Re: Bundles in Agora

[c.]

On 15 Oct 2012, at 16:14, Juan Pablo Carbajal wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Carnë Draug <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On 9 October 2012 23:48, c. <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 9 Oct 2012, at 22:10, address@hidden wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Regarding your future stuff. "A bundle management system (so that
>>>> users can rename, delete, and add files after creating a bundle)", I
>>>> think wee need more basic functionality before this.
>>> 
>>> Actually, if possible I'd prefer if you could NOT implement this 
>>> functionality at all.
>>> I'd rather have users upload complete releases of their bundles.
>>> For managing incremental changes to single files I believe using a revision 
>>> control system
>>> would more appropriate.
>>> 
>>> That's just me though ...
>> 
>> It's not just you, you are right. This functionality is not desirable
>> at all. It's just making easier for all octave programmers that call
>> themselves non-programmers to shoot themselves on the foot.
>> 
>> Carnë
> 
> Hi Wendy,
> 
> I am sorry I did not answer your e-mail. I haven't been getting
> messages from the mailing list (some mail problem at the uni). I saw
> your answers thanks to your post in planet Octave. Thank you fro your
> continuous update!
> 
> Regarding your question:
> 
>> The rating/feedback functionality is a good idea. Do you have any thoughts
>> on how it should work? For instance, should the rating be a number (say, out
>> of 5), and should anonymous users be allowed to rate things? The more ideas
>> you have for this the better!
> 
> The method I thought would be useful is the one of the "like", "do not
> like", with comments (something like youtube). Anonymous users
> shouldn't be able to vote. It would be nice to have a download counter
> as well, this one counting all download from anonymous and registered
> users. The idea is that one would be able to make a search and order
> by downloads and rate. I would start with something as simple as
> possible, we just need what we have in the forums.
> Eventually it would be very useful to have the possibility to flag
> bundles but for this we will need special users, like admins, etc...
> and this is too much... like in stackoverflow... lets leave it for the
> future.
> 
> Again, the simple, the better.
> 
> All this in view of considering one of the uses of Agora to
> recruit/detect future collaborators.
> 
> 
> Thanks and good luck!


Hi Wendy,

I just prepared new releases for some packages in Octave-Forge and I tried to 
upload them 
to Agora in order to test the bundle-submission system.

Here are some comments you may (or may not) find useful to improve its 
functionality.

1) "Description"
   Bundles formatted as Octave loadable packages do include a "DESCRIPTION" 
file, 
   wouldn't it be possible to parse that directly as it is currently done to 
create
   the package page on Octave-Forge?

2) Docs
   When uploading a package on Octave-Forge we include a set of html files with 
the package
   documentation that are automatically generated using the 
"generate_package_html" function.
   Wouldn't it be possible to allow users to upload such files on Agora as well 
and show them 
   instead of the bundle file listing? 

3) Browsing bundle contents
   I don't think the ability to browse the contents of all the files in a 
bundle makes much
   sense, it would be better to just show the description, index, license and 
possibly
   the HTML docs.
  

3) "Name" field. 
   It would be nice to add a warning under the field title specifying the 
acceptable 
   format for the field to avoid trial-and-error

4) "Paste it" button.
   Shouldn't this read "Upload" in this context?

5) Formatted and unformatted bundles.
   These suggestions are biased towards the case were bundles being uploaded 
are in the format
   required by the Octave package manager ("pkg.m"), you might want to add a 
flag in the upload
   page that allows to specify whether the bundle peing uploaded is formatted 
according to this 
   format or not and behave differently in the two cases.

These are just my two cents, others may think differently.
Anyways, starts to look very nice, keep up the very good work!
Thanks,
Carlo