Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] creating lists

[Sylvain Beucler]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2008 at 05:33:38PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote:
>     Changing the themes means editing the CSS files (what you look for is
>     in base.css), I'll do that.
> 
> Thanks.  It is pleasant not to see the excessive justified spacing any more.
> 
>     - the custom texts are stored at
>    
> http://web.cvs.sv.gnu.org/viewvc/administration/content/?root=administration
> 
> Sorry for my ignorance, but I still do not see what to edit or create in
> order to add some text to the mailing list creation pages, e.g.,
> https://savannah.gnu.org/mail/admin/?group=texinfo
> 
> The one file I see under gnu-content/mail at the above url is an
> effectively empty about_list_creation.txt.  Somehow I didn't think it
> would be a good idea to just edit it and see what happened :).
> http://web.cvs.sv.gnu.org/viewvc/administration/content/gnu-content/mail/about_list_creation.txt?root=administration&view=log
> 
> Can you advise?

If you prefer, they are similar to Emacs hooks.

The best would be to look in the Savane source code for
"utils_get_content()", in the location you seek
(e.g. frontend/php/mail/admin/*.php)


>     You also have a pre-installed QEMU image ready to run.
> 
> What does developing savane or savannah have to do with QEMU?  It's the
> first time I've seen this mentioned.

You run the QEMU image and TADA! you get a running Debian Etch system
with Savane pre-installed on it. So you can start testing without the
hassle of understanding the installation process.


>     If that's too much complicated for the volunteers, they probably can't
> 
> The problem is not that running "make install" is hard.  (I certainly
> agree anyone baffled by that is a hopeless case. :) The problem is
> knowing what to download and unpack and set up to get to the point of
> running make install.

I guess we could improve
https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/SavaneTasks a bit.

Well, essentially, go to the mentioned Savannah project, download the
source code, read INSTALL.


> And how any changes can be tested,

For frontend changes, you can use your 'make install' instance, which
starts a web browser on http://localhost:50080/. Or you can use the
QEMU image, which does the same.

For backend changes, install the backend in your system or use the
QEMU image - but since playing with the underlying Unix system is not
trivial, you'd better understand what you do anyway.

Of course the best would be to have an up-to-date QEMU image that
perfectly mimics Savannah. Or have a test instance running somewhere
at Savannah. But as you can imagine this is not easy to do nor to
maintain.


> and how they can get propagated to the live savannah site in due
> course.

Well you send patch to the project maintainer (me :)).

For content/ changes, there's a CVS hook that automatically does the
replication.


But I think all this is to get started, to ease the first steps. In
the end, I doubt one can progress without installing Savane on his/her
computer.

-- 
Sylvain