Re: Project Hosting [Was Re: Minutes of the GNOME ...]

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 06:44:18PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > Although I have some thoughts about the merits of this proposal, I'd 
> > like to make a meta-point instead: isn't this more properly a 
> > gnome-hackers discussion, rather than a foundation-list one?
> 
> I think a fundamental issue is being overlooked here. If we have no remotely
> centralised CVS how are translators going to function. How is things like
> mass document conversion for nautilus going to be organised.
> 
> It sounds like for the sake of a few peoples political objection to basic ACLS
> folk are prepared to screw the entire setup

My objection to ACLs is not just political.  My objection is also very
technical.  You just cannot have the amount of cooperation that you can have
on the GNOME CVS currently if you put ACLs in.  I could very well say:

"It sounds like for the sake of a few people wanting basic ACLS
 folk are prepared to screw the entire setup."

And that is my feeling.

Now for the constructive part of this message:

I think ACLs will do absolutely nothing for the problems you mention.  What
needs to be done is some way for distributing translations and documents, no
matter where the project is hosted.  There will always be projects out of the
GNOME CVS, and we need to include those.  There was some recent discussion
on g-h I think about this and I suppose it is a good direction to go in.

It would be good to set up some sort of an automated system which could work
with a single CVS account to any repository and distribute docs and
translations appropriately.  Suppose a setup like this:

Doc/Translation
CVS server,              <------------> GNOME CVS
contains only docs
and translations         <------------> SourceForge CVS

Translators/Docwriters would get access on the translation CVS server
and a script would sync correct modules with correct docs, translations.
Another advantage of a setup like this is that docs and translation
people would not have to worry about which branch they are supposed to
do stuff in or anything like that.  The script would know the correct
branch, which would be whatever the maintainer sets up.  I think this
was one of the things that most people complained about.

It will also work with projects in any CVS tree, anywhere, mo matter what
policies that server has.  All they have to set up is an account for the
script.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses,
   not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
                       -- Dennis (the bloody peasant)