Re: [Savannah-hackers] Re: Savannah Projects Approval

[Elfyn McBratney]

Hello Sam,

On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 01:26:58AM -0400, Sam Bromley wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm quite pleased to hear that all of your hard
> work had finally paid off. Good job folks.

So are we, and thank you! :)

> I have registered my project with www.gna.org,
> however I am quite interested in pursuing a move
> to savannah.nongnu.org but would like to clarify
> a few questions I have had. If you have a few moments
> (which I'm sure may be few given the backlog you
> must now deal with) I would much appreciate any
> information you could provide me on the following
> questions:
> 
> 1) Does savannah.nongnu.org offer hosting via
> gnu arch (tla) instead of CVS, akin to www.gna.org?

Not yet.  We hope to offer GNU Arch support some time in the future.

> 2) How does savannah differ from gna? Would I be
> correct in assuming that the recent security improvements
> made at savannah have not been made at gna? Gna seems to
> have implemented secure certificates for all sessions.

The changes made to the Savannah infrastructure differ in different parts
of the services offered.  For example, we no longer use pserver for anoncvs,
each project has it's own chroot environment, and we require uploads to be
GPG-signed.

> Is it bigger than this? How does savannah differ from
> savane?

Savannah (the software) is an older version of what is now known as Savane.
We will hopefully be upgrading soon, so there will be no differences.

> 3) The user documentation at gna appears to be more extensive
> than that available at savannah. Is this a temporary issue,
> am I simply unaware of its location, or are you targetting
> a different audience? Is there any more to the FAQ provided?

It certainly is.  The documentation hasn't been updated much since December
2003, which will change soon.

> 4) Which software host, savannah or Gna, is most readily recognized
> as supporting the Libre Software movement? (Biases aside :) )
> The delay in savannah's operation may have given Gna an upper
> hand here. But I'm looking for the best long term solution.

Gna! and Savannah both support the Free Software movement, with Gna!
being sponsored by FSF France and Savannah being sponsored by FSF USA.

> 5) It is very difficult (for me) to determine exactly what hosting
> services are offered through savannah, aside from CVS hosting.
> What are those services? (eg. Through a round about way I found
> that I can host my project webpage at savannah. I also
> found a link in the FAQ explaining what to do if the mailman
> password was lost, thus implying that I can have a mailing list.
> I would really just like to see a list of possible services
> with a short consise description of each.)

Savannah and Gna! offer the same services, with some dirrerences in the way
they are implemented.  For example, Gna! offers sftp and rsync access to
manage download areas while Savannah offers anonymous FTP (and soon a web
front-end) to manage download areas.

A short run down of the services we offer are:

  Project homepage
  Mailing lists
  CVS repository
  Download area
  Bug, news, patch, support and task managers
  ViewCVS (for source and homepage repos)  

> Sorry for all the trouble. Keep up the good work.
> Cheers,
> Sam.

-- 
Elfyn McBratney

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