Re: [Savannah-users] Editing web page

[Bob Proulx]

Edward Ned Harvey (savannah) wrote:
> Karl Berry wrote:
> > After many years of struggle and incremental improvements, all I can say
> > is, I don't expect all of this to ever be perfectly solved.  (And, BTW,
> > all this is one reason why I remain utterly unenthused about supporting
> > non-CVS vc's for web pages, as adding another layer of significant
> > complexity to an already fraught system.)
> 
> I assume, for clarification, you're speaking as a supporter of
> nongnu, saying you remain unenthused about supporting non-CVS for
> webpages on savannah/nongnu.  Right?

I am not Karl but will make a comment.

There are basically two different layers of system administration.
The Savannah machines are hosted by the FSF but Savannah Hackers have
full access to them and can make changes.  The www.gnu.org and
www.nongnu.org systems are hosted by the FSF but no one except for the
FSF sysadmin has access to them.

This means that the existing system works because it is existing.  It
uses CVS because that is what was the best available when it was set
up.  It isn't a bad system for web pages because the web pages have
simple needs.

In order to make any changes we need to work through sysadmin who is
always busy with other tasks.  We don't have the access to do it
ourselves.  So it isn't as simple as just going out and doing it.
Neither Karl or any of the Savannah Hackers can do it.  It can only be
done by FSF sysadmin.

Plus the web pages are quite simple constructs as compared to the
project source code.  The web pages change but not at the same rate as
source code.  Sure we may prefer $YOUR_FAVORITE_VCS_HERE but there is
a non-zero effort to setting it up as compared to having CVS already
set up and running reliably.  Things would need to be able to handle
web pages in a variety of version control systems adding complexity.
The return on the investment is low.

> You're not trying to make any kind of broader generalization about
> svn/git/whatever being inappropriate for webpages in general.  If
> only they were hosted somewhere that was designed to work well with
> those systems, it would be fine.

Right.

Bob