Re: We need to talk about SourceForge

[Carnë Draug]

On 15 June 2015 at 16:22, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden> wrote:
> As you have probably heard, SourceForge has gone bad. We need to get
> Octave-Forge off SourceForge.
>
> Are there any easy alternatives? If there isn't a simple turnkey
> solution, I can move our hosting to hg.octave.org. I am thinking of
> installing a Kallithea instance there so we can host hg and a few git
> repos. The OF webpages would have to be moved and updated too, but
> that should not be impossible. We can run PHP on some subdomain of
> octave.org
>

We keep having this discussion every once in a while.  I remember this
being the same discussion when I became an Octave Forge maintainer.  The
reasons to not do it back then are pretty much the same for not doing it
now.  We do not have the infrastructure in place and we do not have someone
to build it.

I know the news are pretty alarming but let's remember that Octave Forge
primarly releases source packages and we should therefore be a bit safer.
No need to rush into something just yet.  We have installers for old
Octave releases so those are important to move somewhere else.

In the mind of moving Octave Forge somewhere else in the long term, here's
the things that Octave Forge currently provides.

  1. hosting hg, git, and svn repositories for development of packages;

  2. hosting of package releases;

  3. hosting of core installers (for Octave older releases);

  4. a nicer way to look and search for functions. Core functions side by
    side with packages, in a nicer looking layout, and inline demos;

  5. doxygen documentation for core since Octave 3.2.

If the plan is to move things over somewhere else, why not start moving them
one at a time.  The easiest one is the doxygen documentation.  That should
be fairly trivial.  Can this be done?

In addition, since the issue is with installers, can octave host the
installers currently provided by Octave Forge for older releases? [1]

In the last years we moved out the mailing list and bug tracker into core.
We have been merging the two communities slowly over time.  It's good to
continue this but we should do it one piece at a time.

Carnë

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/octave/files/