[sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list

[Morgan Collett]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:47, Morgan Collett <morgan.collett at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 04:42, Bastien <bastienguerry at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Any follow-up on the idea of having a precise list of maintainers for
>> all Sugar activities?  Even just the email address from the git repo
>> would be nice.
>
> I've raised the idea a couple of times to have a mailing list
> specifically for activity developers, which would be uncluttered by
> all the traffic on the devel and even sugar lists. That would
> hopefully have the result that people stay subscribed, or at least
> notice mails which are important to them.
>
> Currently, I'm not even sure which list out of devel and sugar is
> going to reach more activity developers, hence this cross-post and
> many others.
>
> There are a bunch of issues I'm aware of which need to be communicated
> clearly and widely:
>
> * A lot of activities need updating. There are a good number of us who
> can help, if we can get the attention of the original / most recent
> maintainers/authors. We would be willing to do new releases, and we
> will do so (technically forking) without their help if we don't get
> their attention.
>
> * There is a new activity updater in the control panel in joyride.
> There is a certain procedure to provide specific versions of the
> activity for specific builds, so that (future) stable builds get a
> certain version available, whereas development builds can get other
> versions of the activity. The exact procedures around that need to be
> communicated, in such a way that a significant number of activity
> developers *do* them.
>
> * It would be great to have a specific procedure for someone to say "I
> developed this activity, I don't have time to maintain it against
> future releases, it's available for someone to take over". I suspect
> several interesting activities are in this position.
>
> * We need a way to communicate API changes, new resources, etc to
> activity developers without this getting lost in the "noise" of the
> existing lists. We need a way to get clear feedback on these without
> getting swamped by non activity developers.
>
> * We need to make it easier for new activity developers to get up to
> speed without having to wade through information they don't need.
>
> I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really
> think we need this list.
>
> I know it's yet another mailing list, but I think it will help make
> our communication more focussed and effective.
>
> I'm adding this to the agenda of today's (tonight's for me) Sugar
> development meeting. Please comment here in advance of the meeting, or
> come to the meeting for a more immediate discussion.
>
> Morgan
>

We didn't get to discuss this activity developers' mailing list at the
Sugar meetings. However I've had no negative feedback. If anyone is
opposed to this list, please speak up quickly and loudly. Otherwise I
will get it created in the next week, publicize it and invite all
known activity developers whose email addresses I can track down to
subscribe.

My only question is whether this should be @lists.laptop.org or
@lists.sugarlabs.org. Please comment, or I will make it the latter by
default.

Regards
Morgan