[pgrouting-dev] OSGeo server migration troublesystem

pgRouting pgrouting-dev
1

Hi PSC members (and others),

It has been a long time since we started to migrate pgRouting to OSGeo server, and so far we could get

  • Mailing lists
  • Download directory
    But Subversion repository setup is stuck now for months, and even if it was promised to me several times, it didn’t happen yet. (Several emails over the months haven’t had any success)

I feel we reached a point, where waiting for the SVN repository is blocking further development and we’re losing possible contributions from the community (probably we already did).

So I would like to propose to not wait any longer and move to some other hosting provider for the pgRouting source code (and osm2pgRouting).
There are many options: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software

I think it makes sense to chose one, that developers are familiar with, for example

  • Sourceforge
  • Github
  • Gitourious
  • Launchpad
  • Bitbucket
  • Google Code
    Personally I would be in favor to switch from Subversion to a distributed revision control such as Git or Mercurial, because it would make it easier to contribute code and would hopefully increase the number of developers.

Regarding TRAC I would prefer to

  • Close the current Forum/Discussion, make the current content a static website and make it available on OSGeo download server
  • Use GIS Stackexchange instead of the forum for those, who don’t like mailing lists: http://gis.stackexchange.com/
  • Use the ticket/bug tracker of the source code hosting provider
  • Write documentation/website content with Sphinx/ReST and host it in the repository (we can then create HTML and upload it to a server, ie. Georepublic server, accessible under pgrouting.org)
    Any opinions?

Otherwise, please vote for the following questions:

  1. Stop waiting for SVN migration to OSGeo server and chose an alternative revision control hosting?
  2. Switch from Subversion to distributed revision control (DVCS)?
  3. Which DVCS would you prefer?
  4. Shutdown current TRAC as described above?
    Best regards,

Daniel

PS: probably in a few days Chris will tell me that he setup pgRouting SVN repository on OSGEo servers :wink:

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

2

Well, to make a start and give an example:

  1. Stop waiting for SVN migration to OSGeo server and chose an alternative revision control hosting?

+1

  1. Switch from Subversion to distributed revision control (DVCS)?

+1

  1. Which DVCS would you prefer?

Gitorious (because Git is well known in FOSS4G community and it’s more “open” than Github)

  1. Shutdown current TRAC as described above?

+1

Daniel

3

Daniel,

On 10/26/2010 11:09 PM, Daniel Kastl wrote:

Hi PSC members (and others),

It has been a long time since we started to migrate pgRouting to OSGeo
server, and so far we could get

    * Mailing lists
    * Download directory

But Subversion repository setup is stuck now for months, and even if it
was promised to me several times, it didn't happen yet. (Several emails
over the months haven't had any success)
I feel we reached a point, where waiting for the SVN repository is
blocking further development and we're losing possible contributions
from the community (probably we already did).

So I would like to propose to not wait any longer and move to some other
hosting provider for the pgRouting source code (and osm2pgRouting).
There are many options:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software

I think it makes sense to chose one, that developers are familiar with,
for example

    * Sourceforge
    * Github
    * Gitourious
    * Launchpad
    * Bitbucket
    * Google Code

Personally I would be in favor to switch from Subversion to a
distributed revision control such as Git or Mercurial, because it would
make it easier to contribute code and would hopefully increase the
number of developers.

I guess at some point I need to learn Git as it seems some of the other projects are also moving there. I think the OpenLayers team did a test migration to GitHub which gave the developers and community a change to learn about it and figure things out before without the risk of things getting messed up because people did not understand how it worked. This might be a good idea regardless.

I personally like svn/trac, but that is what I know and I'm ok with learning something new.

Regarding TRAC I would prefer to

    * Close the current Forum/Discussion, make the current content a
      static website and make it available on OSGeo download server
    * Use GIS Stackexchange instead of the forum for those, who don't
      like mailing lists: http://gis.stackexchange.com/

I assume we are keeping the mailing list.

    * Use the ticket/bug tracker of the source code hosting provider

I think we need to know what that might be. The OL team was very unimpressed with the Git tracker if I recall correctly. In fact I think they opt'ed to stay on Trac. We do not need to follow their lead, but again this might be something we want to look into to see if it is usable. I suspect our requirements are somewhat lower given the amount of activity we have.

    * Write documentation/website content with Sphinx/ReST and host it
      in the repository (we can then create HTML and upload it to a
      server, ie. Georepublic server, accessible under pgrouting.org
      <http://pgrouting.org>)

+1 on this

Any opinions?

Otherwise, please vote for the following questions:

   1. Stop waiting for SVN migration to OSGeo server and chose an
      alternative revision control hosting?
   2. Switch from Subversion to distributed revision control (DVCS)?
   3. Which DVCS would you prefer?
   4. Shutdown current TRAC as described above?

I'll support any and all of these changes since I'm not doing the work but in reality I don't think infrastructure is the block to changes and releases. At the moment we have very limited bandwidth with Anton as the only developer and he is busy. I hear that you are hoping to make things more accessible with these changes and we can all hope it will attract some new blood to the team.

I do think that we should keep the old infrastructure in place while we test the new setup and make sure we can use it, in case we want to back up and try something else if it is not working out well for us. It is just the prudent thing to do. We can have a future vote on making the migration permanent and committing the final efforts to convert docs, etc.

My 2 cents anyway. BTW thank you for looking into this and carrying the ball on it.

-Steve

Best regards,
Daniel

PS: probably in a few days Chris will tell me that he setup pgRouting
SVN repository on OSGEo servers :wink:

--
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de <mailto:daniel.kastl@georepublic.de>
Web: http://georepublic.de

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4

Stop waiting for SVN migration to OSGeo server and chose an
alternative revision control hosting?

+1

Switch from Subversion to distributed revision control (DVCS)?
Which DVCS would you prefer?

+1
Any git based thing will work.

Shutdown current TRAC as described above?

+1
Mailing list should be continued however.

Anton.

5

Thank you for comments, Steve!

A few answers from my side:

Personally I would be in favor to switch from Subversion to a
distributed revision control such as Git or Mercurial, because it would
make it easier to contribute code and would hopefully increase the
number of developers.

I guess at some point I need to learn Git as it seems some of the other projects are also moving there. I think the OpenLayers team did a test migration to GitHub which gave the developers and community a change to learn about it and figure things out before without the risk of things getting messed up because people did not understand how it worked. This might be a good idea regardless.

I personally like svn/trac, but that is what I know and I’m ok with learning something new.

I used Git for the pgRouting workshop with Frederic and it wasn’t difficult to learn.
I heard people say that DVCS make an open source project more open for contributions.

I think that one real problem of SVN is, that you can’t really do changes to some checked out repository and still stay in sync with changes of the main branch. There are workarounds, but for everyone without commit right to the repository Git should be a big win.

Regarding TRAC I would prefer to

  • Close the current Forum/Discussion, make the current content a
    static website and make it available on OSGeo download server
  • Use GIS Stackexchange instead of the forum for those, who don’t
    like mailing lists: http://gis.stackexchange.com/

I assume we are keeping the mailing list.

Yes, I think so, too. It seems this wasn’t clear in my email before.
I also want to keep the download directory on OSGeo server, because it’s good to have release tarballs, workshop data, etc. on a reliable server.

  • Use the ticket/bug tracker of the source code hosting provider

I think we need to know what that might be. The OL team was very unimpressed with the Git tracker if I recall correctly. In fact I think they opt’ed to stay on Trac. We do not need to follow their lead, but again this might be something we want to look into to see if it is usable. I suspect our requirements are somewhat lower given the amount of activity we have.

Yes, maybe TRAC has more advanced features for tickets, but sometimes simpler and less features doesn’t need to be worse. As you see with pgRouting it’s also possible to create a ticket mess with TRAC :wink:

I’ll support any and all of these changes since I’m not doing the work but in reality I don’t think infrastructure is the block to changes and releases. At the moment we have very limited bandwidth with Anton as the only developer and he is busy. I hear that you are hoping to make things more accessible with these changes and we can all hope it will attract some new blood to the team.

Actually I received a couple of emails this summer with code improvements and good ideas and offer to contribute.
I thought that it would be just a short time to wait for SVN on OSGeo servers, so instead of asking Orkney for new SVN dumps every week I decided to wait (which wasn’t a good idea probably).
My hope with Git is, that contributors can just commit to their pgRouting fork and we can then integrate improvements into pgRouting main branch. I hope that this makes collaboration easier.

I do think that we should keep the old infrastructure in place while we test the new setup and make sure we can use it, in case we want to back up and try something else if it is not working out well for us. It is just the prudent thing to do. We can have a future vote on making the migration permanent and committing the final efforts to convert docs, etc.

Yes, we can keep it as long as Orkney keeps the server running.
Forum/Discussion though I would like to close because it has not many people there reply to questions. Probably Stackoverflow is easier to handle.

Daniel

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

6

Hi PSC,

Is there any comment on this subject of those, who haven’t written yet?
Some agreement or disagreement?

This vote is just some sort of warming up :wink:
There are going to be a few more in the next weeks, I think.

Daniel

2010/10/27 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>

Thank you for comments, Steve!

A few answers from my side:

Personally I would be in favor to switch from Subversion to a
distributed revision control such as Git or Mercurial, because it would
make it easier to contribute code and would hopefully increase the
number of developers.

I guess at some point I need to learn Git as it seems some of the other projects are also moving there. I think the OpenLayers team did a test migration to GitHub which gave the developers and community a change to learn about it and figure things out before without the risk of things getting messed up because people did not understand how it worked. This might be a good idea regardless.

I personally like svn/trac, but that is what I know and I’m ok with learning something new.

I used Git for the pgRouting workshop with Frederic and it wasn’t difficult to learn.
I heard people say that DVCS make an open source project more open for contributions.

I think that one real problem of SVN is, that you can’t really do changes to some checked out repository and still stay in sync with changes of the main branch. There are workarounds, but for everyone without commit right to the repository Git should be a big win.

Regarding TRAC I would prefer to

  • Close the current Forum/Discussion, make the current content a
    static website and make it available on OSGeo download server
  • Use GIS Stackexchange instead of the forum for those, who don’t
    like mailing lists: http://gis.stackexchange.com/

I assume we are keeping the mailing list.

Yes, I think so, too. It seems this wasn’t clear in my email before.
I also want to keep the download directory on OSGeo server, because it’s good to have release tarballs, workshop data, etc. on a reliable server.

  • Use the ticket/bug tracker of the source code hosting provider

I think we need to know what that might be. The OL team was very unimpressed with the Git tracker if I recall correctly. In fact I think they opt’ed to stay on Trac. We do not need to follow their lead, but again this might be something we want to look into to see if it is usable. I suspect our requirements are somewhat lower given the amount of activity we have.

Yes, maybe TRAC has more advanced features for tickets, but sometimes simpler and less features doesn’t need to be worse. As you see with pgRouting it’s also possible to create a ticket mess with TRAC :wink:

I’ll support any and all of these changes since I’m not doing the work but in reality I don’t think infrastructure is the block to changes and releases. At the moment we have very limited bandwidth with Anton as the only developer and he is busy. I hear that you are hoping to make things more accessible with these changes and we can all hope it will attract some new blood to the team.

Actually I received a couple of emails this summer with code improvements and good ideas and offer to contribute.
I thought that it would be just a short time to wait for SVN on OSGeo servers, so instead of asking Orkney for new SVN dumps every week I decided to wait (which wasn’t a good idea probably).
My hope with Git is, that contributors can just commit to their pgRouting fork and we can then integrate improvements into pgRouting main branch. I hope that this makes collaboration easier.

I do think that we should keep the old infrastructure in place while we test the new setup and make sure we can use it, in case we want to back up and try something else if it is not working out well for us. It is just the prudent thing to do. We can have a future vote on making the migration permanent and committing the final efforts to convert docs, etc.

Yes, we can keep it as long as Orkney keeps the server running.
Forum/Discussion though I would like to close because it has not many people there reply to questions. Probably Stackoverflow is easier to handle.

Daniel

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de

Web: http://georepublic.de

7

Hi PSC members,

As long as we got no objections from any PSC member and all votes were
'+1', the deal is done.
It means we are starting to migrate to github and going to close TRAC
forum in next few weeks.

Anton.