it could be a one-stop for
> direct code development news, I could "bookmark" a few
> repositories/projects to get their commits directly into my dashboard
> and I would get an immediate feeling of an active community in terms
> of actual development.
> And since it's already mirrored, directly being able to contribute
> would only be a click or two away.
> 
> It may turn out to be more practical to have it as a separate
> application, and maybe even more lightweight than doing actual
> mirroring. At least for a start...

I think mirroring repositories would be better than linking.  People then
could clone form there and create (publicly visible) personal forks.


>> Yet another system sketch:
>> Provide visibility separately from repo site(s).  Something like repo watch.
>> Multiple-sites.
>> * gitorious provides:
>>  - fork-style collaboration
>>  - easy project creation
>> * code.google provides svn-style team collaboration.
>>  Google is simply where people ended up.  Largest teams are there.
>>  Doesn't support super-project access groups (unlike SF).
>>  Launchpad might be better - eventually open source, and if it doesn't
>>  already do super projects seems likely to need to eventually.
>>  Ubuntu.  But there seems only one real OLPC project on Launchpad.
>> * Four-host solution?  dlo, gitorious, google, and launchpad?
>>  Gitorious for low-barriers and fork-style, google for teams,
>>  launchpad for teams on FOSS platform,
>>  dlo for release and translation infrastructure (and staff work).
>> * New developer story might be:
>>  "Create wiki and gitorious accounts.
>>  As needed, create google and launchpad accounts.
>>  When you have something to internationalize or release,
>>  get dlo hosting for it."
> 
> 
> Personally, I'm thinking that might be wise to keep things as simple
> as possible, while still being open enough for those who want to use
> another place for their code (or svn or bzr or hg or xyz), especially
> as a newcomer to the project I'd have more interesting things to think
> about than making a choice between four different places to contribute
> code on.

Me too.  What we like the most of Gitorious is its fantastically simple UI.

We've just setup a new server hosted by the Open Source Lab at the Oregon
State University (http://osuosl.org/hosting/).  It's a fully-managed
system, with full-time sysadmins, backups, and redundant connectivity.

If it sounds adequate, I guess our next step might be installing Gitorious
there?


>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Mitchell
>>
>>
> 
> Cheers,
> JS

-- 
     // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
   \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://www.sugarlabs.org/