Open Source Infrastructure?
What's your opinion?
I'm considering moving the Hecl project to something a bit more modern in terms of infrastructure.
My rough idea is:
The web site stays at http://www.hecl.org
github for version control
Google Groups for the mailing list.
Google Code for the bug tracker. Or is github's up to snuff at this point?
I don't need much - Hecl isn't a huge project in terms of code or number of committers, but SF is starting to feel a bit... "creaky", so I have started thinking about alternatives, even if we're in no hurry to jump.
Attracting talent to work on the project is definitely one of my biggest concerns. I think that Groups and Github definitely make that easier than SourceForge, but on the other hand, git is fairly new, and I'm not sure how widely it's used outside of that geeky core that jumps on anything new.
What do you think? Is it going to be more disruptive to switch infrastructure than the gains from slightly more modern systems? Is it worth switching at all? Is it worth trying to use something like Google Code that at least groups most of the bits and pieces together? If you found it worthwhile to move away from SF, what was the "breaking point" for you?
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Moving to modern version control will definitely help. Github seems sensible as far as code hosting goes; I don't know enough about their bug tracking to compare it to Google's, but it seems sensible to keep code and bugs in the same place.
I think your biggest problem may arise from the use of Google Groups for the mailing list. It proves fairly difficult for people to subscribe to a Google Group without making a Google account, which raises the bar slightly over just entering an email address and hitting "subscribe". I don't have an excellent alternative suggestion, though.
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http://launchpad.net FTW!
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Disclosure: I work at SourceForge.
SF has supported git for a while (hg and bzr too), so you can use that without changing hosts if you want. If you're looking for a more modern issue tracker than the SF-builtin one, we offer one-click installs of Trac and MantisBT. We've also been rolling out new features like a visual redesign, tags, reviews, and a file release system that allows arbitrary paths (instead of package/release hierarchy). Not everyone is aware of these features, so I wanted to point them out.
Anyway, enough of the shameless plug.
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I've noticed git adoption rates increasing rapidly. There are some terrific services out there beyond github that are helping to explain what a rocking RCS it is.
99% of my work is still in subversion and will stay there for the foreseeable future. If I didn't have all that work in SVN, I'd use git.
Also - cgit is a very nice tool for web viewing git repos.
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The thing that bums me out most about all of those services that you listed is that not one of them is actually open source itself. (github being a whole lot more than just git, which is of course open source) Are there really no good free alternatives? Putting your project at the mercy of a closed, proprietary system seems dangerous, not to mention somewhat ironic.
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I recommend launchpad if you don't mind bazaar, and it can import SVN, CVS, and git trees, and its open source to boot.
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Regarding launchpad. It looks pretty good, but git and mercurial smell more like 'winners' to me. Call it a gut feeling, but I don't want to spend a great deal of time on this, and so I want to be somewhat conservative. I'm even a bit wary of moving to git because I would prefer to use something that's been around a bit longer.
Regarding SF. I know it has git, but there are a number of other things that seem to be slightly broken about it (the mailing list support wasn't working the other day). I have used SF for the past ten years, and have good memories of it, but it seems to have built itself a bit of a negative brand lately.
@noahm - I would prefer to use something open source too. The advantage of git or other dvcs's is that I can always switch hosting services at some later date. In any case using something open source is a lower priority than 1) making it easy for other developers to get involved and 2) making it easy for our users.
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Launchpad is now entirely open source.
A good thing about LP is that the bug tracker integrate well between project and distribution. For example, you could link a bug in your project with the corresponding bug in the Debian BTS, for tracking both together.
LP also has mailing list hosting, based on Mailman.
Regarding Bazaar, I am not in a position to provide an enlightened opinion, as I have not used git much. However, Bazaar is reputedly much easier to learn and use than git, which may be a plus to attract new developers and move those you have to a DVCS. Bazaar also has built-in LP support (bzr branch lp:project ...)
Disclaimer: I work for Canonical (although not on Launchpad)
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(disclaimer google fun) Go google.
It supports hg. I've used git and bzr for about a year (bleeding edge both) and after hearing that google and potion are switching to hg I've tried it and I love it. Hg can be used both as simple tool and advanced with gradual change between the both.
Google ui is generally user friendly and intuitive. Using google code for hg bugs and mailing list (via google groups) is imho best solution for a gentle and elegant solution =)
To make it unbiased let me state killer features that github has best webhosting (push a branch, done) + external api's to better bug control lightning. Launchpad has cross distro linkage & Ppa's for nightly builds.
On the horizon I believe alioth/gforge will soon beat them all.