Re: Where to Host Project

Howdy,

Not *exactly* hackers-related, but I wanted to get a feel for this
from those who are likely to use project hosting, and to minimize the
chances of a flame war.

Right now I have pgTAP on pgFoundry, which is okay, though it appears
to be largely unmaintained. PostgreSQL module projects seem to mainly
just flounder there.

So I'm wondering, given the various discussions of PostgreSQL module
hosting in the past, where would be a good place to put a PostgreSQL
module project? The things I would like to have are:

* SVN or git hosting (I've not used git, but would try it)
* Ability to hand out commit bits to other folks
* A project home page and/or wiki
* Good search results rankings in Google et al.
* Mail lists
* Bug tracking
* Release management

Overall, it should be easy to find my project, and easy to download it
and build it for PostgreSQL. I've had the following suggestions for
places to try, in addition to pgFoundry:

* github
* Google Code
* LaunchPad
* WebFaction

I've not used any of these. So my question is, what do you prefer for
third-party PostgreSQL modules. Where is it that the the PostgreSQL
community is likely to aggregate with its modules?

Thanks!

David

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:22:14 -0700
"David E. Wheeler" <david(at)kineticode(dot)com> wrote:

> * LaunchPad
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Is backed by PostgreSQL. It is the only logical choice :). Seriously
though it is a good service.

Joshua D. Drake

--
The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/
PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/
United States PostgreSQL Association: http://www.postgresql.us/
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

On Sep 18, 2008, at 11:27, Joshua Drake wrote:

>> * LaunchPad
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Is backed by PostgreSQL. It is the only logical choice :). Seriously
> though it is a good service.

Looks pretty nice, though it doesn't have project home pages. Having
just created one for pgTAP on pgFoundry, I'd like to keep it. :-)

I posted a question about this to see if it's in the plans:

https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/45640

Best,

David

David,

> Right now I have pgTAP on pgFoundry, which is okay, though it appears
> to be largely unmaintained. PostgreSQL module projects seem to mainly
> just flounder there.

Yeah. We had huge plans for pgFoundry, but got burned out by a combination
of GForge problems and Hub.org problems -- I know I put in over 150 hours
just making it run. At this point, nobody wants to deal with it anymore.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL
San Francisco

On Thursday 18 September 2008 14:22:14 David E. Wheeler wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> Not *exactly* hackers-related, but I wanted to get a feel for this
> from those who are likely to use project hosting, and to minimize the
> chances of a flame war.
>
> Right now I have pgTAP on pgFoundry, which is okay, though it appears
> to be largely unmaintained. PostgreSQL module projects seem to mainly
> just flounder there.
>
> So I'm wondering, given the various discussions of PostgreSQL module
> hosting in the past, where would be a good place to put a PostgreSQL
> module project? The things I would like to have are:
>
> * SVN or git hosting (I've not used git, but would try it)
> * Ability to hand out commit bits to other folks
> * A project home page and/or wiki
> * Good search results rankings in Google et al.
> * Mail lists
> * Bug tracking
> * Release management
>
> Overall, it should be easy to find my project, and easy to download it
> and build it for PostgreSQL. I've had the following suggestions for
> places to try, in addition to pgFoundry:
>

my .02, since i have used most of these...

> * github

does not offer mailing lists or bug tracking, and the release management is
odd

> * Google Code

does not offer mailing lists

> * LaunchPad

does not offer svn or git, and i think they dont offer a home page service

> * WebFaction
>

dont really know anything about these guys, but i thought they did web
hosting, not project hosting.

Just for the record, you have overlooked SourceForge. While it appears to
fallen out of favor with the open source crowd, it is the one service that
does provide everything you wanted.

> I've not used any of these. So my question is, what do you prefer for
> third-party PostgreSQL modules. Where is it that the the PostgreSQL
> community is likely to aggregate with its modules?
>

I've been saying for some time now we need to get out of the project hosting
service, and get into the project directory service. What we really want is
to make it easy for people to find postgresql related projects, regardless of
where they are.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

David E. Wheeler wrote:

> So I'm wondering, given the various discussions of PostgreSQL module
> hosting in the past, where would be a good place to put a PostgreSQL
> module project? The things I would like to have are:
>
> * SVN or git hosting (I've not used git, but would try it)
> * Ability to hand out commit bits to other folks
> * A project home page and/or wiki
> * Good search results rankings in Google et al.
> * Mail lists
> * Bug tracking
> * Release management

Why not host the code on (say) GitHub, and the rest of the stuff on
pgFoundry?

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

Le jeudi 18 septembre 2008, David E. Wheeler a écrit :
> So I'm wondering, given the various discussions of PostgreSQL module
> hosting in the past, where would be a good place to put a PostgreSQL
> module project? The things I would like to have are:
>
> * SVN or git hosting (I've not used git, but would try it)
> * Ability to hand out commit bits to other folks
> * A project home page and/or wiki
> * Good search results rankings in Google et al.
> * Mail lists
> * Bug tracking
> * Release management

There's a french non-profit team offering those:
http://tuxfamily.org/en/main

You can even take their open source hosting facility software and offer your
own services based on it, and/or extend their perl code to add new features.
I tried to talk pgfoundry admins into this solution in the past, but I
understand maintaining pgfoundry is a PITA.

HTP,
--
dim

David E. Wheeler napsal(a):
> Howdy,

> Overall, it should be easy to find my project, and easy to download it
> and build it for PostgreSQL. I've had the following suggestions for
> places to try, in addition to pgFoundry:
>
> * github
> * Google Code
> * LaunchPad
> * WebFaction
>

You can try http://kenai.com/

Zdenek

--
Zdenek Kotala Sun Microsystems
Prague, Czech Republic http://sun.com/postgresql

On Sep 18, 2008, at 18:43, Robert Treat wrote:

>> * Google Code
>
> does not offer mailing lists

I get mail for the test-more project there. It's through Google
Groups, which is a little weird, but works.

>> * LaunchPad
>
> does not offer svn or git, and i think they dont offer a home page
> service

It uses Bazaar. WTF is that? I've never heard of it.

>> * WebFaction
>
> dont really know anything about these guys, but i thought they did web
> hosting, not project hosting.

Yeah, looks that way.

> Just for the record, you have overlooked SourceForge. While it
> appears to
> fallen out of favor with the open source crowd, it is the one
> service that
> does provide everything you wanted.

Good point. I've not used it in years. Last time I looked the mail
archives still sucked pretty hard. Otherwise, now that it has SVN, and
if it has eliminated the performance problems, it might just do the
trick.

> I've been saying for some time now we need to get out of the project
> hosting
> service, and get into the project directory service. What we really
> want is
> to make it easy for people to find postgresql related projects,
> regardless of
> where they are.

That's an excellent idea. Do you have a plan for this?

Thanks,

David

On Sep 18, 2008, at 19:01, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> Why not host the code on (say) GitHub, and the rest of the stuff on
> pgFoundry?

That's kind of what I'm doing now. But I'm wondering if I should
bother with pgFoundry at all. It seems pretty dead (see Josh Berkus's
reply).

Best,

David

On Sep 19, 2008, at 01:25, Dimitri Fontaine wrote:

> There's a french non-profit team offering those:
> http://tuxfamily.org/en/main
>
> You can even take their open source hosting facility software and
> offer your
> own services based on it, and/or extend their perl code to add new
> features.
> I tried to talk pgfoundry admins into this solution in the past, but I
> understand maintaining pgfoundry is a PITA.

Looks pretty interesting. I've never heard of it. Anyone else have
experience with it?

Thanks,

David

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:05:36 -0700
"David E. Wheeler" <david(at)kineticode(dot)com> wrote:

> >> * LaunchPad
> >
> > does not offer svn or git, and i think they dont offer a home page
> > service
>
> It uses Bazaar. WTF is that? I've never heard of it.

Another git/mecurial/monotone style SCM. It does however allow
interaction with things like remote git and svn repos :)

Joshua D. Drake

--
The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/
PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/
United States PostgreSQL Association: http://www.postgresql.us/
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

On Friday 19 September 2008 14:05:36 David E. Wheeler wrote:
> On Sep 18, 2008, at 18:43, Robert Treat wrote:
> >> * Google Code
> >
> > does not offer mailing lists
>
> I get mail for the test-more project there. It's through Google
> Groups, which is a little weird, but works.
>

I didn't think there was any integration between those two services, but maybe
there is (ie. sign up for an account on google code and you have a google
groups login as well). Otherwise google groups can be considered a solution
for githubs lack of mailing lists as well. (incidentally, github has some
neat automated webhooks for its git repos, like automatically sending email
to a mailing list, or to a basecamp site, or dozens of other places. sure
this can be done with other services, but github makes it very easy)

> >> * LaunchPad
> >
> > does not offer svn or git, and i think they dont offer a home page
> > service
>
> It uses Bazaar. WTF is that? I've never heard of it.

it is another distributed version control system, similar to
git/monotone/etc... very popular in the mysql crowd (and i suppose gaining
more popularity in the ubuntu crowd as well)

> > Just for the record, you have overlooked SourceForge. While it
> > appears to
> > fallen out of favor with the open source crowd, it is the one
> > service that
> > does provide everything you wanted.
>
> Good point. I've not used it in years. Last time I looked the mail
> archives still sucked pretty hard. Otherwise, now that it has SVN, and
> if it has eliminated the performance problems, it might just do the
> trick.
>

Performance is nothing special, and its mail archive search interface is still
pretty crappy, but thats what local mail is for :-) I think the key to
sourceforge is its complete and it does work pretty well most of the time.

> > I've been saying for some time now we need to get out of the project
> > hosting
> > service, and get into the project directory service. What we really
> > want is
> > to make it easy for people to find postgresql related projects,
> > regardless of
> > where they are.
>
> That's an excellent idea. Do you have a plan for this?
>

We already have a product catalog on postgresql.org
http://www.postgresql.org/download/product-categories, so I think the plan
would be something like 1)no new projects on pgfoundry 2) announce 6 months
to move your project off of pgfoundry, and 3) shut it down. The downside is
this causes upheavel for projects currently on pgfoundry, breaks all kinds of
links, and generally leads to similar problems we had when we shut down
gborg, but it might be best in the long run.

Still, I dont think most people have bought into the idea that we shouldn't be
hosting projects anymore, so I haven't put much effort into this.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

David E. Wheeler wrote:
> On Sep 18, 2008, at 19:01, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>
>> Why not host the code on (say) GitHub, and the rest of the stuff on
>> pgFoundry?
>
> That's kind of what I'm doing now. But I'm wondering if I should
> bother with pgFoundry at all. It seems pretty dead (see Josh Berkus's
> reply).
>
>

He didn't say it was dead, nor is it, not remotely. You are badly
misinterpreting his words here.

cheers

andrew

What about Assembla? http://assembla.com/

[]'s
- Walter

> > That's kind of what I'm doing now. But I'm wondering if I should
> > bother with pgFoundry at all. It seems pretty dead (see Josh Berkus's
> > reply).

Actually, pgFoundry remains extremely popular. Currently, we're getting an
average of 2-3 new projects a week.

The issue with pgFoundry is that it's based on a hacked version of the
GForge code, which had legacy problems to begin with and is now no longer
upgradable. And while lots of people want to complain about it, nobody
wants to put in the 15-25 hours of work required to fix it up so that it
supports SVN and code snippets (including me).

However, I agree with Robert that maintaining a collab site is, today, a
bad use of our limited administration resources, which could be better
turned to developing directory and build services (for "kitchen sink"
packages). Realistically, though, shutting down pgFoundry might take as
much work as fixing it.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL
San Francisco

Josh Berkus wrote:
>>> That's kind of what I'm doing now. But I'm wondering if I should
>>> bother with pgFoundry at all. It seems pretty dead (see Josh Berkus's
>>> reply).
>>>
>
> Actually, pgFoundry remains extremely popular. Currently, we're getting an
> average of 2-3 new projects a week.
>
> The issue with pgFoundry is that it's based on a hacked version of the
> GForge code, which had legacy problems to begin with and is now no longer
> upgradable. And while lots of people want to complain about it, nobody
> wants to put in the 15-25 hours of work required to fix it up so that it
> supports SVN and code snippets (including me).
>
I'd be willing to investigate and have a go at this. Until now I
haven't heard that we were in such a situation with pgFoundry. Does it
even have a roadmap for future work? It is a problem that GForge
development in general appears to have slowed/stalled for a couple of
years. There have been some recent developments but I'm not convinced
it will get back to the same development rate as Tim Prudue it working
on the AS version now.

I personally had such high hopes for pgfoundry as the GBorg site was not
that great. But it seems that we haven't been able to make the
pgfoundry dream a reality.
> However, I agree with Robert that maintaining a collab site is, today, a
> bad use of our limited administration resources, which could be better
> turned to developing directory and build services (for "kitchen sink"
> packages). Realistically, though, shutting down pgFoundry might take as
> much work as fixing it.
>
Currently it's managed by core developers. I'm not convinced it's the
best use of their time either. But others in the community may be at
their best supporting something like pgFoundry. But whether it's safe
to hand out that level of clearance to other community members is the
decision that has to be made.

So if somebody is interesting in contacting me about moving pgfoundry
forward, please do so.

Regards

Russell Smith

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 10:38 PM, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> > That's kind of what I'm doing now. But I'm wondering if I should
>> > bother with pgFoundry at all. It seems pretty dead (see Josh Berkus's
>> > reply).
>
> Actually, pgFoundry remains extremely popular. Currently, we're getting an
> average of 2-3 new projects a week.
>
> The issue with pgFoundry is that it's based on a hacked version of the
> GForge code, which had legacy problems to begin with and is now no longer
> upgradable. And while lots of people want to complain about it, nobody
> wants to put in the 15-25 hours of work required to fix it up so that it
> supports SVN and code snippets (including me).

Well that's not strictly true - I persuaded one of the GForge
developers to work on the upgrade. As far as I'm aware, we're still
waiting for the hardware/OS platform to be sorted out after some
initial problems. I suspect JD will tell me something different though
- that being the case, perhaps we can work out the issues and get on
with the upgrade.

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com

Dave Page wrote:

> Well that's not strictly true - I persuaded one of the GForge
> developers to work on the upgrade. As far as I'm aware, we're still
> waiting for the hardware/OS platform to be sorted out after some
> initial problems. I suspect JD will tell me something different though
> - that being the case, perhaps we can work out the issues and get on
> with the upgrade.

The machine is ready to go and as far as I know even has a jail. Stefan
would know more.

Joshua D. Drake

>

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> Dave Page wrote:
>
>> Well that's not strictly true - I persuaded one of the GForge
>> developers to work on the upgrade. As far as I'm aware, we're still
>> waiting for the hardware/OS platform to be sorted out after some
>> initial problems. I suspect JD will tell me something different though
>> - that being the case, perhaps we can work out the issues and get on
>> with the upgrade.
>
> The machine is ready to go and as far as I know even has a jail. Stefan
> would know more.

OK, cool. Stefan; what's your take on where we're at?

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Hi,

Le 20 sept. 08 à 09:42, Dave Page a écrit :
> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Joshua D. Drake
> <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>> Dave Page wrote:
>>
>>> Well that's not strictly true - I persuaded one of the GForge
>>> developers to work on the upgrade. As far as I'm aware, we're still
>>> waiting for the hardware/OS platform to be sorted out after some
>>> initial problems. I suspect JD will tell me something different
>>> though
>>> - that being the case, perhaps we can work out the issues and get on
>>> with the upgrade.

I suppose the plan is to upgrade to a newer GForge. Is it still time
to propose something completely different? I have real good feedbacks
about VHFFS, a perl based clean-room re-implementation of it, if you
want to see it this way.
http://www.vhffs.org/wiki/index.php
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHFFS (easy to grasp keywords)

Hope this helps, regards,
- --
dim

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On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 8:44 PM, Dimitri Fontaine
<dfontaine(at)hi-media(dot)com> wrote:

> I suppose the plan is to upgrade to a newer GForge. Is it still time to
> propose something completely different? I have real good feedbacks about
> VHFFS, a perl based clean-room re-implementation of it, if you want to see
> it this way.
> http://www.vhffs.org/wiki/index.php
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHFFS (easy to grasp keywords)

Certainly not an idea I want to entertain - migrating to a new project
site would be a massive undertaking, and liable to drag on for far
longer than any of us want. It took long enough to migrate from GBorg
:-(

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com

Dave Page wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>> Dave Page wrote:
>>
>>> Well that's not strictly true - I persuaded one of the GForge
>>> developers to work on the upgrade. As far as I'm aware, we're still
>>> waiting for the hardware/OS platform to be sorted out after some
>>> initial problems. I suspect JD will tell me something different though
>>> - that being the case, perhaps we can work out the issues and get on
>>> with the upgrade.
>> The machine is ready to go and as far as I know even has a jail. Stefan
>> would know more.
>
> OK, cool. Stefan; what's your take on where we're at?

yeah there is a box and a jail I set up a while ago but for various
reasons the actual migration (planning and testing) never happened.
I'm still prepared to handle the required sysadmin level work but I
don't have time for anything more fancy right now.

Stefan

On Sep 22, 2008, at 10:08, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:

>>> The machine is ready to go and as far as I know even has a jail.
>>> Stefan
>>> would know more.
>> OK, cool. Stefan; what's your take on where we're at?
>
> yeah there is a box and a jail I set up a while ago but for various
> reasons the actual migration (planning and testing) never happened.
> I'm still prepared to handle the required sysadmin level work but I
> don't have time for anything more fancy right now.

If this upgrade happens, and I can use SVN with pgFoundry, that's
exactly where I'll stay. That would make me happy.

Whether or not it was a good idea to get into the hosting business,
since we do, as a community, have a hosting platform, it behooves us
to try to keep it up-to-date. I'd be willing to give a bit of time for
this.

But I do agree with Robert that we *should* get into the indexing
business. This is CPAN's secret: It doesn't host anything, but
provides a distributed index of Perl modules. What would be useful is
to make it easy for people to add their stuff to the index; and if
that could be automated with pgFoundry, so much the better for those
who host there.

My $0.02. Thanks for the discussion, folks.

Best,

David

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:08:16 +0200
Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan(at)kaltenbrunner(dot)cc> wrote:

> > OK, cool. Stefan; what's your take on where we're at?
>
> yeah there is a box and a jail I set up a while ago but for various
> reasons the actual migration (planning and testing) never happened.
> I'm still prepared to handle the required sysadmin level work but I
> don't have time for anything more fancy right now.

I think one problem we have right now, is nobody knows what it is going
to take. I would expect that our current version is sufficiently old
enough to cause some migration pain?

I know we have two members willing to help that are not Stefan and I.
Which is good, but this doesn't appear to be a small project.

Joshua D. Drake

>
>
>
> Stefan
>

--
The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/
PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/
United States PostgreSQL Association: http://www.postgresql.us/