On Feb 5, 2004, at 10:11 AM, Mat Caughron wrote:
The things that I'd like to see built (which obviously aren't in the
current official site) are:
1. email notification (versiontracker-style) for updates to
particular ports
Not arguing against this, necessarily, but isn't that what
cvs-darwinports-all@ does? Granted we want to trim out the cvs stuffs
and create an RSS feed of the log messages for udpates (I don't think
mij@ has had a chance to do much work in this regard yet).
2. threaded comments for each portfile
For what purpose? It would be far more useful if someone has a comment
about a portfile (a problem, something they would like corrected, a
feature request) for them to send it to this list, darwinports@, and to
the port's maintainer. This is how things are done right now, and it
works very well.
I really don't see what a forum would accomplish, other than to divide
our time and attention to another place of discussion besides this one.
We could provide a web form that sends an email to this list, I guess
(and alternatively, from our ports browser, use that form to send mail
to the maintainer as well)... but the point is, right now comments
about ports are directed to this list and to the port's maintainer.
That is how it should be.
3. links that would download a portfile (and with a properly
configured mimetype?) launch a GUI ports installer app. The goal here
being to have compiled software as easy to install as drag and drop
applications are currently. For all I know this item overlaps what
Apple
has in mind down the road with their package management stuff. (I've
learned over the years that no small company who competes with Apple
lives
to tell the story.)
I am working on a GUI Installer app for the whole of DarwinPorts (and
that will get folded into DarwinPorts Manager.app), which will also
allow one to keep their dports tree and base system up-to-date. In any
case, we have experimented with distributing Installer packages, and we
may do so again in the future, when we can either go ahead with
Chris/Landon's suggestion of sniffing existing package systems for
dependencies, etc.. In any case, right now we have some more pressing
concerns such as dependencies that we must work on first.
4. promotion of secure software deployment practices for the Mac
community at large (checking hashes, signed files etc.) You'd be
suprised
(or maybe not) at the number of Mac users who have never heard of MD5
or
SHA1/2. I think it is a good thing to make clear what the hashing
algorithms do and making clear to them, how they are checked, etc.
We have enough work to do without being a mouthpeice for software
development practices to the Mac community... not that that would be a
bad thing, but I think that's getting waaaay off topic for DarwinPorts.
I personally work on DarwinPorts because I like DarwinPorts, and would
like to see if improve. I don't work on DarwinPorts to promote
development practices to the Mac community as a whole, though I can't
speak for anyone else.
Perhaps you could write the documentation you would like to see and we
can include it somewhere on OpenDarwin.org?
5. freshports-style listing of recent important changes
What is that? Can you give an example?
Not sure what's next:
should I check in darwinports.com source so others can work on it
and leave it where it is?
Send your source to the list, and if you are willing, we can see what
we can do about merging it with our existing port list, which, if I may
say, is more helpful to users because it doesn't just spit the portfile
out at them... but I don't know what your intentions were with your
site. In any case, our existing listing does need to be improved, but
after taking a closer look at darwinports.com last night, I really
think it's more useful to users who want to browse the ports tree.
This is not to say that yours cannot be improved, I'm sure it can... it
also depends on what requirements you would place on it. Right now,
ours just requires an up-to-date PortIndex (afaik, someone can correct
me), and this is best (we have to keep in mind as we look to the future
that we need/want mirrors in the future, and we want to keep the
requirements on them down to a minimum).
scrap it all and header redirect to darwinports.opendarwin.org and
then start submitting patches to the current official web site? (rather
not do that as it would mean that my work has been a waste)
I don't think it's necessary to waste all that you have done, although
I do personally think that darwinports.com is confusing the DarwinPorts
project namespace right now (see comments on MacSlash for the confusion
that was caused--many of the comments take darwinports.com as the
Official site for DarwinPorts, and indeed your announcement made it
sound that way, IMHO).
It would indeed be best, since we are such a small community relative
to others, if we concentrate our effort on presenting all the best
information we can on darwinports.opendarwin.org. If you could submit
patches to our current site, that would be far more productive, maybe
to help us integrate the work you've done (as I've already mentioned).
just keep hacking away on it, taking feature requests from you all
and have it be a fan site?
I personally think that we're a small enough community right now that a
fan site would just dilute and confuse things more than it would help
in attracting new users. If you would work with us on improving the
aspects of our website that you find lacking (that led you to the
creation of your own), then I think that is a more productive approach.
what organizational structure is there to opendarwin and would
they be interested in the domain and what I've built on it?
As Landon has already asked, we might be. The basic structure of
DarwinPorts is we have port maintainers, committers, and users who all
read this list. This list is where all "official" discussion about
DarwinPorts takes place, new ports are announced here sometimes (I wish
more maintainers would do this), questions about the future direction
of DarwinPorts are asked here, new users are given help here.
Basically, everyone who subscribes to this list has a say in what goes
on with DarwinPorts. The PortMgr group also exists to keep the project
running smoothly, maintain the mailing lists, cvs accounts, and other
administrative things of that nature, and also is there to make
decisions about things if a consensus cannot be reached here.
OpenDarwin is a collection of Darwin-related projects, in addition to
the OpenDarwin operating system, and is run by a "Core" group.
Hopefully this email will kick off a discussion about the best plan of
action so that any outcome will not suprise anyone and be beneficial to
the group as a whole. In closing, I have benefitted tremendously from
the
ports system over the years (I still have a FreeBSD3.x book laying
around
in my office) and hopefully I can make a genuinely positive
contribution
to these efforts. Darwinports.com is really a "fan site" in tribute to
the port collection on OSX. It is NOT an effort to fork or take
credit,
and if I thought that it was conducive to either, I would take it
offline
immediately.
I believe your sincerity, and I believe that you probably did intend
for it to be a fan site. As was said many times yesterday by many
different people, we appreciate the work you've put into it, and your
kind words about our hard work. However, the way it was presented to
the world--an announcement on MacSlash which was ambiguously worded at
best, without giving any prior information to this list (the
DarwinPorts community) caught everybody by surprise. If you want to
productive contribute to the DarwinPorts community, that's far from the
right way to go. This email is a good start in the right direction,
and thank you for taking the time to explain things to us.
-Will
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