Re: [Debian-sf-users] State of the 'Forge?

[Roland Mas]

Mathew Jason Binkley (2002-05-30 12:18:51 -0500) :

> Hi.  I'm trying to build a website using Sourceforge or something
> similar for Vanderbilt University researchers to host computer
> source and datasets.  Thus far I've looked at:
>
>      * Debian-SF      [ http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/debian-sf/ ] 
>      * sf-genericinst [ http://sf-genericinst.sourceforge.net ] 
>      * Savannah       [ http://savannah.gnu.org ] 
>
> and Sourceforge clones: 
>
>      * XoopsForge     [ http://xoopsforge.sourceforge.net ] 
>      * GBorg          [ http://gborg.postgresql.org ] 
>
> Not to be mean, but they are all either bleeding raw to the point of
> being unmaintainable, or lack the basic functionality we need
> (CVS/web/mailing list).

Eyh?  Debian-SF provides all that, and is stable.  It's in Debian
testing, soon to be released as Woody, the new stable distribution.
It works, it works well, and it works now.  And we have References
(including the US Air Force, the Icelandic NIC, the Korean Linux
Documentation Project, and quite a few companies) :-)

  You might be referring to the 2.6 series of the same Debian-SF,
which is currently in a rather unstable state (the previous paragraph
refers to the 2.5 series).  Fear not however, for this is not the one
included in Debian, and it won't be before it's considered stable
enough.  And when it is included in Debian, there will be a smooth
upgrade (ther already is).

> Since I've heard mention that the various SourceForge groups are
> working to unify their codebases, I was wondering if someone in the
> know could give a small "State of the (open) Sourceforge" message
> about how things stand and where they're going.  It's hairpulling
> trying to make a long-term decision about which program to use given
> the current state of affairs.

  I haven't tried either XoopsForge or GBorg, so I can't comment on
them.  I know Savannah is quite active (commits, bugfixes and
mailing-lists), and Debian-SF is active too (we're busy stabilising
code for the upcoming 2.6 package).  SF-genericinst hasn't seen much
activity (if at all) for the past six months at least.  Unifying the
codebases is something that might or might not happen, I don't exactly
know.

> In my experience, Sourceforge has little documentation, ugly code,
> requires days of work to get semi-working on my Debian Woody box
> (mostly due to LDAP), and has a ton of "Sourceforge.net"-specific
> stuff that needs to be cleaned out.

  Well, we at Debian-SF are working on all that.  There's not *much*
documentation but there's some.  The code is ugly, but not as much as
some other codes I've seen recently (by far).  And the installation
delay is not counted in days but in minutes now.  If your Woody is
up-to-date, the "sourceforge" package in Woody installs rather well
(unless you *already* have a tricky LDAP setup).  If it doesn't, well,
tell us and we'll fix it :-)

[...]

> Hopefully I haven't ignited a flame war, because I'm genuinely
> interested in all of them, and respect the amount of hard work it
> takes to build/maintain something like it.

  Well, I must admit that having my package qualified of "either
bleeding raw or lacking basic functionality" vexed me for a while.
Please don't do it again :-) Seriously though, the only way to know is
to test them all.  I really don't believe the 2.5 package is
unmaintainable, I've been using it at work for more than a year and
had no problems apart from the ones I caused (like crashing my
database by trying a restoration without stopping it).  I don't know
how hard it is to install Savannah (although it's intended to run on
Debian boxes since it's run on the GNU servers), and I have no clue
about others.

> If anyone knows any other software I haven't mentioned, I would love
> to hear about it.

  There are other forks of Sourceforge, but they're either dead
(X-Forge never really started) or based on very early versions of
Sourceforge (Berlios).

  There.  If you try a more-or-less thorough testing of several
SF-likes, please report the results, so that all these projects can
improve itself in the areas where it lags behind the others.

  Thanks for your interest :-)

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

Time is a drug.  Too much of it kills you.
  -- in Small Gods (Terry Pratchett)